Scaling Up Insights — Coach Panel with Stacey Eads and Daniel Marcos

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Well, there we are live once again. We're ready to have a great conversation with a couple of great coaches all about scaling up and doing a good job with it, getting it ready, getting it right and navigating all the things that happen along the way. Our show today. Couple quotes to start us off. Shift happens. It's time for plan D. Mike Maddox says reminds us that things happen all the time. Unexpected, undesirable, right? Frustrating even. That's the shift. And expect the unexpected. Whenever possible, be the unexpected. That's Linda Berry, one of my favorite all time sort of counterculture comics. Linda Barry, expecting the unexpected. But what if you are the unexpected? We're going to talk about email, hell, disruption, quiet, quitting, giving it all away, finding your purpose, building a great culture, robotics, the rise of the robot, repetition and reinforcement and resentment and like whatever else these two criminals have to say. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of the show. Our show is all about how to scale a company, grow your business no matter what's happening in the world, what's happening in your industry. Like that. Find all our episodes and more wherever you're getting this right now. LinkedIn, Apple, Stitcher, YouTube, Facebook, like wherever. We post all around the place and we bring shows to you every week. So like subscribe it wherever you get them, get the notifications on. It'll make a difference. I am joined now by my friends and peers, Stacy Eads in Oklahoma and Daniel Marcos and Austin, Texas. Daniel, Stacy, welcome to the show.

Hey guys, how are you? Hey Stacey. Great to see you here.

Hey Bill, thanks for, thanks for having us.

Yeah, it's great to have a conversation once again. It's been a while since we've had one of these like panel conversations and I'm grateful for a chance to, to do it, to connect Again, a little bit about this. So we're going to kind of rip through some of these things. We take most of our topics right from the news that Vern shares with us in the Weekly Insights, and then we've got what we've got to say about it and share about how our clients are dealing with it, how we've used these ideas and things like that. First up, the one that caught me this week is really about email. Hell, Adam Grant says adding a sentence to your email can actually free up time. And in an INC article, INC Magazine article says that we spend over two and a half hours, over two and a half hours on email every day. I've trimmed that a little bit. But there are definitely times where it can spend up a lot. He says to free up hours, he suggests we add this additional sentence and help clarify expectations. And, you know, I read this and, and I was like, what does he mean by this? I don't know. Did you guys, either of you read the article or follow it?

I did, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. I felt like it was helpful. It basically was just saying if we would be more honest and transparent in our emails and actually say whether this is a high priority or not a high priority and possibly just end every single email with if you can possibly respond by XYZ date, I would really appreciate it so that I can do ABC with it. And it was just really the theory that if we're more transpar with what we want from those emails, maybe we actually get alignment.

We might get more of it. Yeah. Daniel.

Yeah. So I'm. Guys, I'm going to change to my headphones so it could be better. And by the way, I have a really big eye infection on my right eye, so it's down. I was in Guatemala over the last weekend in a conference. Looks like got. Got something at the airport robbed my e. My eye and it's been really bad. Oh, I'm already in antibiotics and coming out, but it's been tough this week.

Take care.

Let me go a little bit deeper on this thing with Alan Grant. We have a email protocol at Growth Institute. Whenever you send an email, you have a certain structure to send emails. And we got this from Christina Harbridge, a common friend Bill that you and I have. And Christina helped us build this what we call email protocol. And it explains on the two field, if you put someone on the two field, you expect that person to have a response on you or respond in the email, if in the cc just for them to read it. And then you have to Have a purpose of the article. You have to start with a word that says stock for your rights only or whatever. But you have to say a word that kind of state, what's the purpose of the email? Then put the email. And then below, if you could give options, even better saying, hey, we have option A, B or C. What do you want me to do? And I, if I read it, I just put a go and that's it. So my team said if I, if they want me to respond fast, they send me an email. They say, I would love our response by Friday, but here are the three options. Just tell me which of the options and then said, hey, return, that's it. So my speed of returning emails is much faster because we write it that way. Really, really powerful.

You know, I've spent a lot of time with the emails I get in and I like look at them and not only do I not get the replies I want to the ones I sent, but when I'm reading emails from you or anyone else, I'm like, what do they want? What am I supposed to do with this? Am I just being copied in on this? Is there a specific action? And the worst is see below. And then I'm supposed to read through this whole email chain and try to find the thing and they're like, oh well, it's really obvious. I'm like, no it's not. I have no idea what you're talking about. On the other hand, people like me write very terse emails. Like what do you think about this? Or like really not a lot of friendliness in it. And that also has its drawbacks because sometimes people don't think that I'm, they think I'm like mean or unfriendly in the email. But I think that simple tip, right, they have, Adam suggests one has this thing that's very similar to what Christina recommends. Another if you can, I would appreciate a response by that so that I know what to do. Like just say what it is that you want from someone. Hey, no action needed. Just want to inform you. Okay, great, I'll file that away or I need a decision or I need approval or you know, like that kind of thing. Please put it on your calendar. Okay.

I was really shocked and surprised that it was only listed as two and a half hours. I think there's a ton of industries where people really feel like they're checking their email all day long the entire eight hour day. So I was shocked that it only had two and a half. When before I was a coach, I Was a CEO of a technology based company and I actually had a rule for our staff that I really only wanted them checking email three times a day. So as soon as you walked in, check the email, get all of the urgent fires taken care of but within an hour, shut it down and let's actually get work done. Check in around lunchtime, 30 minutes or less. Are there any new fires that you really, really need to know about. Otherwise wait until 4 o', clock, get it all done in your last hour. Because really I needed to make sure that there was uninterrupted time to get more deep think work really accomplished.

Well, think about it. There's email, there's voicemail. Right. There's physical mail still and, and then there's WhatsApp. There's same page, there's slack.

Inboxes. Guys, when is your birthday? How many inbox invoices you have to go to respond and say thank you for everyone that tells you Happy birthday. 10 inboxes.

Yeah, there's a lot I is my birthday yesterday I got hundreds and hundreds of, of greetings, that kind of thing. And it was very sweet and some said more or less but I did have to go through and check off thank you and say like them and that kind of thing to hundreds of messages. Right. So we should all have that problem to be celebrated and, and acknowledged on our day. Well let's, so let's keep going. I think like if you could just provide clarity and we'll come back on this theme a little bit later. One of the speakers at our upcoming summit in Denver is Mike Mattek. I'll also be doing some speaking along with Vern at that event in Denver. We'll talk about that in a second. But he says that there are disruptors who have a proven process and that there are some interesting things to do to turn problems into solutions. Use your demons to drive you to greatness and create frameworks for that kind of repetition. Find ways to think differently under that pressure. So Mike will be talking more about that. I don't know. Like it seems like an awful lot of my clients are disruptors. How about you guys?

I think that's the role of the CEO. I think that the companies that really evolve and able to go to the next level consistently stage, stage it's because they have a lesson d disruptor in the head and, and it's really have a path to have the direction, hey, we're going to go there, there, there and then after setting the direction, understand what's what are the bottlenecks and what they have to bring and usually find creative ideas to solve them. You could not dominate an industry if you're doing everything like your competitors. You have to do something different. And the right CEOs are the ones that bring disruptive innovation and ideas on how to overcome them. And usually that's why they scale the company. So I agree.

Absolutely. I had the joy and pleasure of being able to work with a scaling up client that actually was a startup to scale up and their entire mode was in the disruption field of the electric vehicles and making sure that they were able to supply the electric vehicles with everything that is necessary for the US to really be able to be dominant in this area in the future, whereas the US is not dominant in this area right now. And it's really neat to be able to coach a company that is focused on being a disruptor because the energy of those teams is so focused. It's enjoyable.

There's something enjoyable, I think, about the disruption when it's thoughtfully applied. But it doesn't even have to be like at the core of the company. It could be in smaller processes or things like that, just doing something unique and different and you're still in the same industry, but you're approaching it in a little bit of a different way. So whether the, the level is profound or not, Mike is all about innovation and he's a great speaker. I look forward to having him there. I, you know, most of our companies that we work with, the, the disruption has already begun before we've started. Like the core, the premise of the thing was there. I've got a company working on solutions to blood supply problems. I've got another one working on autism care and I've got people in a whole variety of sectors from technology and solving problems with information, all of them looking at that and very often it begins with that. But then like the core of the company is disruptive, but then they start to find other kinds of things. Like the way they interact with the customer needs some reinvention. The way that they find their talent needs some reinvention. Right. And I think that's where we end up working with people beyond the initial innovation. What is the problem of the day? We've got a bunch of other speakers, Joe Polish, Shailey, Basnett, Biff Gore, all speaking at that summit. There is a discount code for our clients and listeners. If you're one of our clients, you can use October VIP Octvip 20 for whatever's there and look forward to seeing you. That is just in A few weeks in Denver and promised to be a great event. Two days to dive deep into scaling up. October 1819. And you guys will both be there?

Yes, I'll be there.

I will.

Awesome. Yeah, it'll be good. And it's a great one for our clients to come join us at and to learn more and go deeper, not only to review basics of scaling up, but also to hear from other speakers. And Shaylie Basnett was on our show a few weeks ago, and she's a charming and somewhat disruptive woman who talks about scaling Mount Everest and then leading a team of women to go on and scale a whole bunch of different peaks. And on top of that, she's pretty funny with her approach to it. The other thing that we've been talking about or hearing more and more from, and I don't know what you guys are hearing, but is this notion of quiet quitting to hire people for a while. And now we have people and they're like, God, people are not engaged, they're not answering, they're slow to respond. This idea of quiet quitting, I think we've all heard it by now, but it means they still show up to work, they still collect a paycheck, they go through the motions, but they're doing the bare minimum possible. How are you guys dealing with that? How is that showing up in your conversations and with the people on your teams? How are you addressing it?

Stacy, you want to go first?

It's an interesting concept because it depends on which type of article you're reading, right? If you're reading the articles from the individuals who created it and are talking about it on TikTok and who named it Quiet Quitting, you know, they've got, in their opinion, their pros that now that we're work from home life is 24, 7, 365. The Slack channel still dings at 6 o'. Clock, you know, at 7pm, at 8pm you're getting emails. They're trying to look for, where's the balance in my life? When do I actually shut it off and when do I shut it down? So I can see some of where they're coming from. But also the timing of this is incredibly bad because we just got to a level in which we got CEOs comfortable in a lot of industries allowing work from home. And they are seeing people be very productive in those environments. And we're struggling to be able to recruit and hire and get people engaged and interested in positions. And if you offer work from home, man, it opens up the entire United States. It opens up the entire globe and your ability to hire outside of your geographic area. So it's a really unique circumstance that it comes up right now when we've just made so much headway in the types and opportunities of recruiting that we can do. And the trust factor of work from home with CEOs to all of a sudden have this quiet quitting. It's not landing very well. And it just kind of depends on what generation are you in, what kind of industry are you in, and which side of the articles are you reading for me.

So we could spend two hours on this. But let me get a couple of perspectives first on the employee. I get it. We're all tired, guys. It's been a lot of change. Everyone's been telling we're going to have a recession in the U.S. i have people asking, hey, we've been talking about a recession for eight months and we don't see anything. And we're like, yeah, but it's coming, right? But we never know if it's really going to happen or not. So everyone's tired coming out of COVID everyone's tired. A lot of our culture, the way we operate, our companies being remote. We need to figure this out. And the people that are kidding are tired of everyone, but they're really. I think they're degrading their value. If you said, hey, I'm going to do the minimum to get paid, like, I'm not in this world to the minimum. If people choose that on their life, I think it's sad for them that they're choosing it. So that's a perspective on the individual, that they prefer to not add anything to the world and not bring great value and grow themselves. So I think that's an issue on the employees, and that reflects their having some challenges in their life or their perspective at the moment, then on the side of the employer. As an example, we had a webinar with Kevin Oakes last Thursday. Sorry, last Tuesday. And we talk a lot about quitting. And he wrote an article in LinkedIn recently that the CEOs were not qualified to decide who comes back to the office or not. So we had a conversation about that. I said it really has to depend on the manager. If you as a manager have really good KPIs with your team and you could manage a team remotely and they could work great and be productive. Being remote, great, let them be remote. And if you're a bad manager or you don't have the tools and the KPIs then it's really, really hard not to have productive employees working in their house. And then that's a problem with the manager. So it should not be a decision of a CEO. It should be a decision on each manager, depending on the way they work and their KPIs and communication with the team and the rest. So I really believe we have to learn a new way of managing our teams remotely and really engage people. It's our job as leaders to lead a team and even engage and happy if we're not doing that, that's our issue. So we're having a lot of leadership problems. We have tools problems now with the quitting and people are preferring for having all this stress and drama in their life based on society and the changes we're having in the world to choose not to add value and choose to be in the world. So I just think we all have a little bit of of issues on this and we need to communicate better and come better to an agreement on how it's not good for you or for the company to be adequately quitting. Let's have a conversation and make it right. And as Jack Daly said, if they cannot be happy in your company, help them be happy somewhere else.

No, no, no, it's good. I think it's good to stir it up a little bit as you speak. The thing that I am reminded of again and again is it really feels like when the employees quiet quit. I hear a lot of people blaming certain generations and work from home and that kind of thing. But it occurs for me like a failure in leadership. Why would anyone quiet quit? What does that have to do with. Well, let's imagine for a minute I'm somebody in a company. What has to happen for me to quiet quit? Well, if I'm disconnected from the company, if I feel unrelated, if I stop caring about the people and the purpose and the promises of the company, then it's very easy to quiet quit. I don't care. So I put in the minimum and I don't know what and I wait for somebody to give me a better offer, that kind of thing. I become upset, disaffected, anything like that. So what happens there is somebody loses touch with the team and with the purpose and the core of the company and then they sort of shut down and start to go through the motions. And you're right, maybe it's a defect. But as a leader, how would I let somebody feel disconnected? How would I let somebody forget what the purpose of the company is and that I think we see A lot. And I've certainly seen this long before this term got invented of quiet quitting. But I remember a CEO asking me, like, I don't know what else to do. I've tried Spiffs, I've tried this, I've tried games, I've tried things like that. Nothing seems to drive people's performance. And I said, well, how do they respond to these things? What do they want? And that's when we kind of hit on something that this CEO really didn't have any idea what mattered to his people, the people on his team. So I said, well, give me a little time. Let me go check in with them and I'll come back and I'll talk with you. So I went around and I rotated around some of the key people in the office and. And I came back and I asked him which one wanted to go back to school and which one wanted to start a family and which one had never taken an international trip. And they had a whole variety of personal things and he had no idea. And it's pretty normal because in our country and in our cultures, it's very often uncomfortable to ask and almost seems inappropriate to ask personal things. But if you don't really know the what's driving people, like what they love, what they want, then it's very hard to lead them. It's very hard to connect what you're doing as a company to them. And if anything goes off with them, then there's no way to do it. Then you add on that this working from home business or working remotely or whatever you want to call it. Now, an awful lot of companies are in a forever hybrid mode of some people work remotely, and sometimes some of our teams are entirely, entirely remote and started that way and will always be that way. Or sometimes there's different offices, but working across boundaries is something for people. And I've had a lot of CEOs who are like, oh, I'm really stressed by this. I'm like, well, what do you think your people are right? So what are the hours? What are the expectations? How often do you need the camera on? All the time? Are you in and appreciating each other's world? Are you listening? Are you sharing anything yourself? If you don't share anything yourself as a CEO, why would you think anyone would feel free to share anything in return with you? Like, if you don't say, well, I'm really having a tough day. My kids are giving me a thing and they dropped a bombshell on me and I've got Something else going on over here. And if you don't open up a little bit about that, and every time we do that, there's a little trust elevated. There's a little more opening, a little more freedom to be human, to say, I'm having a tough day. Like, I can't lie, I slept terribly last night. I drank too much or I slept terribly last night. I like, you know, whatever it is.

Right. You were celebrating Mexico Independence Day yesterday. That's why you drink a lot.

Yeah. Me. Me and Mexico and Independence Day have. Have something in common.

Celebrating Mexico Independence Day yesterday.

I'm going to Mexico next week with one of our teams. We're doing an off site in Cabo. I'm super excited. I'm going to be working with one of your team members. I'm really grateful. Yes. I'll be in Austin tomorrow to work with another of our teams. And in fact, the team I'm working with in Austin tomorrow is a team that they're actually another one of these distributed teams. So they have physical centers and physical offices, but they are all over the place. So they have both centralized and decentralized teams. And the company headquarters moved from the Bay Area, San Francisco, where I am, to Austin. And so we'll be doing one of their sessions a year, probably in the Austin area. So it's been a long time since I've been in Austin. At least three years now. I think since just before the pandemic.

That you're going to see it's a completely different city. Last three years. So we're gonna have some fun tomorrow.

All right. All right. Fix your eye.

I just. I need to know where my invite was. I. I need to go to Cabo. I need to go to Austin.

Welcome, Stacey. So tomorrow, dinner in Austin, Texas.

I was just looking over my thing for the quarters. I think I have 18 different events this quarter in different cities. And that kind of thing, I'm like. It's back to just like it was before. Except for me anyway. Except now the flight connections have become much more horrible than they were.

So this week I'm going to be in Dallas. After dinner with you tomorrow, I drive to Dallas, then New York and then Mexico City.

Yeah, that's plenty.

Yeah, terrible. Come on. It's looking like pre Covid travel.

My travel is definitely almost like pre Covid travel. And the one thing that I've done, here's my personal hack. I just have eliminated almost all connections. So if we can meet together in a city where both of us don't have to make a flight connection where it's a non stop flight for both of us. I'm happy with that. So I've been figuring out where. What like if you just put in travel between two cities, the connecting cities are the cities that both of you can get to without a stop. So you put it in, you're like, okay, let's see, everything goes through Denver, Dallas. So take your pick. Oh, let's go to Denver because it's easier than Dallas. So we're doing that more and more now. And then the other thing is I'm now allowing more layover time. So a little more buffer time between things. It's not back to back. Like I don't fly in and then deliver a session the next day, morning. And no room for breakdown. Right. Because I've had four or five significant breakdowns so far this year. And being stuck in some city, which can be a weird thing.

Right.

I spent a day in Miami and I never got out of the hotel or the airport. I was there just delivering a Zoom session for something that was supposed to be in person.

Yeah. I like to allow the buffer time like you're mentioning. And I also have clients who are really kind of enjoying the hybrid side where they want you to fly in and come in on site. But maybe at the six month mark and then on the other quarterly marks, they'd like to continue to do those virtual because they're starting to really understand how to make those effective and it's helping them with their cost as well.

I so love this. Like let's do two meetings a year in person. Like let's do the annual and the mid year and then let's do a couple on Zoom and we can save some time on travel and that kind of thing. But I am really grateful to see see more teams again in person because we just are finding a lot more of interesting innovation and quality brainstorming. When we're face to face on Zoom, we're doing faster work in many regards. Like we can quickly align on things. And so doing a couple things here is not bad. And you certainly save the time and the expense of the travel. Yeah. So buffers, fewer connections, use it thoughtfully, don't use it all the time. But I think the same thing goes for the Zoom meetings or teams or whatever tools you're using. I have been telling an awful lot of people no. For my CEO coaching calls or other CXO coaching calls, those are phone calls. I don't need to see you to do that. In fact, it really helps Me just to kind of listen and try to tune into the nuance of your voice without being distracted by are they smiling or not? Or like doing too much more. I find there's some kind of intimacy and connection in the phone. An awful lot of times a phone is just fine and we don't need a Zoom for every meeting.

I love hearing you say that. That is speaking to me. I thought I was the only one. I find myself speaking. So much more effective when it comes to the phone. I feel completely focused and able to give them all of my energy. Whereas sometimes with a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting or whatever it is that you're utilizing for your video technology, there are distractions. I think physically staring at your own face is a distraction. And maybe that's just me, but it's something that I have found that for those who are willing, the phone to me is more effective.

You don't love staring at your own face?

It's not my thing.

It's just not Wrong generation. I don't. Some of us seem to take endless selfies. I don't know what that's all about.

But there's a lot. No, but I completely agree. After being in Zoom five or six hours a day, it's. It's like you really want to run. But as you said, sometimes just having a conversation, voice to voice feels great. So as an example, reading a book with audio or reading the book or whatever, sometimes you want to hear it if it's a story. I love the audiobooks because of that. Same is with a call. I want to have a call. No distraction with video. Not being worried if you're seeing down right or not and just have a conversation.

Yep, yep, 100%. So let's stay on this employee engagement thing a little bit. I read with real interest and was really challenged by the news of Yvon Chouinard Patagonia giving away his company. He read that he was a billionaire, thought that that's really not my goal in life to be a billionaire. It's what I do with the money and do with the company that's interesting. It's the difference I make. And so he's giving away all his stock to a trust and having somebody else take over and run the company. They still make interesting products and they still make money, but then that all goes for the benefit. I'm really curious, right. Practically speaking, I'm really curious, like, how much personally did he keep? Right. Because while he may have given it all away, there's a certain amount of, like, what, What Does a guy like that consider as, like, subsistence buffer?

Right.

I'm sure he didn't leave himself penniless.

So that he's a billion. Probably A billion? A billion he kept for himself.

Yeah. I doubt it. I bet a lot less. Yeah. But he probably figured out what his budget was and then he said, okay, I can live on that and I'll just give the rest of the way. But I'd be curious what that number is for him.

The kids or the grandkids? Way more than enough.

Yeah, I'm fascinated with what that might be. But here's the thing. When your company is centered around impact and purpose, it can still be a profitable company. But you're making a profit from creating some value in the world. Definitely. We know again and again with our companies, employee engagement is higher. Yes, money is nice. Yes, it's great to turn a profit. It shows efficiency. It drives innovation. And yet when we're doing good work and making a profit from good work, we feel differently about the whole thing.

Stacey, you want to go first?

Yeah. I find that what happened with Patagonia, when you're taking a look at what he did, he split it into two nonprofits, or foundations, whatever you'd like to call them. And there were some financial benefits to doing that from tax perspective and legacy and the ability to be able to carry things over, whether it be capital gains or whether it be the opportunity of legacy for his children and family. But also it's just in keeping and in line with what the original purpose driven companies, you know, that started to come out, the Patagonias, the Tomshoes, the people who really wanted to connect a purpose with the vision and the product of what they were doing, it really did keep in line with that. Now, one of the things that I understand from some of the articles is that one of the nonprofits that he created, rather than being a 501C3, it's actually focused and styled in a way that he can provide political donations. So it may be something that was important to him to leave a legacy in that regard of being able to build from the perspective of government, what we're doing with the earth and what we're doing with the environment and where he donates politically via some of these foundations that he has set up now. So it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out, because it felt very in keeping with the original movement of when companies started to decide that passion and purpose and your products could all align for this really unique moment.

Yeah. And that notion of the political and the social agendas, things like that are really important and I think you need to be thoughtful about them because there's a very significant chance that you're going to upset or alienate some number of people and you better be ready for that. I know an awful lot of companies who I want no part of them because I know who they're funding and what they're doing and what they stand for. And it's not me and I don't want to put my dollars there's but others that I like doing it and it could be on either side. Right. It doesn't have to be liberal or conservative. It could just be anything that's gone too far down a rabbit hole. So figuring out like what that is and being thoughtful about it is a good idea. And then separating it. Right. Okay, let's let the company go over there, do that. And then I'm going to go do this over here is also okay.

And I love that. I heard a report to talk about it and they said that they decided to make one shareholder the Earth. So everything that the money goes to is to help the earth. And I think that is a perfect way to expressing what their company is all about. Yes, they provide amazing clothing or whatever, but it's to enjoy the arts and all the profit goes to improve the Earth. So I thought it was very aligned.

With the company purpose, totally connected with the category that they're in. Right? Yeah.

We made a lot of money by helping people enjoy the world. Now we have to help keep the world the way it is so they can continue enjoying the world. So I thought it was perfectly aligned. I loved it. And by the way, be able to have that little of ego and said, hey, I got lucky and rich because of something that we did. How can I bring it back? And instead of going politics as you guys said, they went back to the earth. So I thought it was brilliant.

You know, I think it's a great segue into coaching itself. As coaches, we frequently help people accomplish things. I've helped a few companies at billion dollar valuations and sometimes I've looked back at that and said, well, do I feel good about how much I got paid for the work? We added so many millions of value in some period of time and there's some times where I've been like, no, I definitely wanted a bigger piece of that. But throughout all of them, because the companies that we work with are companies that are doing good in some way in any number of sectors in the world. Then I look at My work and completely separate from whatever I got paid or didn't get paid for it. I know that my work is much bigger as a result of that. So while I might be a small team with a handful of people, associates and support staff and that kind of thing, now we work with an awful lot of companies every year in one form or another, and I start to notice and think all of their work is my work. Like, oh, all of the thousands of people dealing with that health issue. I helped that because of what I did. So I. I take personal responsibility for all their work. I'm like, I did that by getting involved with them, by supporting them, by coaching them, and then no matter what, I get paid. I feel fantastic about the work. I'm motivated to it. I had somebody else that I was on the phone with yesterday, and they're like, oh, my God, it's your birthday. I'm sorry, we don't have to talk. We could wait till next week. I'm like, no. The work that I do at this point in my life is definitely work of passion and purpose. And there are times that I've done it for free because I care very much about it. It's deeply satisfying. And I know all of the coaches that stick around and that are successful in our world are people like that. They care about the clients and what they're up to and that kind of thing. We have a coaching story in the news about somebody who helped a nursing business and go from 50 to 100 million in just a year. So doubling in a year. And I had a conversation with somebody else yesterday, not a client, but a friend with a business. He's like, bill, how do I double my business the next year? And I always think that's really, really hard to do most of the time if you're just focused on the next year. So my first approach is let's start thinking 10x. Let's think 10 years out. If you want to play a 10x game, then the doubling happens fairly easily at some point in the process. But it doesn't if all you're focused on is the doubling. It's a lot of incremental work that is very hard work. I don't know what's your view about your impact and the way you work and the perspective that you have when working with a scaling client.

I've always had this personal motto. I probably developed it maybe at least a decade ago. Just went to a seminar and they really said, you know, who are you? What do you do? What is it that actually you're really passionate about and what's been sort of the thread throughout your life. And for me, I wrote down that it was helping others grow. And at that time, I was not a scaling up coach. I wrote that down over a decade ago and that became my motto because I noticed how much I love to volunteer or give back or mentoring in particular was something that seemed really passionate about and that had been a good thread throughout my life. So it was very natural to me, career wise, to be able to go from being a CEO into being able to coach other CEOs, because I felt as though it was genuinely going to be a part of that motto of helping others grow. And not just from the revenue perspective, but also from the personal perspective, making sure that as leaders, they're continuously growing and that they do have that outside voice and sounding board to be able to bounce off of and say, hey, am I looking at this right? Am I looking at this perspective? What am I missing? And that is such a joy to me to be able to live in that moment. You mentioned your birthday. I've actually worked with clients in scaling up sessions on my birthday every single year. And that's not because I'm a workaholic at all. It's because I genuinely actually feel like I'm fulfilling my passion. And if that's going to be my birthday, let's do it.

And all your birthdays fall on a Thursday.

So far in the last three years, it's been really interesting to be able to do that because it's a joy. You know, the very first one brought a cake and it was their first time meeting me and it was their first day, so they don't know what kind of cake I like. So they end up getting one of those that you can get at the grocery store, that every slice is a different kind. I thought that was incredibly thoughtful.

I love coaching because of that. So I'm still a CEO at the Growth Institute and I like the impact on what we're doing. But also, Bill, what you said about, hey, I don't feel responsible, but I feel that I help create something great. There's a company I've heard in Central America that a pretty wealthy family, they say, hey, our kids cannot go out on the street kids, just because of insecurity and stuff, why don't we do a city that our kids could go on the street and they have their own police and they build a city like for 5,000 families. It's crazy. On Friday, you start seeing all the minivans coming to this new city, they come to the door, the minivan kind of turns around, they open the door and like 10 girls in high school age, whatever, they come out and then the parent goes and it's the only place where you could have kids just running around. They have their own police, like 500 policemen or security guards. And that's the only place where kids in this city could walk and have fun on the street. And and by the way, there's no cars. Whenever you come in you have to go on the basement. All the streets are underground. So outside people could walk on the streets and it's pretty walkable. I love it. Every time I go, I've been helping that client for over 10 years. Every time I go it's just a pleasure and say like this is so great. I'm originally from Mexico so I understand what is to grow in the place that somebody said hey dad, I want to go on my bike. And he was like it's not the right time. I'll go with you or something and be able to go with just my friends and be able to have fun. So I work with a client for over 10 years and it was been awesome to see the process, the development, the amount of people moving in this city and how it's alive. Those just one story that I really feel proud. But as you said Bill, I like, I feel like not building of course CEO and these guys did everything but just be able to help in a way to build a great place like that. It's just amazing. So I would love to work my there. It's a place that I enjoy and I feel great.

I did three things on my birthday. I turned 58 yesterday. I did three things. I spent the whole morning in back to back to back coaching phone calls with CEOs and C suite in different stages and dealing with things so doing all the mid quarter check ins and follow ups and tune ups and things like that that we do in our conversations. And then I got in my car and I did this kind of surfing called wing foil surfing where you use a wing and a hydrofoil surfboard under the Golden Gate Bridge out in the San Francisco Bay. And then I came back, I had great zoom connection with my kids who now live in the east coast and in Los Angeles. And then we went out to dinner with some friends. I'm like what a perfect day that was to have have all of that and finish with a couple of good glasses of wine and then that mix of play and impact and contribution and I couldn't ask For a better thing to be. Rounding out my 50s, heading towards 60, which I definitely look forward to. But this idea of impact and helping people grow and improve. One of the things that I'm fascinated with right now, we've been kind of touching around it is around employee engagement and connection and motivation and that kind of thing. VERN featured Kevin Oaks book Culture Renovation and I think I'm fascinated about this. I don't have the answers yet. I'm hoping you can add something to it. I see a lot of people working on it. I have not yet read the book, but how do we create and manage culture when we are in hybridized and remote environments? If you're only remote, if you're a mix of remote, people are like, well, I know what it's like. I know how we decorate the office and what we do when we're face to face. But what do we do when we are in this thing? I don't know what that answer to that is. How do we create something that looks and feels rich in that environment? What's been developing in your companies? How are you grappling with that with your clients? What do you see? Can you share, add anything about culture?

So first, and I think Kevin got it right, we need to renovate our culture. Often we don't have to reinvent it. We have to renovate it. And today, after Covid.

Yeah, update it, not replace it, right? That's correct.

And what I like, really, I like about Kevin, Kevin, I think has the best data of culture in the U.S. it's crazy. The data they have, they're a book of researchers or company. They do amazing research and they have a lot of companies reporting on a quarterly basis, a lot of data. So it usually comes with the data of what employees really want and shows you how to bring that data to really adapt the culture and renovate your culture. Consistent. So several things it's renovated culture has to be done every certain time, of course, after something like Covid, such a big change in the world culturally that we're having. You have to regulate your culture and then how to get the right data to understand take decisions based on data. And then he recommends having to follow these 18 leadership actions to go through the process. So really recommend.

Clearly you've read it, not me.

Yeah, I read some years ago when we build the course. But it's hey, really? Really? You have to understand I'm trying to get here the 18 to pull them up.

Yeah, Stacy, while Daniel pulls that up. What moves have you done with any cultural Renovations in your clients.

I think it hearkens back a little bit to what we were talking about earlier, that some of my clients right now, they are in that mode where maybe they've made the commitment that they are not necessarily going to come back to the workplace. They are going to have a smaller office, they're going to downgrade, they're going to cost save a lot on that area, they're going to open up their HR and their hiring practices to be nationwide, for example, for this particular company that I'm thinking about. And one of their very first questions was, okay, we've decided this is what we're doing now. How do we do things like the old chili cook off? How do we do things like the old potluck lunch? Right. That's literally one of the first things that they wanted to know was how do we continuously keep them engaged? Obviously we talked about the daily huddle and some of the mechanisms of the meeting rhythms in order to make sure that that engagement is there from the professional perspective, but also from the personal perspective. I just pulled out one of the greatest old time quotes that I really enjoy where people say, you know, people don't actually care how much you know until they know how much you care. Don't forget that. Just because you're not bumping into one another in the office place or meeting for, you know, coffee in the morning to say hello to each other, what are you doing on that personal level, Bill, as you were talking about, to really know what's going on in their personal lives, to ask them how their weekend was, don't make it so robotic and machine oriented that you leave space to really make sure that you're still creating a culture of caring about one another. And that includes not just from 8 to 5 during the grind, but what's happening reading between those lines and why are they having a rough week and, you know, what's going on in their personal life? I think that those are things that people need to consider when they're thinking about maybe renovating their culture if they've had some change over the pandemic. Have any of those changes taken us away from being really closely connected as humans?

One of the key things that I do as a coach is I facilitate the brainstorming, alignment, decision making on any number of the topics around the four decision areas, plus the leadership. So we say, how do we improve our culture? And then we brainstorm and then we pick a few things and we work on those. And fundamentally that that is a thing that almost anybody could Facilitate. But then as a coach, I'll also add in other client and personal experience. Like, okay, there's another company over that's doing something kind of like this. You might consider that. Or a company that we worked with did that and it had this surprising effect or ramification. You might want to think about that before you undertake this thing. So adding that outside perspective all the time to the regular kind of brainstorming and alignment work that, that you could do with any facilitator, I think is where we level up our clients as coaches. With us, it's been a lot of like, okay, I think you're right. Like, how do we acknowledge the humanity, the experience, the different places we're in? What's the weather like there today? How are you doing? How are you feeling? Like leaving a little room for the human side of things without letting it get completely out of hand. Right. That balance of it. I'll do things like, hey, I'll turn on this. Well, you can't see with this narrow crop, but let people see out my window, right with the second angle camera and just like, okay, it's a semi cloudy day here today and it's going to go like that. And we're doing this, allowing a little fun, adding in sound effects, adding in props and things like that for connecting with people, finding ways to still celebrate birthdays and special events and things like that. All of those things make a difference. I always have this guy who comes in when a topic has gone on too long, right. Elmo makes an appearance. And of course, for us, Elmo means enough. Let's move on. Shout out to another coach who got it from somebody else, probably also Rich Manders is who taught this to me. Enough, let's move on. Is where Elmo makes an appear when we've started to talk around in the circles and that kind of thing. Now many of my other clients have an Elmo. Then to also bring in. Elmo can make his way up the side of the screen. But like having some fun like that. There you go. You got your Elmo too. Club Elmo. And then you might not have a whole, like, you know, I obviously have a sound panel and sound effects things, but I also. Right. Could just bring in a regular cowbell to celebrate team victories and wins. When we've got something to go on, like, you know, you could just have some silly things like that to start to bring yours to life in a way that works for you and your company. What's your vibe, what's your. Your flavor?

And one thing that we use a lot for culture and we've been working a lot with our clients on that. The daily huddle, I really believe it sets a tone on the culture on the day to day. If you have a bad daily huddle and people are fighting and shouting to each other, you're going to have a bad day. Yeah, I really, I really like to set the tone. And so I've been working with companies heading up for 12 years and there's some that, that in the 12 years or at the beginning, they said, well, I don't know if this is for me or not. I said, do one thing, please. Tomorrow, have a daily huddle and have these three or four steps and do this, whatever, just have this conversation. And they call me back after weeks like, oh my God, change my company. What else can we do? It really sets the tone. So we've been using the daily huddle to really bring a lot of conversations and communications of the leaders with the team. And Bill, as you said, just go and ask your team, how are they feeling and the trips or whatever. As an example, at Growth Institute, we started inviting our clients to have conversations with our team members. So I talk with clients all the time and I see their impact. I'm super excited. But my team that is doing video editing or accounting or they don't, they don't see that impact. They don't see it. So I started bringing clients every month to have a conversation in the daily huddle on Mondays. And my team calls me. It's like, wow, that's amazing how we help. And I was like, we have those every day and it's the first time I heard it. But once they hear it from the client telling the impact we've been having, that brings it to a completely different level. So I strongly recommend having a daily huddle and use your daily huddle to drive the message you want to bring. As an example, the companies that, that don't drive decision with data, we help them build great dashboards and the dashboard start to bring data. I'll give you an example. We have a client that they've been talking a lot about KPIs and they have a lot of data, but just some revenue generated. Said, hey, this is my conversion rate from leads and an appointment cost me $300. And a client cost called me cost of acquisition, thousand dollars just on the marketing. And I was like, yeah, but what about for the cost of your team members, offices, managers and the rest? And when we started adding all the other costs, it was like, oh my God. Because now the employees before they will say, Hey, I did $30,000 with this client and it cost me 3,000 of cost of client acquisition. So the company made $27,000. And then I said, great, now let me put office, let me put your salary, let me put the 20% of your manager, Let me add all the other costs. And it was crazy. The feeling and the response of the team when they start seeing all the data and really be able to see the KPIs, but with all the cost and how they start responding and said, hey, why we have a sales team that is that big, probably you could do it with two less people. And they start having this conversation on their own. I loved it. So I use the Daily Card a lot, drive the culture and teaching the team on what I'm worried about or what I think the CEO should be connecting with and really using those hurdles for that. And last thing, whenever we see a company having some stress and a lot of drama, we recommend to have two daily huddles a day. One in the beginning of the day and one at the end of the day. It's really important to see how people are ending the day and how kind of connect against and seeing, hey, we had a great game or a great day. We had a great day. This is what happened. This is how we're going to prepare tomorrow. And sometimes we see teams that they had a bad day and they'll come to the company closing Daily huddle, said, hey, can I have a beer? I had a really rough day. Yeah, let's have a beer together. And we stay talking in the daily huddle for some minutes and just have beer as friends and connect. It's been great to go to that. So. So I love the Daily Huddles. I use them as a big driver of culture.

I use the practice of the Daily huddles and we recommend it to clients again and again. What I like about it is the repetition and the consistency of doing it all the time. And, you know, there's the personal aspect about reflecting on what's important in your day, but then there's the other part about connecting with other team members. And that makes a big difference. And if you find you have difficulty with the Daily Huddle or any of the other things, talk to a coach and get some input on how to fix it or adjust it. Don't just give up and say, oh, the Daily Huddle is not for us. I would say more than half of the companies, we recommend the Daily Huddle to try it and then struggle with it. But if they talk to us, we can give them some feedback on little changes to make. And usually it involves watching it, right? Like somebody tells you how to do something, then you go do it. That's why you have a coach to say, okay, wait a minute, you're doing it wrong here. Make this adjustment right. Just like you would have a tennis coach and they'd say, okay, you need to move your arm this way as you serve or whatever it is. Then you would get that kind of correction adjustment. I think we can pay for ourselves very quickly in our work. If you'd like to find a coach, There are over 200 of us around the world. We've got somebody in your neighborhood. Neighborhood. Or somebody who specializes in your industry who has the style you want. I've had a number of our. We have thousands of listeners to the show, and I'm really grateful for everybody who listens to the show. But not all of them is working with us or others as a coach. And I think that's okay. But I think it's also a shame because I know that if you listen, if you're getting value and you don't have some kind of a coach, like I have coaches in every area of my life all the time. And from time to time I realize I could use coach in another area and then I go looking for one. And it's not always easy to find the right one. But if we can refer somebody to you, there's hundreds of us. Drop us an email info scalingcoach.com I'll connect you to somebody who comes to mind for whatever you describe your thing is, or I'll connect you to somebody in your area. But we're really happy to connect you. I tend to stay pretty full. I know Daniel stays very full and Stacy's full right now with clients. So it's probably not one of us. Unless you want to wait till. So we've got an opening. But we're happy to connect you to any one of the many others. And there's somebody for every style. The style of accountability work that I do is really different from others. I've had people who really dislike my irreverent, sarcastic kind of tone, my playful thing. And they're like, that's fine. We have others that bring a different approach.

I always said coaching is 100% how you feel with the coach, and you have to have a connection with the coach. You have a connection where you respect him, great. If not, move on. We're 200, as you said that we're certified. So get the one that really you feel comfortable.

How does that style appreciates? Here's the one thing though that I would say that doesn't need a lot of attention. I think you don't need a coach who knows much about your industry. In fact, a coach who's totally bought into your industry is not going to help you be different or innovate as much as a coach who doesn't know your industry and challenges the ways, the traditional, typical ways of thinking in your industry. You're often going to get some more innovation working with a coach who doesn't know your industry. So it helps to have some of the vocabulary to understand the thing. But if I only worked with SaaS companies or I only worked in construction, that kind of thing, it would probably limit me versus having a broad range of kinds of companies. So we do often get people who are like, I really need to find a coach that understands healthcare or whatever. I'm not so sure a little bit about it.

I just had that conversation this week with a company who really just wanted to know out of all the coaches that we have, who can I talk to that is insurance specific? And that was the conversation that we had. I said, tell me, what are your goals in getting a coach? What types of conversations are you wanting to have? You know, we tend to focus on the four decisions of people. Strategy, execution, cash. They are very universal, right? You all as the company, you all have all the expertise. If we added it up in the room, you probably have 200 plus years of expertise in your industry. You're asking for a coach to come in and have a different type of expertise and to help guide and coach you through a growth system. This is the area that you do feel weak on and that you want assistance with. So just be open to the fact that sometimes what a coach is bringing is the level of expertise of the scaling up system, the entire process from end to end and what they've seen with other clients. And that's really helpful if actually they have a wide variety of industries that they've seen things in because they can pull from some of those ideas like Bill has here today. So sometimes they're open to that, sometimes they're not. But I think that's an important conversation to make sure that they at least open their eyes to some new opportunities.

So I can't tell the whole story now. It's too fresh and it's too confidential still. But in time I'll tell this whole story. But working with a company in the healthcare sector. And they're doing something really cool and innovative and it's going to have a profound effect globally and on health outcomes for people. And I love it. I'm super proud to work with them. But they're having a significant issue a few quarters ago that was dramatically impacting their results and imperiling the company's performance across the board. So I had them start to, well, wait, I don't understand that. Like, you're throwing out all this jargon and that kind of thing, right? Because I don't have a particular background in healthcare. Right. My sister is a nurse. My great grandfather was a surgeon. Like there are people, but I know nothing about it and I'm not a healthcare coach. So they start explaining this thing to me. Well, we do this and it goes like that and then this happens and then we have these issues. And I'm like, really? That's interesting, because when I get my hair cut, that's not how it goes. They do this and that and this and that, and our relationship is great because of that. And they're like, yeah, what is getting your haircut, your hairdresser have to do with our very serious and technical life impinging thing? I'm like, well, it doesn't have anything to do with the life impinging aspects of that. Has everything to do with the humanity and the decision making, the customer relationship and the workflow process. And there's a great lesson there. And I don't know if you can do it or not. And so they had a debate and they did some pros and cons. And it was really. Then they implemented it and that and a couple other things, like totally fixed their performance issues. And a couple quarters there, they're like, they showed me a graph and they're like, here's where we were. It fell off and here's where we needed to be. And look, now we're back there again. And I was like, boom. Yeah. Because a lesson from a hairdresser applied to a major healthcare sophisticated health care problem made a difference, right? That's like out of the box. That's why you don't necessarily need somebody from your industry. Well, moving on, let's talk about robotics and AI before we go to robotics.

AI, I recommend to my clients that they go to a conference that is not from their industry every year precisely because of that. So usually innovation comes from one industry and you see what problem they had, how they solved it. And you were like, how can I apply that to my industry? So I don't know if you read the book the Firm, it explains the story of McKinsey and I loved it. So the book is very well written, kind of goes in detail. It's a Bible, like 600 pages. But here's the guess that I like. He said McKinsey was the only company that had the rights to steal from companies innovation and charge for it. So they went to I'm going to invent. They went to Ford and saw how Ford used the sequencing and the production lines, right? And they went to Kellogg's, the company that does serial and said hey, why don't you do a production line? What is that? And they brought all innovation they learned from Ford and brought into Kellogg's and they was like wow. And now they learn something in Kellogg's how they treat street milk. And they went to a milk company and whatever. So all that and they stole it and learned it from everyone and they took it to other companies. So they said that a lot of the industrialization of the US was because of McKenzie. Because McKenzie was the only firm that kind of got knowledge and innovation of everyone and was distributing and multiplying that innovation. I thought it was brilliant that book. And by the way, that's also what a coach does if we're in different industries. I don't have a client in the same industry. I have today like 12, 13 clients in different industries. And I was like, let me tell you what I've learned with another client. This client had decision, they solved this in this industry. Have you thought about doing this? So I think having someone that is not for your industry is even better. And I explained to them hey, let's go to a conference that is not from your industry to see how they operate. They usually come back and say that like wow, that was an experience. Go to a place that is not in your industry and you will be amazed at what you learn and you're going to be able to bring that innovation to your.

Or go to like our scaling up summit coming up in Denver and sit and talk to some other people, right? Not just your own company people, but get to know some of the others there. You know, before I turned 30, I started and grew division of another company over 500 million. And I had to wrangle like I had an expense budget, I had some P and L control and I had thousands of people that didn't report to me that I had to get to play my games, to do things my way, right? And I'm like, how do I influence these people? I don't have any direct Say I have to cajole them. A lot of times they tell me no. And so I'm thinking about this problem of how to get people to do what I want that I don't control, how to motivate them and encourage them and like how to wag the dog, right? And I read a story about a way that Subway Sandwiches was selling more cookies. And it was like Brand Week magazine or something like that. And I read this and I'm like, oh my God, I could use this in the telecom industry. And I did, in fact. And we used a combination of measurement and reward motivation, along with mystery shoppers to move a particular product. And I used it to influence thousands of people that we had as telephone customer service salespeople and operators working that to try to get them to handle my part of the company that was more difficult, more challenging, but also worth a lot of money. And so like that, you know, thinking about how do we sell cookies, applied to telecom, you wouldn't think that that would apply, but that's exactly that kind of of like, let's get some outside, some outside influence. One of the places where innovation is happening then is robotics. For the third consecutive quarter, a record number of robots have been sold in the US So robots and machine learning things, doing things for us is, you know, so if you do something physical, you might want a physical robot and that's clearly making grounds. But now more and more things that we want to do are being done by computers. My son has been a serial CEO entrepreneur and recently joined another company where he was not the founder CEO, but as a senior member of the team doing AI. And their company is using AI to turn words, descriptive things into artwork, work. And it's pretty funny for a kid who really wasn't that artistic or didn't think of that, who's gotten big into this. Now their company is known as Midjourney. And there are a few companies that you've been hearing about in the news. Midjourney is one of them, Dolly is another one, and there's some others out there as well. His company created the COVID for the Economist magazine a few months ago and was featured in the John Oliver show and an amusing segment about doing that thing. And it's really fun to watch companies apply, like, whether it be physical robotics or machine learning type things to automate and innovate in their industries. Have you got any client examples or things like that to share where you're applying that?

I don't have anybody utilizing it just yet, which is surprising because I have a lot of manufacturing based clients, but the types of things that they're manufacturing are very custom from beginning to end. And every single one that they do is a little unique or different. So a little less of the ability to use robotics to change out any kind of repetitive motion type thing. So I haven't had to utilize it very much within the coaching parameters that I have right now.

So let's kind of understand why we're having all these robotics investment. The US I see a very clear sign of depend less from China. And with all the supply issues we're having and all the geopolitical issues, they said, hey, today we depend too much from China. We need to bring manufacture closer and if possible to the U.S. there's a lot of value of creating the U.S. or building the U.S. so I think we're saying a macro trend there. And there's a lot of things that if you're going to bring it to the US you're going to have to get innovation to help you build it at the same price or very close price that you were producing in China. And the only way is with robotics. And by the way, by the time the US went to China and today, 30 years later, innovation robotics have exploded. So now that you bring the manufacturing back to the US or to America, let's say Canada, Mexico, same bring. Robotics is helping a lot of to keep the prices low and competitive as they were in China. So we're seeing a lot of repatriation of factories a lot to the US and getting innovation or they've been going to Latin America. As I said, I'm originally from Mexico. I still do a lot of business in Mexico and Central America, Latin America. And my clients are inundated with calls from the US and saying, hey, can you manufacture in this? I need to be out. And we've heard this story a couple of times. Hey, my boss told me that I need to shut my factory in China in the next 24 months. Can you help me move it to Mexico? And we've been getting a lot of manufacturing integration we're seeing. That's why we call it new shoring. We're at least in the same time zones culturally with much more aligned. And we're seeing a really, really big move from China. And of course we're having this conversation with clients saying, hey, what should I do? Should I invest in robotics and do it in the US or should I still send it to Latin America and try to keep a similar price and production model that I have in China? So I Think that's what we're seeing and the companies that are balancing their cost of investing in robotics and are bringing it to the U.S. yeah, I.

Think it has to do with geopolitical shifts. It has to do with efficiencies and repeatability. But some of the things that we're doing, we're hitting new levels. I heard some folks talking about this AI art business saying, well, this is the end of the artist nonsense. Smart artists will learn to use this as yet another tool in their palette and then they'll add it with all the other tools to composite and create something that's thoughtful. Because just typing in something, sometimes you get weird results. Like, it takes a little practice to figure out, you know, how to use it well and then how to integrate it for something that's beyond just a music.

And I think that, as you said, robotics have changed a lot. And whoever learns how to use them better to their advantage is one more tool. The computer is a tool for the mind, as Steve Jobs, you said. Now robotics, it's a tool for manufacturing or doing physical things. How can we best use it to our advantage? But I do believe that this will raise the bar for some artists, because if you're a so so artist, AI is going to crush you. That's going to push the artist to go to the next level. And the ones that are able to use AI to go to the next level are usually are the ones that are going to stay. I think this is going to raise the bar for a lot of things in the world. All these robotics that we have, AI, a lot of people said AI is the last innovation that we have to do as human beings things, because then you're going to tell AI to innovate for you. And they will innovate, but you still have to tell them what you want.

For sure. You're going to have to describe the problem to solve or the request. You've still got to create something, right? There's not a general AI that's thinking for us and taking over things. It's simply a tool to expand things and a lot of times to program.

AI best and get the right, right questions to AI are usually going to use it better.

Yeah, same as well. If robots are about efficiency and consistency, as a leader, repetition is really important. I think Pat Lencioni said, when your team can do an amusing impression of you talking about the same stuff you always talk about, like a broken record, you're beginning to talk about things enough. A leader ultimately hones in on a few simple Messages, the purpose, the values, the brand promises of the company. The bhag. The leader focuses in on these things again and again and again, and then asks the whole team to think from these things and to take the company down the road, but doesn't try to solve everything. So the leader assembles the people, empowers the people, keeps them engaged. But the leader's messages ought to be few and overemphasized. And that is what Adam Grant talks.

About.

Is in his article about over communicating being redundant. I don't know how you guys coach your leaders on this, but I find a lot of times they're like, oh, I've already said that. Yeah, you need to say that until you retire.

Absolutely. I just had this conversation this week. I did one of the largest groups, I did 22 executives here in Oklahoma for a company and this topic of conversation came up. Right. Well, I know that I said that once or I feel like I repeat myself a lot. I said, well, good, then you're doing your job if you're repeating yourself a lot. Because I personally just have a rule that I talk to people about when I'm coaching. That's the 3x and the 7x rule that just based on my marketing and the background that I had. We were always taught that you drive by a brand new billboard at least three times before you turn to your spouse and say, hey, has that always been there? Right? Like just, we know this, we know this in advertising, we know this in marketing. We have to also know this among our communication. So I pretty much tell everybody that I coach, if you didn't say it three times, they never heard you the first time. Go back and make sure that you are verbalizing this over and over and over to the point where you've at least said it three times to make sure they've heard it the first time. And then the 7x portion of the rule is that if you want somebody to learn it to the point where they can repeat it to somebody else and go train other people on it, then try to be a little bit more creative on the modes of communication. Can you try to find seven different ways to express it? Is it written? Is it verbal? Is it in a meeting? Is there an image of it? Is there a poster? Is it on a PowerPoint? Is it in a newsletter? How could you make it so that they can actually interact with the knowledge to the point where if they hear it and see it and it's expressed visually and from an artwork perspective at least seven different ways, that's how many times somebody needs their brain to interact with it that they could then be your advocate for you. And you don't have to be everywhere repeating it. They can repeat it for you. They can train others, they can teach others.

Yeah. Out hone it, drill it in forever and ever and ever.

Listen until they don't start mocking you. You haven't repeat yourself. Here it comes again with the same thank you. I give a hug and said thank you. You got it.

Let them have some fun with it. Right. Be willing to be that broken record that they can make fun of. I think is awesome. So in light of that also then you know, if you don't want to come to or it doesn't work for you to do our Denver Summit, we also do a series of boot camps. Vernal lead intimate boot camps. I usually lead a couple of them with him a year. But we have boot camps coming up to do an intimate deep dive in the basics of scaling up, getting started. It's usually CEO COO about, I don't know, four to nine pairs like that in a small setting for a few days with Vern and one of the senior coaches. And we've got them coming up in November, March and April. I'll be co leading the one in April in Squaw Valley and Nano's Palisades or Olympic Valley Tahoe. But in each of these places it's a deep dive in an intimate, upscale setting. A great off site thing to learn alongside other CEOs. The first one is a YPO exclusive event, which is fantastic. We've had so many great successes with that. A couple of things that I want to cover before we run out of time. Today there's a somewhat jarring video from Rabbi Stephen Bayers. Like stylistically jarring. But he talks about that.

We will.

Inevitably feel ripped off, lied to, cheated, maligned and abused as human beings. And it generate or can generate resentment in our soul. And it's fantastic to be able to set aside the resentment. Did either of you get a chance to watch that video?

Have not watched it. I already opened it. So as soon as I finish the podcast I will hear it.

So I was watching it earlier and from across the house, Laurie was like, what are you watching there? Because there's like music and noise and all kinds of things and then he barks in on stuff. But the idea of this is these sorts of people that will cause you pain in life are already living and dealing with enough punishment. You don't need to add more to it. You can simply Move on and let your success be all that you, your retribution that you need and that there's something about being able to say set that aside and to, and to allow yourself to let go of the resentment that that might be created. So I, I, I think it's a great, we'll put the link in the show notes and you can, you can watch it. But I think one of the things that's great about Stephen Bars is he, he reminds us of very simple human things that we all have to deal with. It's not just, just using a power of one tool or some of the other things that we do that are more technical in nature. Throughout all of it, there's human beings. We have some updates. The Mastering Rockefeller Habits is heading off to print now. It's been significantly updated after many years scaling up got updated and all of these and more live as courses at the Growth Institute. Daniel, talk to us about the online courseware that's such a great complement to our coaching work in the online education.

And by the way, super excited to say we signed last week Marshall Goldsmith. He's going to record a course on leadership on how not to manage your employees, how to lead your employees.

Lead, not manage.

Yeah, that's correct. And give us a lot of coaching tools, but not for a coach to coach another CEO. It's for you as a leader of a company or a team team, to coach your team and lead your team. So I'm super, super excited with that. So what we do is we partner with the best business of leaders and bring their content in a format and place and price that makes sense. And we have all the components that you need to scale a company. And this is what we say we do two things. We help you scale your impact, do what you do in a bigger way, but most importantly reduce the drama. So we have a class on scaling up. We have a class of breakable business to really do open book management directly with Jack Stack. We have class with Jack Daly on how to build a sales team. We have cultural innovation with Kevin Oakes. That's the next class coming up on how to renovate your culture. So all the building blocks that you need to build a scalable company, we have it in video directly with thought leader and coaching calls. By the way, we don't believe a video works. YouTube has amazing video. So it's not about the video. Video is about implementing your company. So you get some videos directly with thought leader, then some coaching calls with a thought leader or a coach to guide you on the process and then tools and workbooks of how to implement in your company. So usually our three month intensive classes that you focus on improving a systems or process in your company around hiring with upgrading or meetings and everything with scaling up. And we walk you through the process, process and we help around 1000 companies every year be able to improve one of their systems and process.

Yeah, there's so many courses around so many topics. There's the big things and then there's always new things there. It's just a great tool. When you combine that with thoughtful discussion and coaching support, you're really advancing the process. Of course you could do the whole MBD program, the Master Business Dynamics program, in a coordinated way over a period of time as well. And along with a cohort of people.

And now we have everything for teams. We're launching as an example a C suite ready. We're getting a lot of our team members saying hey, I have amazing team members that kind of start growing on the organization. I want them to be in the C suite, but they're not ready. They don't know how to present a project. They don't have all these tools help me set them ready to be in the C. So we're launching a program called C Ready. All of the things they have to have to be able to be ready to be forceful and also a leadership, first time leadership. So if you have a frontline employee who wants to be a manager, what are the right tools they need to know to be able to go to the next level.

So in the world of scaling up business growth, we've got free things like the podcast every week. We've got Vern's insights every week. We share examples and stories and things like that and speak with thought leaders in a whole variety of things.

Things.

And then we have the online courses, we have the in person summits and the boot camps. We can do private workshops and then we have the coaching thing. The last piece that we have is the software that ties together, that helps you connect between the learning and the off sites and things like that. And that's the Align Today software. And you can find all that and more of course@scalingup.com and our website scalingcoach.com, if you need that or want to know more. If you want to drop us a line, you can send a note Note to info scalingcoach.com as we talked about before, if you'd like to suggest a topic as we get a few suggestions every day. But we love keep them coming even if we can't get your particular guest on right away. We're interested for your topic if we can connect you to one of the speakers or resources or a coach or that kind of thing. Let's give a shout out to our guest panelists and your websites and what you've got. Stacy Daniel Neil.

Absolutely. It's pretty simple. It's just stacyeds.com if you can spell it you can get there. It's S T A C Y and the last name is E a d.

S stacyeds.com and Daniel Marcos Growth Institute.

First growthinstitute.com where we have all the courses online and then my personal website danielmarcus co without the end at the.

End danielmarcos co stacytace.com stacyeds.com I want to also give thanks the guy we've been talking about through all of this Verne Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework, my friend and mentor. Our show is produced by Wanda Mitchell who's there in the background throwing our titles up, getting the show and the guests ready every week we can week out and the folks at Podfly Productions who clean up the audio and make the show notes and distribute things on a regular basis. Thanks so much to all of them and the folks at Repurpose House who pull out our snippets and help promote all the little nuggets from the show every week. Thanks again everyone for listening. It's been great talking to you all. Have a great week. Keep Scaling Up Foreign. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for Scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go with their mobile app. App you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.