The Best of Scaling Up 2022

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 talent. Talk to Doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill g. One more time. Docsatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Oh, hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. My name is Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. We bring our show to you every week and all our back catalog of hundreds and hundreds of shows now on all the things to do with people, strategy, execution, cash and the leadership to take your company to the next level. All that and more@scalingcoach.com getting into strategy today with Ron Price. We have certainly seen a few people who did that. I think you could probably break down all business owners, leaders in the last couple of years who reacted in one of two main ways. Right. The one we saw adapted and said, all right, this is what we got. Now whatever my personal beliefs are about what should or shouldn't be and I do what I got to do. So I'm going to move my restaurant to a little lean to outside in the parking lot or I'm going to wear my mask or I'm going to take temperature, any number of adaptations and evolution. I'm going to move online instead of in person or right. All that, the world of it. And they might not liked it, whatever, but they said this is what's going on, so let's deal. And then the other one said, I don't like this. This is going to be over. I'm going to wait this out or I'm not going to operate into this thing. And they waited until it was too late or they shut down. And I definitely saw people and I have to say my first judgment is, oh, you made a mistake. But it's certainly a valid thing to say, I don't want to do business like this. I'm going to go out of business. It's a personal choice, right?

That's correct. Yeah. One of the great stories that came out of this was a pizza place in Chicago, who, of course, making pizza during the early shutdown, before we figured out takeout delivery, all those kinds of things, they were kind of stuck. And so they said, well, what are our assets? What do we have to work with? And they discovered through ideating that they could use their ovens to actually make shields for people who needed to wear a shield and a mask. So they ended up starting to make shields using the same equipment. And coming out of the pandemic, now they have two businesses. They have their pizza business and their shield business.

Interesting, interesting, interesting. It's funny, of all the businesses that could be, like, immediately, you would think pizza, pizza delivery, takeout, like, the easiest thing in the world in so many places. In fact, some of our places here, they develop more elaborate things for the pickup. But that was a piece of cake compared to.

Absolutely. Yeah. And if you remember, in the early days of the pandemic, everything was shut down. You could not deliver pizza.

It wasn't our home. And it got real quiet everywhere. Right.

So I admire that they didn't give up. I admire their creativity. In their particular case, they really did have a dramatic change in the nature of their business, and it gave them the kind of financial resources so that when things came back into a little bit more normalcy now, they could have both businesses operating.

You know, what I'm struck with is don't ever kid yourself that you have no choice to say, well, this was forced upon me and I had no choice, and that's what I had to do. No, you always have a choice. If you decided you didn't want to be in business and you got out of business, that's your choice. And in most cases, somebody else is taking over, that business is operating. I can think of many examples right off the top or places that close and then another business moved in there. But you can bet when we look back on this, we will see that many businesses open and operated, and we have plenty of evidence for that. But the fact that we just are in a profound labor shortage. Right. We just don't have enough people. And it's not all accounted for by people retiring early. Right. That's not that many people who are.

I can't. I think you're exactly right, Bill. It is a choice. And it depends on whether we want to try to find a different pathway more often than not. I think the pathways there just needs to be discovered.

And Judy Gaido.

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's 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, we. 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 Harvard, you know, didn't hurt. But he. They linked and in talking all of a sudden, she quickly began to grow. And they said, once you got past the connection, your Harvard connection and your farm and your basket of tomatoes, you gotta prove yourself when you're working with this guy. And so she really just really focused on things that are, as a former CMO and CMSO 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 differentiation and how do I create that differentiation and what are the activities, right? Much like Michael Porter, right, a Harvard professor, talks about what are those differentiating activities? And so she took some real kind of companies that, you know, were, you know, were the pampered chefs 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, but 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, kind of the folky side behind it with meeting, 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. We haven't been live in a little while, but I'm happy to be live again with my friend Jack Daly today. Let's talk about failure for a minute because you've had some setbacks and there's maybe other things that I don't know about. But how so when you get a skin cancer, when you get handed Covid like we all did, when you find yourself knocked down with things and your plan and you come up short, how do you deal with that? Where do you come up short? I think you've had a concussion. You've had some other injuries. Talk about that. Yeah.

Look, there, there's a, there's, there's a great saying by Woody Allen and, and I, I apply it in my business and my personal life. When you see an angry mob coming towards you, get in front and call it a parade. And so, you know, protect the six inches between your ears. I, I, I fell off my bike and broke my collarbone, bruised three ribs and had a concussion and cut my head open. 17 stitches here. And I was out for 40 minutes. I'll never have those 40 minutes. And I had an ironman race that I was training for that was just four weeks away in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. And the doc said, there's no way that we can get you better by then. So, okay, I planned on doing Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, Ironman. That's off the, that's off the docket. But I should be better before the end of the year. So find a replacement ironman, which I found in Napa Valley and did the Ironman in Napa Valley. Right. And so, you know, I, I, I, I had to make a change. Look, we were all faced with our plans being changed in March of 2020, and, you know, we go into full lockdown now. Here I am as a speaker. What do I do? I travel the world and I speak to large groups of people. Well, that was those, those two things were not in play. So within a month of lockdown, I, I did two things. I said, I'm going to write the book that I haven't written, which is Jack Daly's Life by design and help other people lead an exceptional life, as you say, however they would determine exceptional life. And the second thing I'm going to do, because I think this thing's going to last at least two or three or four years and I need to have accessibility of the public to me with what I teach. So I brought in a crew and we. I had them build a professional studio. I'm broadcasting today from my office at home, but I have an entire room that's been redone as a studio with the proper lighting and all those types of things. And so I want you to think March is the lockdown. But check this out. By June, I had set a Guinness world record and it was for the largest attendance for a virtual business conference of 21,261 people. And I'm in my 70s and said, well, this is not my forte, speaking to a camera in a room with nobody here. But I need to figure this out if I'm going to be able to impact people in a positive way. And so figure it out. So the message is, we have different things come upon us and it ruins our existing plans. So make new ones. Bonnie got diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in February of 17. Well, I had a full plan for 2017 that literally went into the dumpster and then said, okay, within the confines of now what I'm dealing with, the person that I met at 16 years old and had been with for 52 freaking years needs me all the time. What can I do while I'm home helping her fight the battle?

Right?

Yeah, life happens.

Life happens. Things happen. We have setbacks and then there's what can you do in the face of it, right? Like replanning, adjusting, adapting to what goes on because you just, who knows, focus.

On that which you have control over.

On the show with me today is Marissa Levin. Marissa, welcome to the show. So now you've worked with others on their advisory boards. Talk to us about that a little bit.

I threw the book up on Amazon after I wrote it. I self published it and it went to about 14 different countries. And it's kind of taken on its own life. It's patented and trademarked, and as a result, companies called us to say, can you help me with your advisory board? So I figured out how to actually turn this into a consulting opportunity. And so that's part of the offerings that we offer through successful culture international. And leaders have come to me and said, tell, you know, we've Read your book. We don't want to do this ourselves. And that's the whole thing about entrepreneurship, which, being as someone who's an entrepreneur, you know, for the last quarter, you know, quarter of a century, I understand that we put the processes out there, but the truth is, is they don't want to do them themselves. They want to delegate them these types of things to people who are the experts. And so they will call and they'll say, can you help us? And, you know, there are certain things that need to be in place. There are certain, you know, rules of engagement that have to happen with an advisory board initiative. The first thing is I have an online assessment and survey where I, you know, make sure that they're actually ready and that they're right for an advisory board. But the first thing is that to know that an advisory board is not, it's not a solution for a crisis. It's not something that you put in place to triage a problem. It is a strategic initiative. So if you've got something going on in your firm and you think, well, if I have an advisory board, they're going to fix it. This is, this is a long term strategic initiative that should be aligned to a strategic plan. It's not to just come in and fix one specific thing. So when I work with clients, the first thing I do is make sure I understand where they are strategically. The second thing, it's not the advisory board's job to do. The values, the mission, the vision, the competitive positioning, the customer analysis, all of this has to be done and really clearly defined before even going down this path, because that information becomes part of your advisory board search document. All of that. You know, the CEO needs to have their story down cold when they're searching for advisors and to know how they want that advisor to engage. So there's so much upfront work that we need to do before we even get to defining what the seat definitions are and who they need around the table and the vetting process. So that's the first thing is really even making sure that they're even aware of whether or not they're ready for an advisory board. So when they come to us, you know, we do that vetting first. And if they are ready and we embark on it, we make sure that they're aware of the investment. And that depends on how many seats they're looking to fill, what types of seats they're looking to fill, if they want us to actually do the source selection. So either partner with a search firm or engage in the search. Perhaps they only want to get us to get them ready for the advisory board. There's lots of different ways to figure it out. But once we do that and we're engaged, they have to know it could take six months to get the right advisors around the table. And what we've learned with our experience is that one of the things that could drag out or delay the process of completing the whole thing is the need for diversity. And we've learned that companies who put in advisory boards, it's very important to their employees that the board accurately represents the diversity of the employee base and the customer base. So if you're going to put in a group of all white males, you are going to alienate your employees and you won't be representing what they look like, what, what your customers look like. And you also won't get a diverse viewpoint on how the world is operating today. So finding diversity within your advisory board, you have to factor in that need for doing that type of search because it's not always easy. So there's a lot of factors that have to go into the entire advisory board process. But once we do it and we get the advisory board in place, we, we don't just take off. We make sure we have a whole bootcamp and a process to kick off the advisory board successfully. And then we stick around for as long as they want us to, whether it's six months or nine months or 12 months, to make sure that the advisory board is really functioning in the most optimal way possible.

Welcome to show Jason Forrest. Jason, so you up the recruiting and you do the training. What does the training process look like? What are you actually doing with a company like, like this?

That's great. So, so again, that's, that's our bread and butter. That's what we're known for. We just won a global guru award for Warrior Selling is listed as the number one sales training program in the United States, number two in the world. And then our sales management program, leadership sales coaching is listed as number one in the world, which is great. So basically it's called Warrior Selling. It's a night. The, the minimum engagement is 90 days. We, it starts off with a two day bootcamp where we teach people not just kind of what to do and why to do it, but how to do it. So again, that's a big frustration that I have that our competitors are focused on telling people what to do. Hey, make sure you handle objections, make sure you present present value, make sure you challenge perspective. They don't tell you Actually how to pull it off. So everything we do is very tactical. It's very chunked down. We also get into the mindset component. So we're always, we're always figuring out what is the story, self image, reluctance or rule that's holding them back from execution. Then everything we do is a follow up program. So they, they, we create a customized sales personal script with them. They then practice that with their customers on a weekly basis. They get on a two hour a week zoom call with my trainers in a public setting. Their job there is to bring their real life sales challenges to the table and be unleashed by my team. The reason why we're able to basically guarantee an roi. Why is because like Bill, if you had a salesperson, they were on one of our calls, they would bring whatever sales obstacle is in their way from a real life prospect. They bring it to the table with one of my trained instructors and my trained instructors would sell through them. So it's not theory, it's they're making money during those, those weekly calls which is what separates from everyone else.

So you're role playing or they're doing or they're selling together with them. I'm not sure I follow.

Yeah. So, so let's, let's go back in the example of like Komatsu, right? So, so Komatsu said hey I really, I'm about to position myself. I'm about to. I finally got a meeting with Key Wit. So let's, let's go over, you know, how, how keyword's going to play out and then the sale and then they're basically kind of coaching them on and preparing them for what that conversation is going to look like. Using our Finance 543 sales process and preempting what specific objections keyword's going to give them and how to sell through them and then role playing and practicing that.

So you touched on something interesting there. What's the 543 sales process?

So the 543 is something that I invented. So it's 12 individual concepts. You know to me I kind of see myself as like the Bruce Lee of sales training. So meaning Bruce Lee was very big on study all the great masters, study Kung fu, study boxing, study Jeet Kune do say that's what he created Jeet do study all these different arts, right. And then, and then what's the best of that art and then throw away the rest. So that's really what I've done with the 543. So so for example, you know it's five steps to understand the customer's mission. Four steps present solutions. Three steps to resolve the sale. So I'm sure a lot of people have heard of the challenger process. Well, the challenger process is great, but it's only around one key concept, and that's create a challenging selling message. Create a provocative selling message. They don't teach you, though, how to set up the customer when so to get in rapport so the customer can hear that challenging message. They don't teach you how to handle it. Objections? They don't teach you how to compare what you're offering to other offerings. They don't teach you how to close. They don't teach you how any of that stuff.

Right?

So I agree with the challenger method, but it's just one of our 12 steps. So in the 543, it's just one of the 12 concepts. So that's what I've done is I've just kind of taken the best concepts from, you know, the hundred different sales training offerings that are there out there. And I've said, I like this one concept. Let me put it in my training and then combine it with the rest of them to create kind of the ultimate mixed martial arts sales process.

So we've got the hiring, we've got the sales training with the role play. If you were going to tell our listeners some main takeaways that they could get started at doing right now to level up the their sales efforts, what would you say?

Yeah, well, the biggest thing I would say is, you know, let's just take one simple concept, right? And that is that, number one, I would create, you know, what are the three reasons why people choose you? So what are the three reasons why people come to you and choose you? And, you know, you need to start working on what's called your triple bind. And so that's one of the things that we teach out of the gate. It's an NLP technique, but so it's, you know, so it'd be something like this, right? So, you know, Mr. Customer, you know, there's a few reasons why people choose us. It's either A, B or C. I'm curious, of those three, what would you say is most important to you or what would you, like, have a conversation around today? So the reason why that's critical is because most salespeople really fail in the very beginning. They fail when they start the conversation. They fail when they open their mouth because they'll say something like, hey, Bill, I'm curious, what, what has you calling in today or hey, what can I help you with? Or what, what are you interested in? Well, what I, when I, soon as I asked that dumb question, I'm now putting all the power in your lap. You are now the customer that controls me. So I knew I lose all position of strength, which means you now dictate the price, the terms, you dictate everything. And so instead I want to create a selling message in the form of a triple bind of what are some common reasons why, you know, you would come to me. And then that allows me to guide the conversation with a kind of mutually purposeful relationship.

So, so what would you, what's a, what's a different question that you would ask then?

So what's an example of a triple buying?

You mean? Yeah, yeah.

So like in, like in, it could be something like, like in my world it would be, hey, great. So there's a, there's, you know, three reasons why people are interested in, in our recruiting services. It's number one, they're frustrated with all of the time and effort that they're putting forth trying to find and recruit and hire a top salesperson. Number two, it's because they have hired several salespeople but have a high tracker of turnover and they're just not succeeding with the right salespeople. And then number three is that they've got a tremendous amount of, you know, kind of inbound leads and they really need to do something about getting a new salesperson up to speed very quickly and we could help them with that as well. So I'm curious, you know, what, what's the main reason why you're interested in our recruiting services today? So these, See that's how it's different than if I, if you were to call in on my recruiting services or I was to get, or let's say you were a Google lead or something and I would just say, hey Bill, I'm curious, what has you interested in my recruiting services? Well, that puts all the pressure on you to like, tell me why I'm valuable versus me. Give you a multiple choice question. So think of, it's like, you know, would you rather have a fill in the blank open ended question or would you rather have a multiple choice question in your quiz in your test life?

So you're opening with the situations rather than just an open friendly thing. You're starting to categorize them, find them, have them, self identify in that first.

Phase, yeah, you're having them. It's just, it's a way to get the conversation moving forward. It's a way to get into business rapport, not fake rapport. So I'm a big fan of that. A lot of people kind of misteach what rapport is. Rapport is not talking about the weather or talking about the football game. Rapport is about what is your problem you're trying to move away from and what is the outcome you're trying to move towards. And we want to get into business rapport as fast as we possibly can so we can be in alignment, so that we can mutually decide if we're going to help each other, if I'm going to be able to help you or not. That's a big leash, by the way, Bill, that most salespeople have because they've been mistaught. It's the whole like, make a friend, make a sale or, you know, when March of coronavirus came out all over LinkedIn it said, stop selling and start helping. So that presupposes that if I sell you, I'm not helping you. And so I was all over LinkedIn saying, Look, I believe the opposite. I believe that when I sell you something, I'm helping you. Especially if I can show you how not to fire people during the time of coronavirus.

Right.

So 90% of our clients that were in our full program met or exceeded their sales goals in March and April when we had some of the highest firing and terminations unemployment in the history of the nation.

We're talking today with Allison Horst Meyer. I spent some time recently doing strengths work and I was sharing, reviewing with my mentor. I'm like, you know, I have empathy really low in my Gallup CliftonStrengths. And why is that? Because I feel like I really can be highly empathetic. And my former mentor said to me, said, no, no, no, you, you don't have empathy at all. My friend, he said, by empathy in that world, what we mean is somebody who just walks in the room and they instantly sense where everyone's at. They feel it, they know it, like in a blank. You have to figure it out. And you can be empathetic, but that's different than this notion. Like I have to cultivate it and my access is curiosity, like, hey, what's going on with them? But some people just see it and go, wow, they're, they're like off right now or they're upset or they're asleep or like whatever.

Yeah, so you. Yeah, so. So, Bill, you're super goal oriented and, and you like to drive. And our drivers don't really want to cue in to what's coming, what's going on in the room and how things are landing. So this is when we talk about emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about tuning in. Like, how is this really landing with people? What's really going on here? And, you know, for. When I work with sales folks, we talk about the three pillars to client centricity is curiosity, empathy, and managing our cognitive biases. Because we have to really understand what's going on with our client. We're perspective seeking, not just taking and aligning agendas, because if we don't, we're not going to get the sale. And. And in terms of the engineering team, they really wanted to model curiosity way. That said, you know, I've got your back. Go experiment, go a challenge, and I want to be less directive. I want to tune in where I can coach and develop. And. And it was through our work together that it was one of the leaders. He's like, wow, I just learned that as a boss, I really need to be approachable and I need to connect with my teammates, Especially because Covid was going on, it was kind of all fresh and people were swimming in uncertainty, and he had to be. He had to have a lot more communication in terms of hearing how people were actually feeling. And I know people are like, oh, well, we're not supposed to be talking about our feelings. Well, when we're in a crisis, yes, we are, because that gives us a gauge of where people are and how we might be able to help them and connect with them. And again, so he was using his curiosity to engage with, like, checking in with people, like, where. How are you really? Yeah, you know, here. Fine. So the next question is, how are you feeling really? You know, because that's. That's. That's like not. Not really. You're not really fine, you know, and so for somebody like you, Bill, you would probably be like, okay, great, let's move on. Yes, that's your opportunity.

I might, I might.

Then I'm sure when you go, hey, well, what? No, what's really going on? I am actually interested to hear because when you just say, you know, when you just keep going, it says people. Then people are like, oh, you're not really connecting with me. How. How then are those people really going to follow you? Are they going to trust you?

Probably not, no. But. But I have more than a couple people like me in my world who are all about getting started, taking charge and driving a particular outcome. We seize on some goal, we're pushing towards it, and you'll say Fine. We'll say, how are you? And you'll say, fine. I'm like, okay, good enough. Unless you stop and say, stop, I need your attention. Look at me. I'm not okay. You give one little nod and I'm speaking really for myself. But I know there's a lot of people like me in our audience.

Yeah. And now what we're seeing so much more of is so the drivers are awesome. We need the drivers. Because you connect things that some other folks can't see. You have a vision, you see how to get there. And then with the hard drive and not tuning in, you're not really bringing people along.

Yes.

Yeah. So it's a smaller thing you can do if you are by yourself than if you have a whole team with you. Right.

So you're in that scenario. I like to say you're the what and the why and they're the how. How are you empowering them to do the how? How are you connecting the how to your what and why? How are you, you know, how has it. How is it? You know, how. How are people understanding, like what they do matters to that, to what you're seeing? And. And people tend to gloss over that. That's actually really important. It's really important because then people become disengaged, de energized, and then they'll leave. So we have high turnover going on right now for that very reason.

Yeah. And why do people leave? They're like, my boss isn't listening. The organization doesn't care. Something big just happened. I'm reassessing my whole life, my work balance, my role, my life's purpose. And you're like, just chugging away and like, get back to the office, like, yeah, I don't know. I figured out how to not do that.

Yeah.

It's a balance. Right. You have to figure out how to get done what you want to get done. But work with people in new ways. Because people are reconsidering things.

Yeah, absolutely. Because they can there. I mean, they can make decisions. They're feeling much. I think Covid has brought, you know, an empowerment and a realization that there doesn't. You don't have to toil a certain way anymore.

Yeah.

And I think we have to honor and respect that and figure out how to leverage that. So, you know, I. A lot of my training is virtual now and I can do more of it. I could speak. It's really actually been a benefit. Do I miss the in person energy and group energy interaction? Absolutely. And at the same time, am I meeting people where they're at and what they need in the form that they want to interact with me. Yes.

Yeah. You know, it's a mixture of all of those things, right, that we do. Like our ton of our work now has moved online and we got better cameras and lighting and microphones and things like that and created online tools and we can do amazing things. But one of my teams I'm meeting with in a couple of weeks will meet virtually, but I just met with them in their office in the Midwest a couple weeks before. So it's a mixture of those things. Some of our teams are working all remotely, but then we'll gather at a winery or some other place and spend a couple days doing planning and strategic thinking and that kind of thing.

Right.

So that kind of mix of stuff. What I like that I'm hearing in your message here is that, is this notion of that we all have some areas or aptitude for curiosity, but it is something to practice, to develop over time, to cultivate. There are places where I notice that I'm naturally curious and others where I'm completely arrogant, think I know everything and it's not even conscious in either case, right. Until I stop, pause and notice it a little bit, bring some mindfulness to it. Like, oh, I could cultivate like that, like that empathy conversation. Like, I may not naturally be empathetic, but I can cultivate an extraordinary amount of empathy with a little intentionality.

Yeah. The research shows it's self directed, so. And the research shows it's insane in each one of us. So we do choose to be curious. It is self directed. It does take intentionality, it does take effort and energy. So all of this in my research and you know, and the practice is coming back to the practice. We're all going to fall off and so just having that awareness. Bill. Right. Oh, man. I didn't, I didn't practice at that time. And then going in the next time with these folks, like setting it, setting intention before. I mean, really easy. I do this with all the executives I work with is can you set an intention before you go into meeting of how, how you really want to show up and what you're in service of? Just get in the practice of that.

I'm joined by somebody who's become a friend, who's just a fucking rock star in the world of business scaling. That's a technical term. It's why we're not on the Disney Channel at this point. Chris Rozio, welcome to the show.

So I have so many things so first of all, the first thing I start thinking about is those Pinterest fails when you're baking something and it's like a smushed down imploded cookie or cake, whatever. I've had a ton of those and they're, they're funny to share, but, you know, there's, there's two elements here. One is that sometimes there's an art to what you're doing. You know, you can have all the instructions, right, but you just need the reps of the experience to get good at it. And so in our businesses, I think that there's an element of experience and art that you can be taught the instructions, but you're not going to advance to the most senior level of doing something until you have a ton of experience. Like, I remember working with a hair salon and, you know, you can all get the same hair certification, but then there can be dramatic differences of what people charge because they're the master stylist, that they've been there for 15 years versus they're fresh out of school. And so, yeah, love your hair, by the way. So there's, there's, there's, I'm just glad.

To still have some at my age.

Yeah, mine's, mine's getting gray. So. So there's a level of art that comes with experience and you can't train art necessarily. There's, there's the best training could not make you have an epic surfing experience. The first time you hit, hit the waves.

No, you just, you wait to the right moment, you paddle and then you stand on the board. It all works out. And then you turn in and when it gets too close, then you turn back and if you ride up the lip, then you can just kind of turn and go down. That's really cool.

So, so, but then take that experience again and say, let's say you read all the instructions. And this is something in, in a business. You read all the instructions and you didn't get the outcome you wanted. But now the person that's trying to show you and look over your shoulder says, oh, I forgot, I missed a step. I forgot to tell you something. So actually, running through training, delegating something is a really good way to refine your documentation because the people on the other end of the training will raise their hand and say, well, what about this? What about this? And that's how your content gets better. So, you know, it's not perfect the first time around. But, but I want to distinguish there, there is that difference between incomplete instructions and then where there's just a level of experience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but, but what you said there is really great because if you've been doing something while there's lots of things you do that are, you're like unconscious to.

Yeah.

Until you try to teach them, until you try to explain to somebody else, they'll be like, wait a minute, wait, why, Why'd you put your hands there? And. And then you're like, oh, okay, so there's a piece. I didn't. I. I don't even know that I do that.

Yeah. So, so great hack here for anyone listening. Sometimes you're not the best person to document the training for the thing that you do because you skip a lot of those steps in your head and you take it for granted.

More cowbell for that one.

So sometimes you can just have an intern or an EA or somebody ask you say, say, train me how to do this thing. And then they can be in a learner, you know, beginner's mind, they can be asking those questions to actually write down better documentation than you could create yourself.

Yeah, it's really great. I know in the background, like watching us and being ready on the titles and comments and things like that is Wanda. And she is like cringing and like squirming because she's been going through this as the newest member on our team. Like, nobody told me how to do that. Nobody told me that mattered.

Well, that is a great person. So if you're just getting started in this and trying to assemble your playbook, that newest person that's coming into your business is the most valuable person because they're the one that has to learn everything. And so they can kind of journal as they go the things that they're learning. And that's like your minimum viable training. You know, if they can get themselves up to speed and figure out, just like they're the pioneer trying to learn about your business without any training, then they can make it that much easier on the next person.

Yeah, it can. Or. And as you expand, you know, and get additional people onto the team and, and most of our folks are scaling up and trying to figure out how to scale, how to get more of themselves. Michael Solomon. Michael, welcome to the show. As a leader, you're often kind of creating that environment right around them, making sure they're well set up.

And the more you can bring in other people like that, the more you can create the high performing team which then attracts the other high performing members. It's almost impossible to have a high performing team with Only one or two high performing members because they don't want to be the best in the room. Really high performing people don't want to be the smartest person in the room. They want to work with the best. I've got a situation in the negotiation world. This person works at a major tech company. I think one of the big ones being recruited by a financial services company that's offering tons of money, let's just leave it like that. And one of the considerations for him, even though the money is so much better, is do I want to leave this great company where I work with the best of the best technologists in the world and even though I'm going to make a lot more money, go work in a place where their tech stack, the technology they use is old and not great and their team is old and not great. I don't mean old age wise. I mean it's just not. These are just not the newest rock stars. And I'm talking about a massive amount of money is being considered in this equation that like, even though it's, you know, almost again, I don't want to talk about numbers because I, I don't. I'm just trying to think about whether anybody could identify anything from this conversation. So I'm going to just leave the numbers out. Massive, massive numbers differential. And, and this person might walk away because it's not the right, it's not the right environment where they can do their best work.

Yeah, you think about it. So there's a couple things that work. One of them is that key challenge. Right? What is your company up to? What is this particular team working on? Is it some next cool app or some really interesting. It doesn't have to be technology. It could be anything, your work. And a lot of our work is more in technology, but it could be really any realm. Are you up to something really worthy? And you talk about working with millennials, that kind of thing. People want to work on co that's actually going to impact the world. And then they think about and what kind of bozos am I going to work with? Am I going to work with a bunch of cool rock stars who are really going to up my game and challenge me and. Or am I going to suffer a bunch of fools who don't know what they're up to and who are all petty?

And that's a really big consideration. And if you're one of the, one of the people who's listening and you keep saying, I have not been able to hire the people I want to Hire, you have to look around at what you're offering. It is, are you explaining your offering? Are you explaining the value of what your company does? I mean, Everybody younger than 40 and many over than 40, but the younger generations, they definitely want to work on mission critical things that are important in the world, as you were just saying. And that doesn't mean that everything they need to do needs to be a social justice fight, but they need to feel like they're not making the world a worse place. And so few people hiring actually bother asking any questions about that. I mean, one of the most important things that we came up with is a tool called the lifestyle calculator, which is on the 10XSN site. And it's a way for a potential employee to take 100 points and distribute it among up to 24 different things that go into a job package and a job lifestyle. First of all, every time people do this, they're like, wow, I never really thought about all these things before. And it allows us to understand their priorities. And usually it allows them to understand their priorities. What I can tell you, having done this quite a number of times now, is not a single question is asked by most companies about what are you looking for in your employment? They will ask, what is your salary requirement? What is your compensation requirement? That's it. That's all. I've only seen one company to date that actually gave an offer in two forms. There's one startup that said you can have a little more cash this way and a little less equity, or you have choice B, which is more equity, less cash. And what a great idea. You have to. I mean, with the market being what it is, you have to sell your company to the people you're trying to hire. And most people don't. They think, I've got a job offer, I'm going to make an offer to this person. They must jump at that. But that's not the market we're in right now.

We often learn from our mistakes, right? What, what do you think is the biggest mistake that you made that led you to this work in this way?

It's a very general mistake, but I've given, I've given this a lot of thought. I think the biggest thing I did early in my career was I did not measure what I was doing in a reliable way. I worked very, very hard to try and boil the ocean. And I did that for years and years and years. And now I am very calculated in where I put my effort. And in a lot of ways it's A very light touch I can figure out with doing not that much that I can have the right impact on an outcome. Which isn't to say that I don't work hard, but it's really about working smarter, not harder. And that was a mistake I made very badly in the early years.

We.

We can all tell you're in New York right now.

Oh, because of the siren.

Sorry about that. Amount of background noise that you have in New York is always, always kind of blows me away. Whenever I. I go, I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

I often do my podcast from my home in Montclair for that reason. But then you have leaf blowers and.

Leaf blowers.

Yes. So you can't win.

You can't win. Yeah. So, yeah, it's interesting that focus on what it is that you do well. Which kind of goes back to this idea of people in their roles and working together and working with great people. I watched the. The show the other night. Elvis Costello there doing his thing.

Right.

Here's a guy in his late 60s and a lot of his bandmates are people he's performed with for decades. And then. And then there's a guest artists that joined him. Charlie Sexton was another guitarist in the band. Fantastic guitarist. Right. These are all people that really know each other really well and count on each other to be able to be like, professional and do it. And then. And then they're all kind of doing their thing and. And then there are moments where they. It's all really working together and they just kind of flowing and. And that kind of work. And you think about your teams and your own role when you're doing your best work versus when you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing. Right. Things that. And things that your team shouldn't be fiddling with. Right.

There's a great juxtaposition for the story you just described about Elvis and his team and how they've come together and they've grown and there seems to be trust and that comes out on stage. Juxtapose that with James Brown. I don't know if you've ever heard this story, but James Brown would dock his musicians on stage while performing and practicing, and it would be a hand symbol. He would literally turn, look at the bass player. 10 bucks, 5 bucks. Like that's how he did it. It's a management style. You know, you can. You can get people to do things by. With. With the carrot or the stick. But today, with these generations, that ain't gonna fly. Yeah, that's A gotta go with the Elvis version.

People tighten up their, tighten up their game with something like that. But yeah, I have seen James Brown perform a couple times and the man is a, A God. Right.

But yeah, undeniable. But I'm not sure.

We have seen a lot of people who perform in a way, whether it be in music or in other arts and. Or in business in a way that's toxic and not sustainable, that, that churns people through versus finding, you know, your E Street band to play forever. And they just trust each other and they vibe and they, they know how to do their thing.

Absolutely. And that's. I think that's, that's the change that we're seeing is the days of, of just, you know, you're out, you're at like just. Just doesn't work anymore. People have choices right now. They have seemingly unlimited choices. And I'm not just talking about tech people right now. I mean you can't. I don't know. I don't know what your experience is where you live. I can't have a good meal in a restaurant because there's no, there's no servers. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. I went to a business breakfast at the W Hotel in Manhattan on Sunday morning for a very important meeting and they couldn't get coffee out to us before our food was ready.

Yeah. Or water.

I mean, it was nuts. And this is not. I'm not picking on them. This is. Everywhere I go. People are feeling like they have choices. They pre pandemic. Everybody was sort of rolling with the status quo. This is what my life is, this is what I'm doing. And then when you have a global mortality event that causes everybody at once to say, is this the life I want to live if I'm not going to live forever? And I mentioned earlier, I had this mortality event when I was 23. This to me is what's going on right now. And people are being very picky in different ways than they were before. I don't think that's going to stick around forever because they won't have the choices. But it's a new. It's. It's really a new paradigm right now.

Awesome. You can drop us a note info scalingcoach.com if there's anything we can help you with. I want to give a shout out also to my friend and mentor, author and creator of the Rockefeller Habits, the Scaling Up Framework itself, Verne Harnish, and to Wanda Mitchell getting things ready in the background and to our partners at podfly Productions who get our show out every week and Albert Burge over there editing our show and getting it ready. Thanks again everyone for watching, for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Up. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Aligned. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com billg1 more time. Aligntoday. Com Bill G That's aligntoday. Com Bill G. Check it out and try it now.