The Agile Scaleup

Most Admired; Most Overrated; Introverts in Sales; Sustaining Joy; How to Be the Best

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

The Untethered Soul Online -- a new 8-part series by serial entrepreneur Michael Singer, it's outstanding. More info below, but first...

YPO-Only Workshop -- winner, this year, of three global "best of the best" awards for YPO International, the next 2.5 day Scaling Up workshop for 18 YPOers and their teams (6 slots left) is April 10 - 12 Las Vegas at hotel SLS. Day Chair is Wei Chen. For more info

The Introvert's Edge...In Selling -- in an era where people would rather be educated, not sold, the title of Matthew Pollard's recently released book, The Introvert's Edge: How the Quiet and Shy Can Outsell Anyone, says it all. Towards the end of Chapter 1 is a summary of the book subtitled "7 Steps to the Introvert's Edge." Take 3 minutes to scan pages 25 - 34. Then read the rest of the book for the details behind each step. It's the kind of "playbook" approach that Jack Daly suggests.

How People Get Better at What They Do -- brilliant physician Atul Gawande, author of multiple award-winning books including The Checklist Manifesto, makes a case in this 16-minute TED talk how critical it is for professionals to improve and perfect their craft through better habits of thinking and learning. And more specifically, the importance of getting a coach. Fun fact at 5:38 in the talk, he notes that coaching in sports was a very American thing. In 1875 Yale and Harvard played one of the first American-rules football games. Yale hired a head coach; Harvard did not. And over the next three decades Harvard won only four times. They then hired a coach!! Atul goes on to explain how he had slowed in his improvement in the surgical suite until he hired a coach to observe him and advise. Do you have a coach? Take a moment to listen to Atul's beautiful stories (and what he learned from his coach that made him a better surgeon - start at 7:15 in the talk) - and then get a coach. Thank you to Adam Grant for pointing me to this TED talk.

Fortune's Most Admired List -- topping $900 billion in market cap this morning and topping the World's Most Admired list for the 11th year in a row is Apple. Based on their reputation among 3900 global business leaders, Amazon, Alphabet (lesson - "A" names are golden?), Berkshire Hathaway, and Starbucks round out the top five among 1500 global firms. Notes Alan Murray, Fortune's President, in his daily blog:

Among company leaders, Mark Zuckerberg got most mentions as "the most overrated CEO," while Satya Nadella (Microsoft's CEO) was voted "most underrated." (Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk made top five on both lists!)

For details

How to Sustain Joy - Michael Singer's New Online Course -- growing a company can be stressful, with the rate of depression among entrepreneurs one of the highest. And just the pressures from everyday life can cause your mind to bombard you with gut-wrenching negative thoughts. So how do you let this go? Serial entrepreneur Michael Singer, author of the huge best-seller The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment has a new video series titled "Living from a Place of Surrender, The Untethered Soul in Action." I'm in the middle of the eight-session, nine-hour course and it's excellent. You can learn more about the $197 online course at http://untetheredsoul.com/surrender-course or if you want, you can get started with a free 3-Part Video series using this link. En-Joy!

EO's 30th Anniversary - Four Golden Rules -- last Thursday in Washington, DC we celebrated the 30th anniversary of EO and specifically the first ever EO chapter meeting January 1988 which was a joint event between the newly formed DC chapter and YPO. The guest speaker that evening 30 years ago was Bill Marriott. Here's the Inc. piece highlighting my keynote at the event last week along with four "golden rules" for scaling. Thank you to Marissa Levin, author of Built to Scale (about advisory boards), for writing the article.

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 9 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. April 3 - 6; May 29 - June 1 (YPO-only); and October 2 - 5.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.

And if you're interested in becoming a world-class certified Gazelles International coach, please go to gicoaches.com/becomeacoach for more information. If you determine that we're a fit and wish to join our premier organization, we invite you to contact our Dir. of Coach Engagement at [email protected] or 877.217.2253 ext.700.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

Most Complained About Company; Theme for 2018; 3 Question Sequence; Place to Visit This Summer

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Most Complained About Company in 2017 -- fun fact for the weekend gatherings, this Fortune article highlights the most complained about company in the US in 2017. And it was the winner in 49 states and DC - the only exception was North Dakota! Take 10 seconds to find out.

Blackrock's Focus on Social Impact -- with $6.3 trillion under management, Larry Fink's Annual Letter to CEOs tends to get some attention. Blackrock's CEO, Fink gave companies three criteria they would use to invest in the future - a purpose, a long term strategic direction, and a diverse board (which is why mid-market firms that install Rockefeller Habits 2.0 are valued so highly by public companies - you have at least of the three already in place). The most interesting paragraph:

We also see many governments failing to prepare for the future, on issues ranging from retirement and infrastructure to automation and worker retraining. As a result, society increasingly is turning to the private sector and asking that companies respond to broader societal challenges. Indeed, the public expectations of your company have never been greater. Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.

Please take 3 minutes to read down through the letter - for both style and substance.

Three-Step Question Sequence -- I love the headline "How Better Questions Can Drive Innovation and Business Growth: An Interview with a 'A More Beautiful Question' Author Warren Berger" so it caught my attention. Scaling Up is all about finding the right question - like "what is the constraint in my industry and how do I gain control of it." And who doesn't want to find a "beautiful question" - kudos to Berger for a beautiful title. However, for some reason the article fell flat, except for this three-step question sequence Berger suggests - why, what if, and how. More specifically:

When you ask "why?", you're trying to understand something: "Why does this problem exist? Why are we doing things the way we're doing them?" It's basically an understanding question. "What if" is an imagination question. You understand the problem and now you're saying, "What if we try this or what if we came at the problem by doing X, Y or Z?" You're moving now from understanding in the "why" stage to imagination in the "what if" stage. "How" is really about getting things done. They're very practical questions. "How much is it going to cost, how are we going to do it, how will we take the first steps." It's an interesting, 3-step cycle that moves from understanding to imagining to doing.

That's a beautiful paragraph and sequence - moving from understanding to imagining to doing. Worth putting to use. Thank you to Steve Hall, DriversSelect.com for suggesting.

25 Companies Getting Design Right -- this Fortune article details how companies from Apple to Zalando are getting design right. I love the opening story, which I've shared around the globe, how Airbnb finally got it right after struggling for five years to build the company. It was four magical words "go to your users!" So, they moved from Mountain View to New York City. They figured out the two constraints to their business and the rest is history. This is your longer read for the weekend - 7 - 10 minutes - but it will get your head into the right place - design is everything - from processes to products, it's the user interface/experience that matters. It's so important that it's Gazelles' overarching theme for 2018 - to up the design impact of everything we do, starting with my PPT slide deck getting a major overhaul to the look and feel of our ScaleUp Summits, to the technology platforms driving Rockefeller Habits 2.0.

Planning Summer Travel -- Spain has overtaken the U.S. as the second most visited country next to France. This Guardian article provides some of the details.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.
 
And if you're interested in becoming a world-class certified Gazelles International coach, please go to gicoaches.com/becomeacoach for more information. If you determine that we're a fit and wish to join our premier organization, we invite you to contact our Dir. of Coach Engagement at [email protected] or 877.217.2253 ext.700.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

Richest Ever?; Rethinking HR; 2018 Year of...; Rich Moran

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

YPO-only CEO Boot Camp -- today's insight will be short since John Ratliff and I are hosting another CEO Boot Camp this week in Marathon, FL. (all consuming). Limited to 10 CEOs, McKeel Hagerty, immediate past International Chair of YPO, is co-hosting a YPO-only CEO Boot Camp with us May 29 - June 1. April 3 - 6 is open (4 spots left) to all CEOs. For more info.

Jeff Bezos Richest Person of All Time (besides Putin!)? -- this week the founder of Amazon leaped ahead of Bill Gates according to this Money magazine article as the richest person ever in terms of net worth. However, all this is debatable if one inflation adjusts Gates brief $100 billion next worth in 1999, which would be $140 billion in today's dollars. And if Gates hadn't given away over $60 billion he would be worth over $150 billion today. Then there is Russia President Vladimir Putin's unofficial net worth estimated by Bill Browder, formerly Russia's largest foreign investor, at over $200 billion. Browder wrote a brilliant and insightful book called Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice. Fun facts (and reading) for this weekend's gatherings!

Fast Growing Dermatology Group Rethinks HR (Gazelles case study) -- As Schweiger Dermatology Group expanded to 502 employees and 31 locations, CEO Eric Schweiger, MD, realized he needed to rethink his HR processes to build the right team to scale the business. My latest Huffington Post piece details how they created a new position - VP of employee experience led by Ana Welsh - and implemented Topgrading, testing, a new in-depth onboarding process, and their version of the Dream On program poineered by John Ratliff when he was scaling Appletreenswers. Results? Turnover, including their call center employees, has droppped from 60% to 26% in one year - and continues to drop. Plea take 2 minutes to read the details.

2018 Year of Scaleups -- as Gazelles' newest advisor Rich Moran notes in his latest LinkedIn article, the focus on scaleups has really accelerated. We've just wrapped up our annual planning session and have priorities set to contribute significantly to this movement in 2018 and beyond. It's exciting times! Rich is President emeritus of Menlo College; has guided many venture backed firms; was on the Venrock VC team; and was my Regis McKenna coach back in the early 80s. He's also written eight business books, creating a new genre of "bullet books." Glad to be back working with Rich.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.
 
And if you're interested in becoming a world-class certified Gazelles International coach, please go to gicoaches.com/becomeacoach for more information. If you determine that we're a fit and wish to join our premier organization, we invite you to contact our Dir. of Coach Engagement at [email protected] or 877.217.2253 ext.700.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

8 to Start 2018; Hagerty's Office Design; Solopreneurs; Jan 30 - Feb 4 Panama

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

8 to Start 2018 -- my annual pick of the top biz books from last year is published with Huffington Post. I chose two for each of the 4 Decisions from Scaling Up - People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. And if you attended our ScaleUp Summits (New Orleans May 22 - 23 is next) you've likely heard from most of these authors. See how many you and your team have already absorbed. And to make it easier to digest, split up the list among the team and have each report back the best implementable ideas for 2018. Here's the list (details on why and the best idea from each in the Huffington Post piece):

PEOPLE The Master Coach: Leading with Character, Building Connections, and Engaging in Extraordinary Conversations by Gregg Thompson Life's a PIC/NIC by Aubrey Daniels and Alice Lattal STRATEGY Jobs to Be Done by Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman and David Farber The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google by Scott Galloway EXECUTION Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson Performance Partnerships: The Checkered Past, Changing Present and Exciting Future of Affiliate Marketing by Robert Glazer CASH Am I Being Too Subtle? by Sam Zell The Principles by Ray Dalio

The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business -- and just released this week is Elaine Pofeldt's book about solo entrepreneurs who have created seven-figure plus, ultra-lean companies. Drawing on their experiences, the book details specific strategies these entrepreneurs used to approach and hit $1 million in revenue before adding employees. FYI, you might recognize Elaine's name - she's the writer who helped me craft Scaling Up and ghost writes my various columns. Congrats, Elaine, on this well researched and written book.

Demise of the Cube Farm -- form follows function, and nowhere is this principle more critical then when designing office space. Hagerty, the leader in classic car insurance, has engaged in a significant remodel of its work spaces to encourage more collaboration. Being careful to "shoot bullets before cannonballs" they are still in Phase 1 where they are testing different office furniture configurations. Notes Sarah Friess, the company's senior manager of employee programs:

...Hagerty's Future of Work concept provides employees with the tools, technology and space to be able to work where and with whom their work dictates.

This short TCBN article shares one diagram and details both the employee-driver approach and partnership Hagerty has with Herman Miller, the chosen vendor. It's worth 2 minutes to read. Then start thinking about revamping your own space.

Eliminating Laundry Detergent -- to rid the planet of one of its biggest polluters, laundry detergent, a Danish biotechnology firm, Novozymes, is turning to nature for the answer. This NY Times article details how this $2.2 billion firm is turning to mushrooms to create a series of enzymes that can dramatically reduce the amount of detergent needed to get heavily stained clothes clean. Please take 4 minutes to read the details.

Designing with Nature -- it's biomimicry approaches like above, along with how nature can guide office designs, that are just two of the many ways companies are beginning to "Design with Nature" - the title of our next Geoversity program in the jungles of Panama, Jan 30 - Feb 4. Join me, along with a couple billion dollar players and leaders of other major and growing firms, including a world-class faculty and the support of organizations like the Smithsonian and Harvard, for this highly experiential executive program.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.
 
And if you're interested in becoming a world-class certified Gazelles International coach, please go to gicoaches.com/becomeacoach for more information. If you determine that we're a fit and wish to join our premier organization, we invite you to contact our Dir. of Coach Engagement at [email protected] or 877.217.2253 ext.700.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.