The Agile Scaleup

Jim Collins’ Latest; 7 Uses of AI; Mariya Yao; 3-Timer CEOs; ScaleUp Summit May 21 – 22 Atlanta

Hello ScaleUps, 

Hope it’s been a productive and purposeful week. Here are some insights/opportunities to help you outlearn/outthink the competition.

The greatest danger in business and life lies not in outright failure but in achieving success without understanding why you were successful in the first place.
	Jim Collins paraphrasing Prof. Robert Burgelman

3-Timer CEOs (Scaling Up Case Studies) –
From $100 million to over $1 billion in 24 months; from 3 to 30 locations; dozens of acquisitions; and a significant business pivot – this 87-second video highlights the outcomes four scaleup CEOs have achieved from attending our CEO Boot Camp three times since we launched two years ago. Why attend so many times? Because the experience is powerful. March is full, but 4 spots are open for June 4 – 7 in Marathon, FL. 

Jim Collins’ Flywheel –
How does YOUR flywheel turn? Jim Collins articulated the flywheel concept in Good to Great, one of the most powerful ideas to come out of his collective work. And it’s18 years later that he’s come to understand more fully the intricacies enough to help us discern our own flywheel – what are the components; what is the sequence; is the logic of your flywheel as equally sound as Amazon’s? Please watch this two-minute Jim Collins video for more details on his flywheel concept -- as applicable to business as it is non-profits and your own personal career.

Turning the Flywheel Monograph –
Released yesterday, Jim Collins’ latest 46-page Turning the Flywheel monograph provides a way for you to think about your own flywheel. It’s such a brilliant and quick read that I couldn’t put it down – and has my head spinning on precisely how to describe our own flywheel (if we have one!). To get it right means, to quote Jim Collins:

…if you conceive of your flywheel in the right way – and if you continually renew and extend the flywheel – it can be remarkably durable, perhaps even capable of carrying your organization through a major strategic inflection point or turbulent disruption.

But he goes on to warn:

…to do so requires understanding the underlying architecture of the flywheel as distinct from a single line of business or arena of activity (emphasis Jim Collins’).

Please grab a Kindle copy and take 62 minutes to read it this weekend, then bring Jim’s key questions to your weekly “council” meeting the next few weeks. Figuring out your flywheel is one of the most important strategic decision you’ll make – personally and professionally.

7 Practical Applications of Artificial Intelligence –
Chapter 2 of Applied Artificial Intelligence provides the best summary/progression of how AI is applied to business I’ve seen to date. You can read the chapter in 5 minutes. Co-authored by Mariya Yao, it’s subtitled A Handbook for Business Leaders – and it is!  SPro and Book Club members will receive a copy of the book next week. Mariya, along with 11 other top biz authors, will keynote our upcoming ScaleUp Summit in Atlanta May 21 – 22. Our two-day Summit is the equivalent of your team reading a dozen books (which research says is the differentiator between A-player execs and everyone else).

Machine Intelligence Continuum (MIC) –
Mariya labels these applications of AI, in Chapter 2, MIC. The seven are machine learning systems that: Act, Predict, Learn, Create, Relate, Master, and Evolve. And she shares examples where each is being used in business, which should spur some creative ideas for your own organization. I then suggest you go right to Chapter 6 where she details how to build an AI-ready culture. No surprise – it’s best if the CEO is onboard and at least one C-Suite executive has an advanced math degree (often top CMO’s have this, since it’s such an analytical function – or should be!!!). Again, Mariya has written a very practical and straight-forward book on how AI can be applied to our businesses. Join us in Atlanta to learn from her and a dozen others. 

What a Quantum Computer Looks Like –
10 years from being useful, quantum computing is the next frontier. For those curious, this Fortune article and 6-minute video gives you a quick look at what a quantum computer looks like -- essentially the most expensive refrigerator on the planet!

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 2019.

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? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://coaches.scalingup.com/.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

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.

Australian Billionaires; Maddock’s Plan D; Oscar Winner?; Congrats Gunjan; Vegas April 9 - 11

Hello ScaleUps, 

Hope it’s been a productive and purposeful week. Here are some insights/opportunities to help you outlearn/outthink the competition.

YPO-Only Scaling Up Workshop Las Vegas April 9 – 11 –
YPO has a few more spots for YPO teams to attend the 3-time award winning Scaling Up workshop “Making the Rockefeller Habits Rock” in Las Vegas April 9 – 11. YPOer Reza Etedali is the Day Chair subbing in for my dear friend Wei Chen who passed away two months ago. For more info email Emma Fenton-Wells [email protected]. See you in Vegas!

“Free Solo” a Must-See Documentary –
Expected to capture the Oscar this weekend for Best Documentary, Free Solo follows Alex Honnold’s successful scaling of El Capitan without ropes. My 11-year-old son Quinn and I saw it last weekend on the big screen. We both LOVED it and were sitting on the edge of our seats the entire time. The big lessons for all of us scaling companies?

1. Power of intention (BHAG) – it was a 20-year journey/goal for Alex, involving 8 years of preparation – he kept his eye on the prize with no deadline (most think BHAG’s need a deadline – not so)
2. Only taking calculated risks – with camera’s rolling, Alex stopped the ascent a year earlier because he wasn’t fully prepared for “the Boulder Problem.” Again, keep the deadline fluid and as Jim Collins calls it “shoot bullets before cannon balls.” Test before going all in.
3. Preparation, Preparation, Preparation – every thumb and toe hold were choreographed, practiced hundreds of times with ropes, before he attempted to free solo.

Successful leaders are NOT risk takers. Instead, they do what appear to be risky things but with a plan A, B, C, or D. And in Alex’s case, he needed a gold medal performance, or he died. Enjoy the show!

Plan D by YPOer Mike Maddock –
Mike is a great speaker, writer and friend. He is also an internationally recognized innovation expert. His new book Plan D: Lessons from the World’s Most Successful Disruptors is about people that blow sh** up for the good of the whole (That’s YOU!). Three quick takeaways: 

1. Under pressure, Disruptors have trained themselves to think, see and solve challenges differently. To many, this appears to be instinctive, but it is a learned practice. 
2. Disruptors use simple, repeatable frameworks to move faster and smarter than their competitors. This book is full of them.  
3. All extremely successful people are either chasing--or being chased by--ghosts. This can lead to scary and sometimes tragic outcomes. But the healthy Disruptors have learned to use their ghosts to give them an unfair competitive advantage.

This book is practical, funny and candid. Grab a Kindle version and enjoy over the weekend!

Australia’s First Tech Billionaires –
This NY Times article details how Atlassian co-founders Scott Farquhar (kind enough to endorse my book) and Mike Cannon-Brookes, who scaled their firm to a market cap of over $20 billion ($24.74 billion today) while holding onto 75% of the ownership, have lobbied for change. Unlike other wealthy people in Australia, they have been vocal about the political changes that need to occur in their country. Please take 4-minutes to read about two of the world’s top entrepreneurs who defied Silicon Valley – and who now live next to each other (with a hole in the fence so their children can play together) in the two most expensive homes in Australia.

Congratulations Gunjan Doshi, Founder/CEO InRhythm –
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy appointed Gunjan Doshi, whose firm InRhythm is an Inc. 5000 Hall of Famer (6 years in a row!), to Chair the Commission on Science, Innovation, and Technology. The Commission is comprised of 17 members including the Secretary of Higher Education; the Commissioner of Education; and the CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. This is a serious appointment! Noted Gunjan “please share that I’m a proud long-term student of Scaling Up!” Congratulations, Gunjan, for giving back to your community and state – and scaling a very successful company.

Hilton Using Growth Institute Online Courses –
Last week I noted Hilton was named the #1 Best Place to Work by Fortune, a key reason being their focus on training and development. My team reminded me that Hilton has been using some of our Growth Institute online courses. Congrats to Daniel Marcos and his team for providing this online “corporate university” anyone can access 24/7.

Vibra Enterprise’s 2 Billion Views on YouTube –
And another shout out to Daniel and his team. Diego Lossada, Founder & CEO of Vibra Enterprise, just earned his Master of Business Dynamics (MBD), a series of 6 accredited online coached courses (Scaling Up, Topgrading, ExO, etc.). Noted Diego:

As a company, we just reached 2 billion views on YouTube. I have been implementing the methodologies I have learned in the MBD for two years and they have undoubtedly made it possible to multiply our results. To reach 1 billion views, it took us 7 years and we reached 2 billion just 2 years after that.

Diego goes on to explain how their growth spurred a name change (the company name matters!):

We continue to grow and expand (4x in 24 months) and for that reason, we changed the name of our company from SolesMedia to Vibra Enterprise. The old name pigeonholed us in media and now we are strong in e-commerce and other areas as well. Thanks, Daniel Marcos and your team!

Hundreds of leaders are earning their MBD. More practical than an MBA and a sixth the cost, invest in yourself and your leadership team – it works. As McKinsey noted a couple weeks ago, the KEY competitive factor has shifted from brawn to brains!

Dominate Your Industry in 4 Stages of Growth – and last week, Growth Institute’s CEO, Daniel Marcos (I guess it’s my week to highlight Daniel), hosted a webinar where he shared the 4 stages of growth and how to use this dynamic growth model to grow from one stage to the next. He also shared how a leader needs to evolve to make sure they are never trapped by their growing business. If you missed the training, you can get the most important highlights here.

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 2019.

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? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://coaches.scalingup.com/.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

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.

HGTV Co-Founder; Best Place to Work; 8 Self-Leadership Traits; Bloomberg CEO Summit

Hello ScaleUps, 

Hope it’s been a productive and purposeful week. Here are some insights to help you outlearn/outthink the competition.

But, if you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.
	Carl Jung as quoted in Fully Human

Bloomberg’s CEO Summit June 17 – 18 NYC –
Join me and a star-studded A-list of speakers and 200+ mid-market CEOs at Bloomberg’s beautiful HQ in NYC for their June 17 – 18 CEO Summit. More info below, but first…

HGTV Co-Founder Susan Packard –
Under Susan Packard’s leadership, HGTV became one of the fastest-growing cable networks in television history. In her new book released this week, Fully Human: 3 Steps to Grow Your Emotional Fitness in Work, Leadership, and Life, Packard shares how to improve what she calls your EQ Fitness and apply it to real world business situations. Jump to chapter 4 for a great reminder of what it means to be a leader that smiles (what it takes to experience joy as the leader of a growing business) – then read the rest of the book. Susan is keynoting our ScaleUp Summit May 21 – 22, Atlanta. SPro and book club members will receive a copy of her book next week for their libraries. 

10 Strategies for Women in the Workplace –
Susan Packard is also the author of New Rules of the Game, written for women leaders. She’ll share many of the lessons from this book, as well, during her interactive keynote in Atlanta. With over 30 years in the cable TV world, Susan has been touted as a pioneer, an innovator and a role model. She's been on the ground floor in the creation of some of the biggest brands in the industry, from HBO to CNBC and, most notably HGTV, as mentioned above. It’s an opportunity for your team to receive some outstanding executive education (which you can also stream back to your company) along with a thousand leaders of other scaleups in attendance – not to be missed.

The 8 C’s of Self-Leadership –
Yesterday I was on the phone with my dear friend Dr. Bill Isaacs, the famous dialogue guru at MIT. He pointed me to Dr. Richard Schwartz’s “Internal Family Systems” framework of self-leadership. Towards the end of his online one-pager, he concludes that:

After twenty years of helping people…The eight Cs of self-leadership include: calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness (emphasis mine).

I can’t think of a better list to live by – personally and professionally. Print, post, live!

And the Best Place to Work is? –
Fortune magazine released their annual list this morning and the winner is not the typical hi-tech firm with table tennis facilities! Instead, it’s Hilton Hotels. Seems happy employees lead to happy customers which leads to happy shareholders – the stock is up 274% since IPO. The key is CEO Chris Nassetta. Notes Fortune: “Nassetta has worked to upgrade the staff experience and placed a special emphasis on education and training (my emphasis!).” Rounding out the top 10: Salesforce, Wegmans, Workday, and Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants. This just underpins McKinsey’s research I shared last week – it’s brains, not brawn, that wins in the marketplace.

Bloomberg’s CEO Summit June 17 – 18, NYC –
Bloomberg, our partner for the ScaleUp Summits, hosts 18 events throughout the year (and around the globe) for an elite group of mid-market CEOs (above $30 million in revenue). They’ve extended to “my world” an opportunity to invite 35 members. It’s a chance to network with the leadership of both Bloomberg and the other CEO members – a very high quality and global group of roughly 200 CEOs. 

Global membership is just $5k for all 18 events including their “The High Road Driving Experience” where you get to test drive all the brand-new luxury cars before they are available to the public – and the Bloomberg Gala 50 event Dec 9 in NYC. We’ve also included one seat to our Summit ($2k value), so it makes this membership the best if you plan to attend just one Summit in 2019. 

Regional membership is $2500 and includes 14 of the 18 events, the most important being their CEO Summit in NYC June 17 – 18 (Global invited as well). Here’s a link to a list of all 18 events and locations. Attending just one or two is worth the price of membership for Global or Regional. 

Please email me [email protected] if you’re over $30 million in revenue and interested.

Create Yourself!

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 2019.

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? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://coaches.scalingup.com/.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

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.

Beautiful Name; Costco's Resilience; Belgium Gazelles; Services Replace Products

Hello ScaleUps, 

Hope it’s been a productive and purposeful week. Here are some insights to help you outlearn/outthink the competition.

Great Company Name –
Do you need to rename your company? Congratulations to Dina Dwyer-Owens (Chair), Mike Bidwell (CEO) and her team for taking a huge leap and renaming the almost 40-year-old family business. At $1.8 billion now, the Dwyer Group recently rebranded their collection of 21 home service franchises to Neighborly. Brilliant, memorable, and emotionally connective!  Here’s a link to the latest press release on the details. Again, do you need to rename your company? Something simpler along the lines of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, FedEx, and Neighborly? Or Costco?

The Resilience of Costco (thank you to Tim Ferriss) --
Tim Ferriss highlighted this “article” on Costco. Notes Ferriss, in his 5-Bullet Friday post (one of my favorite blogs each week): “For 40 years, Costco has succeeded with a simple formula: reinvest merchandising profits into lower prices and better products; be a disciplined operator; and treat customers and employees well.” This is a great study in simplicity (drastically reducing SKUs, per slide 44, and keeping the stores barebone, per slide 70), contrarian decision-making (no expensive advertising, per slide 54, and only offering bulk sizes, per slide 58), and much, much more.” Please take 2 minutes to click through the 146 slides (it really is quick to absorb!). Thank you, Tim, for highlighting this great biz example – and love the clever way the story is told via slides. 

Services Replacing Products in Global Trade –
A new study out from the McKinsey Global Institute finds the share of goods produced around the world that is traded across borders has fallen sharply, from 28.1% in 2007 to 22.5% in 2017. In turn, the trade in services is skyrocketing. To quote Fortune magazine’s take on important implications of this research: 

• Foreign trade is no longer being driven by the search for low wages. Less than 20% of trade is based on labor-cost arbitrage, the report says. 

• Knowledge-based trade is soaring. Investment in intangible assets - R&D, strong brands, intellectual property - has doubled as a share of trade, from 5.5% to 13.1%. 

Fortune continues: “The implications for public policy are clear. Restricting trade in physical goods is fighting the last war. And attempting to restrict trade in intellectual property and intangibles is a fool’s errand. In the next round of globalization, it will be countries with the best talent, not those with the lowest wages, that will have the upper hand.” Brains, not brawn, are the key to success in the 21^stCentury. 

Gazelles as Job Generators –
Research continues to show that the small slivers of “gazelles” in the economy drive a majority of the jobs. The latest is from Belgium where 3.5% of firms where found to generate 67% of jobs between 2014 and 2017. Thank you to Scaling Up Certified coach Rob Nankeris for pointing me to this study.

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 2019. 

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? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://coaches.scalingup.com/. 

TECHNOLOGY: 

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video. 

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.