Scaling Up Business Podcast

When your team and your clients feel engaged and connected, great things happen. In this new episode of The Scaling Up Podcast, we have panelists Oklahoma Consultant and Woman of the Year Stacey Eads and Growth Institute Co-founder and CEO Daniel Marcos for a conversation about company culture.   One additional sentence in every email can free up a significant portion of the time that you spend sorting through your inbox. By simply stating whether an email request is a high priority or low priority, or offering a few options for people to reply with, you are clearly stating your request and making it easy for others to respond.   The newest trend in the workplace is “quiet quitting,” and it means different things for different people. Some people are looking for greater work/life balance, while others are quietly disengaging with their jobs as a preliminary move before quitting altogether. This is not a great move considering CEOs have just gotten comfortable with the idea of more remote work, but it’s not go

Great experiences enhance your creativity, help you rest and recover, and restore your soul. Similarly, creating great experiences for the people that you work with, whether it be customers or employees, can be a powerful way to scale up.   Shane Mahoney has propelled luxury travel planning from a service to an art form. As the CEO and creative brain behind Lugos Travel, Shane puts together custom, luxury adventures, and meaningful experiences that are out-of-the-ordinary, thrilling, and a guaranteed delight to his clients.   So much travel now is planned by way of apps and websites, but when Shane learned about the opportunities available to him as a tour operator, he knew he had found the work he always wanted to do (even before he knew it existed).   Shane highlights what luxury travel looks like, how Lugos has pinpointed their travel destinations, and what their customers can expect from their experience. Their goal is to solve problems before their clients even know there is a problem at all.   Now opera

What’s changed with hiring and recruiting? The short answer is everything. Today’s guest is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Recruiter.com, an on-demand recruiting platform providing flexible talent acquisition solutions that scale from startups to the Fortune 100, and he has great insights into the future of hiring.   Evan Sohn is a frequent contributor to CNBC and Yahoo! Finance and demonstrates expertise in a diverse set of industries, including Wi-Fi, Instant Messaging, data security, customer relationship management (CRM), and much more.   The state of hiring can be broken down into three parts: what was happening pre-pandemic, what is happening currently, and what the future of hiring looks like. Wage inflation means across the board, people are worth more than they were two years ago. Zoom interviews make it easy to connect with your potential new boss, and employees aren’t expected to stay at a job nearly as long as they once were. Every micro-change that has affected the job market over th

Shailee Basnet scaled Mt. Everest in 2008. She then led a historic “Seven Summits Women Team,” which became the world’s first group to scale the highest peak in each continent. She currently leads, “Female Leadership Academy” in Nepal to help train young female survivors of human trafficking.   Growing up with Mt. Everest in her backyard, Shailee saw climbing the mountain as her ticket to adventure. She took on climbing as a way to figure out what her body was capable of doing, and has since worked to lead teams across the 7 Summits.   It takes incredible self-awareness to recognize when something is missing from your life and then take the action to do something about it. As a nearly five-foot-tall woman who started her journey having never trekked before in her life, Shailee had to work extra hard and she earned every single ability that she needed to climb Everest.   Even when Shailee woke up paralyzed, she kept working toward her goals. She recognized that failure is just another emotion that has to be pr

What are the core things you are forgetting in your scaling-up journey? Too often entrepreneurs get distracted by their passion projects and forget the essential principles of success.   Sean Castrina is the founder of The Weekend MBA, a serial entrepreneur, having started more than 20 companies over the last 20 years, and still seeks to launch a new venture annually.   He is the author of four bestselling business books including 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, Developing The Entrepreneur Within and World’s Greatest Business Plan.   Sean’s entrepreneurial journey began when his first dream job told him they were “going in a different direction.” As a result, he looked around for a need and founded a very unsexy car wash business that made $30,000 in the first year. He has since repeated his simple startup formula again and again for over 30 years and has no problem building companies that he doesn’t feel passionate about.   Entrepreneurs don’t have to

Today’s conversation is all about designing the future you! Who are you? Who are you going to be? What stories are you telling yourself today that are shaping your future success?   Founder and president of Transitions Institute, Inc., David Zelman has served as a corporate and business coach to millionaires, billionaires, royalty, and other top professionals who want to bridge the gap between professional accomplishment and personal satisfaction. His unique approach to fully expressing one’s humanity has empowered people to step beyond what is predictable and create truly extraordinary lives.   From near-illiterate high school dropout to college graduate to corporate consultant and business coach, David knows a thing or two about making successful transitions. When he realized he was headed down one dead end, he found the courage to pivot toward something better. Dying with your potential intact is not a good idea! The game isn’t to fulfill your potential, it’s leaning into it. That’s what the trajectory of

Are you so certain of what you (think you) know that you’re missing out on the possibilities that only come with embracing the unknown? Taking risks and presenting yourself in powerful ways are both key concerns of effective leaders.   Victoria Labalme harnesses principles from Broadway, Hollywood & Television to help entrepreneurs, artists and leaders Risk Forward® and Rock The Room®. She’s a WSJ bestselling author, Performance Strategist & Hall of Fame Speaker.   Victoria found her most impactful stage as a coach to CEOs and leaders around the world. From her own experiences with 9/11, terminal cancer and the pandemic, she has learned as well as anyone the value of embracing the unknown and utilizing the performing arts to present your best self.   When you present yourself from within, you harness a current that is followed by your authentic self and the natural energy that you have. Victoria’s programs Risk Forward® and Rock The Room® are both about the authentic expression of one’s self, in leade

How and when are you going to sell your company? It’s the biggest sale you’ll ever make, and the one that too many business owners aren’t spending enough time preparing for. But the sale of your business needs your time and attention now in order to really pay off down the road.   Larry Snyder has successfully led businesses for over 40 years. He has been through all four stages of a business — starting one, building the foundation, growing the business, and exiting. He knows the value of being prepared for an exit from Day 1 and how to achieve that for optimal value.   Looking back to his own exits, Larry made several key proactive steps. First, he recognized that a successful exit doesn’t happen overnight. He also identified how to align all invested partners to optimize well before the exit date. Larry has seen firsthand what happens when companies don’t have a clearly-thought-out exit strategy in place. And without one, business owners are setting themselves up to receive a fraction of the sale price that

A great storyteller knows how to craft a story and use it to their advantage. With your team, your investors, your customers, and your partners, the right stories can be incredibly powerful.   Stephanie Paul’s talents take many forms — as an actress who has worked in 10 international TV and Film markets, as an improv, stand up and sketch comedian, a director, producer, writer, public speaker, and most recently the author of Unlock the MAGIC of Story. She began acting at the age of 10 and has spent her life engaging others in powerful stories.   She has learned that the most powerful story you will ever tell is the one you tell yourself. Some stories empower us, and some make us feel limited, but all of the stories can either motivate or paralyze us. Actors use these stories to harness the brain chemicals that make for good entertainment, and we can hack our own biology — for better or worse — with storytelling.   Your brain will complete an unfinished story, even without the facts to support it. Stephanie exp

People who are willing to take more risks are more likely to experience greater success, and the only difference is that they are willing to try, and occasionally fail.   Jim McCormick is the president of the Research Institute for Risk Intelligence, a world-class, Hall of Fame skydiver, and author of The Power of Risk. With over 5,200 skydives to his name, Jim knows plenty about the value and thrill of intelligent risk-taking. He took his first jump when he was 32, and immediately found that satisfaction that comes with conquering his fears.   But how important is risk-taking in reaching your goals? Jim shares the fears of deep-sea exploration and the value that leaders have by sharing their expertise with non-experts. Humans do not like to feel vulnerable, and risk makes us vulnerable, but that doesn’t mean it should be avoided altogether.   Everybody is happy when innovation works out, but what happens when companies take a risk and it doesn’t work out? Jim explains the 350 Rule, which celebrates failure w

At the intersection of work and home, we find life — who we are and where we find purpose amidst all the things we deal with. There are frameworks to deal with in every aspect of life, and this week’s guest understands the challenge of trying to manage it all while finding and fulfilling our life’s purpose.   Jonathan Domsky is the founder of Kidorable and is now a full-time coach. He calls himself an accidental entrepreneur who started with the simple goal of gaining more control over his time. When he realized he couldn’t dedicate any more of his life to work that didn’t light him up, he transitioned to coaching — what he calls the best journey of his life.   Even though Jonathan didn’t know anything about coaching, he did have the desire to take action. With that dedication and a clear vision of the kind of coach he wanted to be, Jonathan started on his new path and has experienced great joy along the way.   When we don’t know who we are or what our core values are, it’s impossible to know if we’re achievi

As the CEO, do you ever feel like you get a little sidetracked? Do you feel you’re too in your business instead of focusing on what you’re actually good at? This week’s guest knows how to offboard those troublesome tasks so that you can get more productive CEO work done.   Richard Shaull is the Founder of Unleashed, a company that helps visionary CEOs free up 30 hours per week by training their COO counterpart, which then allows CEOs to focus on tasks that propel their company forward. After almost killing himself through two business ventures, Richard made it his mission to help other entrepreneurs never go through the same struggles again.   As a newly-married man and running two businesses at the same time, Richard couldn’t take it anymore. He was suffering on a level he did not know he could. He ended up losing investor money, got defrauded by the U.S. government, sued, you name it, Richard experienced it.   As Richard reflects on what he could have done better, he realizes that his fatal flaw was his lea

When you’re scaling your business, fires are likely to pop up and get your mission detailed. Business owners often face the problem that they’re unable to utilize their people effectively in times of crisis. Today’s guest has wisdom on how to keep culture aligned and have everyone’s mental stamina primed and ready for action.   John Robertson is the Founder & President of Fortlog Services. He built his services with an encouragement-based approach, resolving root causes at the source as opposed to treating crisis in the workplace symptomatically. He is a Workforce Wellness Expert and a Cultural Alignment Specialist and helps organizations develop and engage their people.   Why do we make people feel bad whenever something stressful happens in the workplace? The old school “walk it off” model when you’re in pain just doesn’t work. John has seen clients excel greatly in their position, but each and every task they did became a painful stone in their shoe that built up to the point where they no longer could

How do we attract and retain A-players? And how do we build an A-player culture in a me-over-we environment? Today’s guest knows that the number one asset of any successful company is the people, and he has joined the podcast to share his secrets of company culture success.   Marc Reifenrath is the co-founder and CEO of Spinutech. Spinutech has grown from a university dorm start-up over 20 years ago to a multinational digital agency with 150-plus team members across the U.S.   What does it mean to have the kind of company culture that attracts and retains top talent? From the beginning, Marc and the team at Spinutech aimed to shape their workplace as one that they wanted to work at. Since they aren’t in the business of saving lives, they aim to have fun with the work they are doing.   Leaders give their team permission to act, whether it’s through yelling at employees or playing and having fun while working. As CEO, Marc has had to give up some of his favorite fun parts of his work, but that hasn’t stopped hi

Today’s guest has an array of life experiences that uniquely shaped her leadership skills. From parochial school to West Point, Special Ops to stockbroker, Becky Margiotta has powerful insights into the leadership skills that lead to success.   Becky Margiotta is the cofounder and owner of The Billions Institute, LLC, the author of Impact with Integrity: Repairing the World Without Breaking Yourself, and the host of the Unleashing Social Change Podcast. Becky also directed the 100,000 Homes campaign for Community Solutions, working across 186 cities to permanently house more than 100,000 people.   With her diverse background, Becky was prepared to tackle the biggest challenge of her career — housing the homeless. Over the course of four years, she succeeded in reducing homelessness in Times Square by 87%. She highlights some of the situations she faced during this opportunity and how her leadership skills turned challenges into incredible success.   Over her 11 years working with the homeless, her curiosity a

Are the most successful companies just the luckiest ones? Why is it that some companies scale quickly while others never really seem to take off? Today’s guest highlights the real secret to success, and the secret is leaders who are willing to ACT!   Matt Hulett has driven more than $2 billion in value creation as a four-time public company CEO and president and a two-time private company CEO. He is a seasoned technology executive with more than thirty years of experience building and leading world-class SaaS and consumer companies. He has had multiple turnaround successes in the public and private sectors, including Rosetta Stone, RealNetworks, and Expedia. Matt is also the author of Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power.   Matt is a man with a particular set of skills, and those skills have taken him far. Rosetta Stone was his most satisfying turnaround, with a clear opportunity for market leadership and increased relevance within a premium market. By looking at technology trend

This week’s episode is all about swagger! It’s about you, your attitude, and the impact it can make on you and everyone around you. It’s a leadership conversation with a guest who has a passion for life.   Randy Cohen is an entrepreneur, restaurateur, author, speaker, investor, philanthropist, and successful business owner. Randy founded the online ticket reseller, TicketCity, in 1990. He serves as TicketCity’s Chief Energizing Officer and is one of the most well-known and successful entrepreneurs in the secondary ticket markets. He is the owner of Z Tejas Southwestern Grill, a thriving chain of restaurants in Arizona and Texas.   From his very first sales with TicketCity to a memorable experience at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Randy has been a leader who sets the example of going above and beyond. He is living proof that a leader who is authentic, sincere, humble, and kind is a leader who is going to win.   Randy’s goal is to be the energetic, rising tide that lifts everyone around him, but how he does that m

When trying to scale, too many companies think that their only option is to hire more salespeople. But today’s guest argues that adding more salespeople to your team is not the answer at all.   Andy Buyting is a serial entrepreneur, learning junkie, and Scaling Up coach who brings over 20 years of sales, marketing, operations, business development, entrepreneurship, management, and executive experience to his clients. He is the founder of Tulip Media Group as well as various real estate developments and is the author of Double Sales/Zero Salespeople.   Andy has joined the podcast to share his experiences with doubling sales without hiring additional salespeople. Salespeople certainly have a place in growing businesses, especially as the conduit that connects customers to the needs and wants of a company. But in many cases, there are other employees within a company, like digital marketers or production people, that can fill the sales role, maybe even more effectively than a salesperson.   Andy shares an inspi

So often, we are pitching our companies to new prospects and potential investors, but the slightest wrong move, especially in the beginning, can throw the whole impression off. This week’s guest talks about how to create a memorable impression that gets people calling you back.   Ronny Leber is an expert on Public Speaking and loves to motivate his listeners and create magical moments that enhance team-building skills. Not only is Ronny a renowned keynote speaker, but he is also a TV host and legacy coach that has entertained millions of people worldwide.   The biggest mistake Ronny sees with new speakers is that they’re way too focused on themselves. The reality is, that people don’t particularly care about your product, company, or who you are until they know you can solve a very critical problem they’re having. The world is not waiting for you!   It begins with a bit of empathy and understanding your clients’ needs and wants first. Part of Ronny’s job is to take the audience through an emotion and create b

Today’s entrepreneur shares some of his growth challenges when entering into a booming market that still has some pending legal clarity around it. Everything from not being able to advertise, losing merchant accounts, and not being able to get bank accounts is part of today’s guest story!   Eric Robichaud is a Serial Entrepreneur with over 30+ years of experience in tech, marketing, and business management. He is the CEO of Green Goddess Supply, a cannabis tech accessory brand. Eric has made his transition from traditional “computer geek” to “the weed guy,” and shares some of the challenges that possesses.   Eric is trying to democratize the plant. Medicine should not be for those who can only afford it. He wants to empower people to be able to grow the herb at home and by themselves.   Eric got his start off of Amazon. In the beginning, he had a criterion of what a good product looked like, most of the time it matched five out of the seven checkboxes until one day one of his team members came to him with a “