Scaling Up Business Podcast

If you don’t ask, you don’t receive, but there’s an eloquent way of asking in order for you to have it all. It first starts with being an advocate for yourself and your needs. You are your own best advocate and today’s guest will show you how to get exactly what you ask for. Heather Hansen is a Lawyer, Self-Advocacy Expert, Coach, Author, and sought-after international speaker. She’s also the Founder and CEO of Advocate to Win, a consulting business where she’s given thousands of clients the knowledge and tools they need to become better advocates and gain support and engagement for their big ideas. Still an active lawyer, Heather was named one of the top female attorneys in Pennsylvania and she represented doctors, nurses, and hospitals throughout her career. The reason why she was so good at what she does was that she helped teach her clients how to be advocates for themselves. However, throughout Heather’s career, although she was good at advocating for others, she wasn’t the best at advocating for herself

Are you suffering through some circumstances right now that you can’t seem to get out of? Are you feeling really frustrated? It sucks to be going through this in the moment, but the good news is, there is a solution. You can find a way out of this. When Bill turned 40, he found himself in a unique place. He had everything he wanted, he had accomplished a lot in his life at that time, yet, why was he so unhappy? Why was he suffering? He felt trapped by his circumstances. The first thing Bill did was to take stock and recognize he wasn’t happy. Then, he re-examined his life. He started at the root. He looked at his relationship with his family, with his parents, with his siblings, and what his life had brought him at key points in his life. He uncovered something interesting. Bill knew he was a natural leader, he was smart, he knew he had qualities that not many could beat. However, he could always find someone else who was slightly better than him. This comparison completely stole his joy. It felt like everyth

There’s a lot to cover in this week’s Scaling Up Insights show! We have two returning guests, Dominic Monkhouse and Daniel Marcos. Both of these growth coaches talk about what’s on their summer reading list, understanding customer and employee data, and inflation making a comeback! All this and more, in today’s episode. Bust Buy’s Turnaround time really is a gift of wonders. Daniel shares an example of why he chose them over Amazon for a particular retail purchase. He was amazed! In and out in less than five minutes and he didn’t even have to leave his car. The future truly is wonderful. People are so quick to blame Amazon for disrupting and ruining other industries. Best Buy said no, it’s not Amazon’s fault. It’s ours. It’s our lack of execution that’s put us in this position. When they took ownership of their own shortcomings, they were able to innovate greatly, and you also kind of have COVID-19 to thank for that, too. Dominic is surprised we still have poor customer service issues in 2021. Some people jus

Are you feeling a bit off right now? Or maybe you’ve felt a little “blah” in the past and you’ve slowly gotten yourself out of it, but you’ve always wondered how did you get into that place in the first place? Bill’s got a tip for you. Bill had a client come to him during a team coaching session and he admitted he was feeling kind of off. It was like, overnight, he lost his passion and he wanted out. Bill spent some time listening to him and he could tell this was just a feeling he was going through at the moment. It wasn’t a core belief he had rooted into. When this happens to Bill’s coaching clients, it’s really helpful to take a minute to work backward and reflect when you started feeling this way. You can do this by yourself or have a partner help you through this reflection period. Ask yourself the question, “When was I feeling okay? And when did this feeling shift?” The answers might not come to you right away but trust the process. There was a moment that made you switch from feeling great about your b

This week’s exciting entrepreneur is René Serbon! She is an International Skin Expert and Aesthetician. She helps people grow their skin business in a unique way and René consults fellow Aestheticians, Physicians, and Dermatologists to become confident and profitable entrepreneurs. René not only helps her clients grow, but she also provides additional education on the latest skin treatments, products, and procedures. Her business serves two-fold, both as an education and consulting business as well as a distribution business. René has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. She begged her parents to homeschool her, and when they did, she set up a small clothing shop on the side. She grew up in a very medical-centric family, and decided to follow in her family’s footsteps (somewhat). When René stepped into the skin and beauty world, she got bit by the bug. She loved helping people feel confident. She could see in real-time the difference she was making in people’s lives and she didn’t want to stop! You might thi

A vision is critical to your success, but how do you go about creating one? What pieces should you include and not include? This week’s guest has some answers for you today! Jennifer Judye is the Founder and CEO of Conscious Copy & Co. where they help entrepreneurs communicate their vision and message in a way that inspires people to action. Jennifer and her team have supported hundreds of entrepreneurs through the Vivid Vision process (created by Cameron Herold), which helps entrepreneurs attract top talent, align their team, create key partners and vendors, and stay focused and motivated. Jennifer was at a business dinner and randomly sat at Cameron Herold’s table. After speaking with him, she decided to read his book and craft a vivid vision for her new copywriting company. She wrote down big names in the industry that she would love to work with, and it actually came true! The way Jennifer views a “Vivid Vision.” It’s like a sales page for your future. Cameron noticed that some of his clients were get

Is your work going well, but the rest of your life is in disarray? Are you missing some play or some fun in your life? Do you feel like you have no balance happening right now? Bill has found himself in a very similar position. He was making some progress in the business, but he wasn’t enjoying himself. He wasn’t having fun; things were just off for him. His life could easily be categorized into two buckets: Things he was supposed to do and the things he actually enjoyed doing. Neither of these activities overlapped with each other.   Here’s the thing, if you are able to get your passions, your play, your purpose, and fulfillment all into alignment, not only is it possible, it’s magical once you do. Can you find a way to integrate all these things into one? The answer is a yes, it just might take a bit of creative tweaking to get it all there.   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Sel

In this week’s Getting Real episode, we have Neel Parekh, who is the founder of MaidThis Franchise, which helps homeowners and short-term rental hosts with their cleanings. We’ll learn why he quit his corporate job to start his own business and some of the biggest challenges he’s faced thus far. Neel had the idea of his business slightly over seven years ago. He wanted his business to be fully remote so that he could travel and see more of the world. Fast-forward to today, he has generated millions in revenue while having a fully remote team and wants to help other people achieve the same. Prior to starting his business, Neel worked in venture capital and private investing. However, he always had a travel bug in him and he wanted to create something that could fit more into his lifestyle. He also wanted to find a way to support his parents, or have them work with him on this business, remotely. These were his big two “whys” for starting the business. MaidThis now covers all of Greater Los Angeles, the Bay Are

With over 25 years of human resources and talent management experience at organizations, this week’s guest shares some of the people-centric activities you need to focus on to achieve high growth. Andrew Bartlow leads Series B Consulting, a firm that helps companies build their people strategy and accelerate their growth. He is also the Founder of People Leader Accelerator, which is a development program for startup HR leaders, and the co-author of Scaling for Success. Andrew used to be a bit self-conscious when it came to telling people he worked in HR. He found out that not a lot of people knew exactly what that meant and that it had a negative connotation around it. HR goes beyond employee relations and payroll. Andrew would often tell people he was in management consulting because that’s how the best companies approach it. What inspired Andrew to write his book? Well, everyone has a book inside of them, but Andrew saw a huge gap in the market in the startup ecospace. There are a lot of companies that are

Have you been struggling to grow your business? You’d love to double your revenue, but you can’t seem to figure out what’s moving, or not moving the needle? Bill and his wife ran a business together a few years back and he found himself in the same situation. They’d go up some months, and then down some other months. All they wanted to do was double their business, yet they were stuck! Back to the drawing board, Bill and his wife came up with a couple of things that ended up making a huge difference. The first one was the BHAG and the second was the vivid vision. Through their BHAG, they were able to see a 10X future for themselves. By going through this mental exercise, they could see some bigger picture strategies they could be doing today, instead of being “in the weeds” trying to 2X. These perspective shifts were game-changing and allowed them to grow quicker than they had anticipated!   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attendin

Your personal brand is everything and you can use your personality, your voice, to enhance your business brand and get more out of life. Today’s guest showcases why and how PR is the way to go to hit the next step in your business! Victoria Kennedy is the CEO of Victorious PR, a media agency that helps Entrepreneurs, Real Estate Brokerages, Mortgage Companies, and Solar Businesses get featured in industry-specific publications, local press, podcasts, and top publications to be seen as Industry Leaders in their fields. Growing up, Victoria wanted to be an opera singer and she even had a number one hit single in Europe! Victoria was heavily pitching editors and TV producers to get her music out there, and that’s where she discovered she had a PR talent. Unfortunately, Victoria’s European visa did not renew and she had to find another way to make a living back home in the U.S. Victoria had dedicated her whole life to singing; she didn’t have any other skills. She was dirt poor and realized that she could go all-

Today in Scaling Up Insights, we have returning panelist Daniel Marcos, and a new panelist, Max Kozlovsky, a business consultant with more than 20 years of experience working with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 Companies. In a recent article by Marc Benioff, he recommends using an off-site ranch to conduct culture-building activities for his Salesforce office. Daniel loves the idea and actually conducts a lot of his quarterly planning sessions in Mexico. Getting “out” really gets the creative juices flowing. Daniel doesn’t have an office space anymore, but it’ll be great to have a little meeting room space where he and his team could meet once a week or so if needed. Max himself bought a house to specifically use for team training. It’s incredibly convenient to have. Both Max and Daniel have noticed that real estate is becoming such a booming commodity, with Daniel unable to see any houses for sale in San Antonio, Texas, and some of Max’s friends in Austin, Texas were bidding 10% over asking price and still not

Do you have a hard time controlling your anger? Do you just let your thoughts stew in your head and then blow up at people? Ouch! There’s a solution for this. Bill was working with an accomplished CEO, but gosh, did he have a temper! He was easily triggered, too. The problem was that he was seeing a level of incompetence among his people and it was frustrating him, and forcing him to refocus on the immediate fire. However, Bill had him walk around on the floor and really get to know his people. Approach the problem from a more side-to-side approach than a top-down approach. When he began doing that, he developed a lot of compassion and understanding for what his team was REALLY going through, and he was able to show up and support them much better because of it.   Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTu

Welcome to another Getting Real episode where we deep dive into entrepreneurs’ journeys and discover all the good, the bad, and lucky breaks they’ve received throughout their uncommon career! Today’s guest is Leigh-Anne Acquisto, the founder of Liquorish Ink, a brand behavior business that creates innovative ideas and brand stories. Leigh-Anne started her career in corporate as a brand strategist and after seven years, she decided it was time to start her own business that specializes specifically in strategy. Strategy is one of the fundamental aspects of growing a brand, and Leigh-Anne is passionate about thinking big-picture and long-term to see that vision come to life. Leigh-Anne believes her luckiest break so far in the industry has been getting word-of-mouth clients to fill her pipeline. It’s been a challenge for Leigh-Anne because she doesn’t have business partners, so everything that she does to move the needle can really break or make the business. In fact, some of the challenges Leigh-Anne faced thi

Interested in buying a business and you’d like to know what goes on behind the scenes? Any good investor or buyer will first conduct their due diligence and verify the business does what it says it does. This week’s guest talks all about it!    Elliott Holland is the Founder of Guardian Due Diligence and he helps entrepreneurs select businesses, underwrites them, and then performs due diligence checks to make sure entrepreneurs aren't getting taken advantage of by sellers or brokers.     Elliott usually sees deals anywhere from $1-5 million dollars in purchase price and they usually take about 3-6 months to close. However, if you’re doing the due diligence process correctly, it can take over a year to find the right business and deal for you.    You’d be surprised by how many people are willing to lie about their business and fudge the numbers. Buyers, if you’re paying for 6-8x cash flow, a lot of sellers will lie. Elliott shares some of his first-hand experiences as to why certain deals just don’t go through

Are you missing key company targets? Do you find your performance declining in some way? Are you not sure what might be the cause of it? Bill has the perfect resource for you! Bill was working with a manufacturing company and after moving to a new facility, they were having some pretty mysterious productivity problems. Production was falling off, they were behind on their targets and unable to catch up, and more. Not being able to see the problem right away, Bill asked the team to order eight (8!) whiteboards. They then sat down and spent 45 minutes on what each of the metrics might be for each department. This gave the entire team a clear vision and it set the expectation of what everyone needed to be striving for, each and every day. If you’re unclear what some of your departmental goals are, try this method! Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach du

Bill gets to dive deep with another entrepreneur who is in the marketing world. She shares her challenges, biggest mistakes, and some of the amazing things she’s grateful for since starting her business four years ago! How did Angela come up with her company name? Well after working in a very fast-paced agency, she realized that everyone on the team was overwhelmed and stressed out. Whenever there was a new client in the pipeline, the team that had the least amount of work would get them, but everyone was relatively busy and maxed out. When Angela decided to start her company, she wanted to do something slightly different. She wanted to provide a high-quality experience for her clients with people who were overwhelmed. This is why she named her company 11outof11 — because they are better than a standard 10-out-of-10 score. Angela wanted to set her business up differently compared to what she experienced in the agency world. She has about 55 subcontractors and works with them on an on-need basis, and has about

Today’s topic expert shares how she scaled her business, created multiple companies, and even pivoted during the pandemic when her primary customers, tourists, ran dry. Lisa Song Sutton is an Entrepreneur, Real Estate Investor, and former Miss Nevada. She started her business career working in a top Las Vegas law firm and has since gone on to create multiple companies of her own. Her first business, Sin City Cupcakes, is an iconic Las Vegas treat that delights tens of thousands of locals and visitors each year. Lisa is also the co-founder of Ship Las Vegas, Elite Homes – Christie’s International Real Estate, and Liquid & Lace swimwear. How does one go from law school to then becoming an entrepreneur? Lisa loved law school and thought it was a great foundation for her because she learned right away how to NOT get sued. She ended up starting her cupcake company in 2012 while she was still working as an Associate at a law firm. It was a fun side hustle until it grew into a full-fledged business about a year

Are you feeling nervous or unsure what to work on? Every CEO knows what it’s like to have emergencies, breakdowns, and little fires to put out, but when you’re doing this all day, everyday, it can almost feel daunting trying to figure out which fire or task to focus on. Bill had a client that faced exactly this problem. A great exercise to do is the ‘Net Promoter System’ (NPS) scoring. This exercise gives you a bird’s eye view on everything that’s happening and any disconnects that’s appearing in the business. It gives CEOs a clear vision on what needs immediate attention, and where customers feel like the business is falling short. Try it out and you’ll quickly see some of the gaps that need filling. Resources: Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.) Bill on YouTube   Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then head over to iT

This week’s entrepreneur is a Technical Producer, Creative Producer, and Filmmaker. He is the Founder of SFG Productions, and they focus on live events, broadcasts, virtual conferences, and so much more. Let’s dive into Sean’s entrepreneurial story! Sean was forced to become an entrepreneur. This was definitely not on his radar when he was a kid. Sean was slowly freelancing here and there, and eventually, his clients said that they needed him to be a company. As a freelancer, he had a hard time saying no, and the number of clients coming through his door made him realize he had to hire and scale or else he’d be losing some great opportunities. Sean’s lucky break happened when he got a production gig for TED Talks. At the time, it was not nearly as big as it was before, but he took on the challenge and it led to fantastic press for his company. The video production on the TED Talk stages was much better quality than any “standard” conference at the time. When Sean joined EO, it was like a curtain being pulled