Scaling Up Business Podcast

Tim Danley is the Founder of Resource Converting LLC. How do you get to $200 million dollars in projects, with only 3 people? Well, that’s the $200 million dollar question on this week’s episode. Tim touches on the radical change he made in business models, and how he leveraged outsourcing, on the interview. Let’s get started. Tim had been in the printing business for a little over 20 years, and during that time he made every mistake he could under the sun. He’s been an entrepreneur his whole life, but when he went through the Birthing of Giants program (now called Entrepreneurial Masters Program), things really, really began to click for him. Through the experience of going through the Birthing of Giants program, traveling the world, and getting more educated on the subject of entrepreneurship, Tim was ready to get out of the printing business. When he sold the printing business, he went to work looking for the next opportunity. In the BOG program, he learned about licensing and learned why this was a fantas

Krystal Hulsey is the Marketing Coordinator at BALI Construction in Walnut Creek, CA. Today, Bill and Krystal discuss listening skills and how it can impact business performance when these skills are used correctly. Bill and Krystal will be going back and forth showcasing key examples of how to do these listening exercises. Krystal is a visual person, which means her ability to listen and retain information doesn’t always stick. She remembers best when she can physically see what’s in front of her. She often worries about verbal communications and not being able to remember the conversation for later. Now, visual learners shouldn’t beat themselves up. Many of us learn through visual stimulation. In fact, visuals are another form of language. There is also such a thing as physical forms of language too, like communicating through body language. In business, we deal a lot more with verbal language. According to the book, Three Laws of Performance, the actions people take in the world are directly matched to how

Joe Apfelbaum is the CEO of Ajax Union, a Digital Marketing Agency located in Brooklyn, New York. Ajax Union provides companies with expert Lead Generation, Ecommerce,  and Digital Awareness Campaigns. He’s the perfect guest for this week’s topic about keeping the passion and fire alive in your business. How does Joe set his goals and intentions? What keeps him inspired? Joe started Ajax Union about seven years ago, but he’s been on a personal development journey for the last three years. When Ajax Union was created, all Joe wanted was to be financially free, but once he started generating a sufficient income, he knew there was something more to life than just money. When he finally discovered that there was a better and more meaningful way to live his life, that’s when things began to change for him. Yes, everything happens for a reason, but Joe (and you), are personally able to choose the reason! Joe is  creates his own purpose in this world and when that creation is aligned with his own values something ma

Don Smith is the owner and founder of Elite Electronics, a company that takes traditional car mechanics to an entirely new level.  Don is the perfect guest for today’s show, because what he is doing in his own industry is completely unique! Don’s business did not happen overnight. He created his company ten years ago, and has been slowly building the company you see today. In this podcast we'll unpack this to a deeper level. What is Don great at? Despite being so wildly different, how does Don fit in into his industry? And how has this uniqueness gotten him into trouble? You definitely don’t want to miss out on this conversation with Don. We look at these questions both from a personal and professional level. Find out more by listening to the podcast!   Interview Links: Elite-dfw.com   More Resources: ScalingUpBusiness.com:  Learn about how growth coaching can help you and and your business see big results. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by atten

Elliot Luchansky is the CEO and Board Member of InsynQ, LLC., the industry’s leading cloud hosting provider that offers an extensive range of over 600 software solutions running on multiple data centers. On this week’s episode, Bill and Elliot discuss how to engage and help your team on a personal level, how leaders can have a balanced life, and the one-page personal planner. This conversation is being recorded live on video, which you can see on YouTube! So, let’s dive right into the one page personal planner. This is a really useful thing to do during Christmas and New Years, as things begin to wind down. Bill recommends you first use it personally and then share it with your spouse and then bring it to those who you work with. How does Bill like to use this? To begin this exercise, it’s useful to reflect on the last year. Usually, our thoughts revolve around a very narrow range, but by performing this exercise, we are able to look at things from a wider perspective. What has this past year been like for yo

Mike Birdsall is the Co-founder of Birdsall Interactive, FanConneX, and DateBox Club. Mike and his wife, Maureen, are a husband/wife team who have been working together in business for the last 23 years, and married for the last 30 years. On this week’s episode Bill talks to Mike his business purpose, his life purpose, and how those two come together. When Mike’s sons were growing older and getting ready for college, Mike and his wife knew they were soon going to be empty-nesters. This notion of being completely alone in the house, scared both Mike and Maureen, so they started finding creative ways to re-date each other and to work on their relationship, since their children were no longer going to be the main focus. These creative dates allowed Mike and Maureen to reconnect with each other like they used to, back before they had kids. That’s how DateBox Club came to be, which is a subscription service where every month a super creative date night is delivered in the mail to their customers. The three goals o

Brad Giles is the Founder of Evolution Partners, and a certified Gazelles coach. Originally from Australia, Brad is a strategic advisor and coach to CEOs and executive teams across Australia and Asia. On this week’s show, we explore how to develop a powerful brand promise through the use of the Attribute Map. How has Brad applied the Attribute Map tool while working one-on-one with clients? Brad first used the tool while working on strategy development with a contracting company in Australia. As he used it he saw how closely this tool aligned with brand promise. Brad found out that his client and his client’s competitors, were all having the same problem: they were failing to deliver the finished work on time. In order to solve this and reduce their customer’s frustrations, Brad helped them map out their key service attributes in order to find ways to improve their reputation in the market. There’s nothing more frustrating than hiring a company who doesn’t deliver on time. With that in mind, they created the

Darius Mirshahzadeh is the CEO of The Money Source Inc. and the Founder of Endeavor America Loan Services. Darius has worked directly with Scaling Up principles and has seen quick growth within a short period of time at his two companies. On this interview, Darius shares the things he’s learned from when he first started out in 2013. What was it like learning these Scaling Up principles for the first time? When Darius was going through the “Birthing of Giants” program, he did feel a little overwhelmed by how much material there was to cover, but he was excited because at the time he was looking for a model that helped with high growth. At the time, there weren’t a lot of resources out there that were teaching these growth methods. What does Darius’s business look like now since he first learned about these principles in 2013? When Darius became the CEO of The Money Source Inc., it was the first time Darius had the chance to effectively apply what he learned, as he knew this company could scale aggressively. S

Paul Akers is the Founder and CEO of FastCap and is an expert in the field of lean manufacturing and lean thinking. He has written several books on the subject, including 2 Second Lean, Lean Health, and Lean Travel.  So, how can we optimize ‘lean,’ in a simple and easy way? This week’s episode dives right into the inner workings of how to leverage ‘lean’ without headaches. Paul has seen ‘lean’ work in the U.S., Japan, and now Kazakhstan. So, what is ‘lean,’ exactly? Simple! ‘Lean’ is one thing — the elimination of waste. Every basic task in our life is a process. What ‘lean’ does is analyze how long it takes you to complete a process, and see if it can optimize it more effectively. You don’t have to make massive improvements from between the time you start and end a process. The improvements with the use of ‘lean,’ are often very tiny, but end up becoming incredibly effective over time. The main goal is to do higher quality work with less time. ‘Lean’ does not just apply to manufacturing. It applies to all as

Tanya Chernova is an accomplished and passionate professional speaker, coach, and author. Tanya, originally from Russia, has traveled all over the world to help her clients get to the next level in their business. Today, she currently resides in Toronto, Canada, where she was awarded Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, in 2013. Today Tanya and I discuss how to overcome limiting beliefs and become a better leader. The brain processes the goals that you set from two different places -- the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind, the logical mind, only operates between 1-5% of the day. The unconscious mind, which holds our habits, patterns, and emotions, dictates about 95-99% of our day. Our conscious mind is the one that logically sets our goals, and our subconscious mind helps us go after those goals; it is the goal-getter. However, if you have a limiting belief, your subconscious mind could work against you, and sabotage you, to the point where you feel like you’re procrastinating on y

Gil Bonwitt is the CEO of Gazelles Social Initiatives. It is projected that Gazelles Social Initiative will impact over 500 social sector organizations by the year 2020, through the use of best practices from the Scaling Up book. Gil and I will be discussing the various ways you can scale up in the social sector, on this week’s episode. Let’s begin this topic by talking about cash flow in the social sectors. As many of these social companies are not for-profit companies, money is often not their main focus. Since social companies are so mission-based, they often forget the importance of cash flow. The way social sectors increase their cash flow is very different compared to a for-profit organization. When social companies begin to scale up, that’s when they begin to see the constraints of their insufficient cash flow. By this point, it is often too late to make enough capital for their mission and their operations start to break. Gil and his team try to remind social entrepreneurs that it’s really about cash

Shelby Scarbrough began her career in The White House Office of Presidential Advance, and as a Protocol Officer at the U.S. Department of State. Today, Shelby is an entrepreneur, angel investor, speaker and more. For this week’s topic, Shelby and I discussed how we can improve relationships and build rapport. Let’s get right into the heart of the matter. It all boils down to dignity and respect, when it comes to building rapport. And no matter what you’re doing, those two things are the only things people want. If you’re the giver, or the receiver, keep those two things in mind, and things will begin, and end, smoothly. Shelby’s boss, who was President Ronald Reagan, treated everybody with dignity and respect. Based on his actions, this taught Shelby, at an early point in her career, why these two principles were so important. President Reagan’s team even treated others the same way the President did, because they were all representatives of his administration. When Shelby left the White House, she took her s

Kevin Lawrence is a strategic advisor and coach to CEOs and executive teams all over the globe. Today, Kevin and I talk about keeping it together as a leader and ways not to meltdown as you try to grow your company. How do leaders keep themselves together while under the enormous pressure of running a company? In his 20 years of experience, Kevin is always fascinated by how some people can do it and have fantastic personal lives, while others are just miserable throughout their entire leadership journey.  When Kevin dug further into this, there are some very famous people like Kurt Cobain and Elvis, who at the peak of their careers, had it all and then somewhere along the line, they imploded in their success. This same sort of timeline applies to successful executives, too.  After working with a number of very high-performing individuals, Kevin dubbed this imploding timeline as the ‘The Dark Secret of The Boardroom.’ We all have our own Elvises and Kurt Cobains inside of us. So, Kevin’s job is to help exe

John Mullins is an award-winning teacher, author and scholar. John is an Associate Professor of Management Practice in Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School and is recognized as a thought leader in entrepreneurship. On this episode, John and I discuss customer-funded businesses and some of the novel ways business owners can fund their businesses. To begin the interview John and I discussed his most recent book, The Customer-Funded Business. the idea for this book began while writing a chapter in his first book, Getting to Plan B, about Costco's innovative business model. John knew there were a lot of interesting funding models like Costco's out there that worked, but for most entrepreneurs it seemed as though their go-to method to acquire funding was to simply find a VC. There are other ways! John discusses 5 different models so you can fund a business without using venture capital, family money, a bank, or an angel investor. The first way is to be a matchmaker, where you just brin

Robert Sher is the Founding Principal of CEO to CEO, a regular columnist for Forbes and CFO Magazine, and the author of two books, The Feel of the Deal and Mighty Midsized Companies. On this week's episode, Rob and I discuss growth and leadership. To start off, Rob shares a story about his client who recently had been promoted to CEO and had a big problem to solve that he just couldn't get his head wrapped around. Rob’s client had a management team, but he had to push them on every little thing, and then later chase them down because they would only compete the task halfway. It was exhausting and frustrating and he knew that playing babysitter was not the most effective way to spend his time. This company just seemed really, really, really hard to run. The company had pretty strict firing policies. In fact, the three top leaders had been there since 1985. The one thing Rob saw right off the bat was that the CEO's team needed help in leadership training and communication, as did the CEO. Since the CEO was more

Ted Sarvata is a fellow Gazelles coach who is focused on reigniting your purpose to restore your sanity! He and I will be diving into purpose, how you find it, how you use it in a company setting, and so much more on this week's episode. How do you discover your own personal purpose? Business owners tend to downplay their purpose in terms of why they started their business, but the reality is they shouldn't. The team buys into the owner's vision and the company's purpose, so the 'why' needs to be prominent in the company culture. Why does purpose even matter? Isn't that a bit 'woo-woo'? For those who might think so, I share a story with the audience on why taking your team through the journey of discovering their purpose is so powerful. Purpose becomes the core motivator for your team and this is one of the reasons why it's so crucial for the team to discover it. As you begin the conversation, it is best to first ask people what they do and why they do what they do? You keep peeling back that layer until it s

Joanna Bloor is a veteran in the media space and has worked in leadership roles with companies like CBS Interactive, Pandora, and OpenTable. Joanna is the CEO and Founder of Amplify Lab and has over 20 years of experience in digital media, broadcast television, and radio. In this episode, Joanna and I dive into what you actually want to be known for in your professional career and how to properly articulate that to your peers and clients. Joanna has spent a year talking with other women on how they can represent themselves as the experts and get C-suite leadership positions, which are usually very male-dominated. A big question that comes up is how do you figure out what you really want to be known for? As Joanna was trying to figure out how to answer this particular question, she found that it was actually quite difficult to really articulate that message for yourself. Another point that she discovered was that once you've figured out what you want to be known for, the actual process of explaining that to ot

Dave Kashen is on a mission to help people love their work life by eliminating ineffective meetings. Did you know there are over 3 billion meetings a year in the United States, and over half of them suck? This is why Dave co-founded Worklife Inc., a tech startup that helps maximize team productivity without the meeting! Meetings are a fabric of our working lives and they help with collaboration. That being said, when groups of people get together, it seems meetings become an ineffective experience and nothing substantial is achieved. So, why is that? Well, Dave set out to find the elements that make up an effective meeting, and then simplify the process further by implementing software to optimize it. Dave found several contributing factors to how a successful meeting occurs, breaking down the process in three stages: before the meeting, during the meeting, and after the meeting. One of the factors to a successful meeting was to create an agenda before the meeting takes place. This makes a huge difference bec

Nick Nanton is a four-time Emmy Award Winning Director, Producer, and Filmmaker. A master storyteller, Nick is recognized as one of the top thought-leaders in the business world, and is the author of StorySelling. Nick and I dive right into the art of storytelling and how to tell your story in a compelling and engaging way. A friend once told Nick that he has a unique skillset, as he is able to create media on a budget that looks like it came out of Hollywood; and that he should get out of the music industry and join the business world instead. Nick took his friend's advice and now ten years later, here he is today. So, how do you create your own personal story? First of all, most people take their own journey for granted. Why talk about that? It's boring. That couldn't be farther from the truth. If you tell your story well, it will position you as the only person in the world who can possibly solve your ideal clients' problems. Your story has to make sense or at least connect well with what you're currently

A Certified Gazelles Coach with quite a rich background, Jim Jubelirer helps leaders improve their business performance and personal satisfaction. He also speaks to a wide variety of audiences about leadership and business excellence. On this episode, Jim and I expand upon a topic the show has covered in the past and that's people! People seem to be the biggest challenge and resource for entrepreneurs and other business professionals. So, how can we get the right people on the bus? Through the use of Topgrading methods. Jim expands on how you can apply Topgrading with software tools and how you can effectively use the  assessments Topgrading provides to gain a different perspective. Jim also provides key tips on how to hire effectively. Topgrading tells us that only one in four people turn out to be a top performer, which means around 75% of people you hire don't move the needle in terms of culture and performance. Poor performance is one of the top complaints among growth companies. Companies are quite poor