071: The Biggest Mistakes in Scaling Up with Verne Harnish
Are you having trouble scaling your business effectively? Have you ever thought that you might be doing it ‘wrong’? This episode dives into the biggest mistakes we see leaders making in the quest scale up.
Our guest for this week is the one and only Verne Harnish. As most of you already know, he is the author of Scaling Up, Founder and CEO of Gazelles. He is also co-founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).
The tools that Verne and our team at Gazelles have put in place have worked for over 40,000 companies, across many industries, and around the world. This is Verne’s 35th year working helping business to scale. In fact, Verne and EO are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the organization and the 25th anniversary of the originating MIT program, the Birthing of Giants. It’s also the 20th anniversary of our Gazelles organization.
There is a lot of education for startup founders, but much much less on successfully scaling up.
In this show, Verne shares the story of a 76-year old who accidentally became a CEO and was recently named CEO of the year in British Columbia, Canada. With 3 decades of experience as a cancer researcher, he cites Gazelles as what helped him navigate the chaos of growing his company, now approaching a $1 billion valuation.
We also look at what people are missing the Strategy area: it’s pricing!
Companies are leaving massive amounts of money on the table. There are two things you want to think about when it comes to pricing. First, adjust your pricing based on the time and/or the season (develop dynamic pricing). And second, there’s psychology behind this. Human beings are not rational decision makers and sometimes need 3 tiers of pricing in order to be convinced that a higher tier is the one for them.
In People decisions, this is the best piece of advice Verne ever received: If you want to scale your company by 10x, figure out who are the top 25 influencers in your industry that need to get behind your company. The bigger the names, the faster you will scale. Verne was bold, so he put President Ronald Reagan on his list, along with Steve Jobs. Verne also knew he had to get Inc. Magazine and Venture Magazine involved. He spent an hour every week figuring out how he could get himself in front of these influencers. 3 years later, they were global.
Just because Verne aimed for the President at the time doesn’t mean that’s also your only option. In this day and age, there are tons of influencers you can target. Do not ignore bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram stars, etc. Every industry has their lead customer. If you’ve got them onboard, your product will fly off the shelf.
Listen to this show for big insights on getting proactive with your Execution habits and managing the Cash decisions of your business model.
Resources:
Download our Growth Kit for Scaling Up with instructions, agendas, and worksheets for your leadership team.
Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops.
