126: Scott Duffy on Achieving Breakthroughs
When you’re launching, scaling, or even selling a business, it comes with a lot of tough challenges… as well as some amazing breakthroughs. Today’s show is all about achieving those breakthroughs on a regular basis and getting more of those ‘aha’ moments.
Scott Duffy has been listed as a “Top 10 Keynote Speaker” by Entrepreneur and even sold one of his businesses to Richard Branson. He is also the best-selling author of Launched! and gives a deeper dive into his most recent book, Breakthrough, in today’s episode.
As a junior in college, Scott got into a horrific car accident with a garbage truck while he was going 90 miles an hour. He had two brain hemorrhages and had to drop out of school. While on bed rest, Scott was listening to motivational speakers and he made it his mission to intern/work for these very people who helped him recover. After his recovery, he went back to school and landed an internship with Tony Robbins.
The job was hard. Scott would be on the road for 50 straight weeks and his training team would speak up to seven days a week, five times a day. Unfortunately, Scott burned out from this high-paced and high-energy environment.
After some time off, Scott joined with his old roommate to create an Internet company (this was back in 1994). The first two months were a disaster. Nothing was working. So, Scott decided to go where the action was and move to San Francisco where all the smart guys, like Yahoo, were.
A ton of friends’ couches and six months later, Scott ran out of money and people stopped calling him back. So, he pawned all of his stuff! He took the money he had, bought some pizzas, smashed his resume into the cheese, and delivered them to companies. He got a call from Bill Peck, the father of Internet Advertising, and that’s when Scott got his first breakthrough.
Interview Links:
Resources:
Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshops: 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)
TWEETABLES:
“We have this energy, we have this enthusiasm, and we know if someone would just give us a shot, we’d do a great job!”
“In life, we gotta position ourselves.”
“The rule number one I’ve learned with being around people like Richard Branson or Tony Robbins — just never get in the way of possibility.”
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Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Gazelles Coaching, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher, host of the Scaling Up business podcast and a leading Gazelles Coach. Gazelles is the term we use for fast-growing companies.
We help leadership teams with 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Scaling Up for Gazelles companies is based on the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).
