Broadway Record; Most Profitable Company; 4 Day Workweek Results; Unmasking What Matters

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Unmasking What Matters — Sandra Joseph holds the record as Broadway's longest-running female star when she became Andrew Lloyd Webber's leading lady in The Phantom of the Opera. Her 2018 book Unmasking What Matters: 10 Life Lessons From 10 Years on Broadway, is a powerful and beautiful story of pursuing her "role of a lifetime" — and how the journey of going inward is the key to going upward. SPro and book club members will receive a copy of her book next week. Then join us at the ScaleUp Summit in Denver Oct 16 – 17 as Sandra shares her story and gifts as the closing keynote.

Fortune's Global 500 Numbers — the latest list is out. I encourage you to find a couple global firms on the list that are in your (related) industry and check out their numbers/ratios. Overall, the Global 500 averaged a profit of 6.3% ($28,065 profit/employee), up from 5.4% last year. And since we like to see Scaling Up clients achieve 3X industry average profitability, something north of 19% is on par with what John Ratliff, the new head of our global coaching organization, achieved in his call center business when he drove profit from an industry average 4% to over 21% — equal to Apple's profitability last year.

Revenue/Employee — an equally important ratio, the Global 500 averaged $443,131 revenue/employee, up from $413k the previous year. In turn, mid-market firms ($5 million to a billion) average just $126,000/employee. Why? The Global 500 have brand which gives them pricing power. This is why it's important for you to dominate a narrow niche in order to create similar brand/pricing power. And second, the Global 500 have superior processes and technology. Instead, mid-market firms tend to throw people at the problem rather than streamline what they are already doing as they scale.

$390,244 profit/employee — and though Apple dropped two spots to #11 on the Global 500 list, they were once again the most profitable company at over $48 billion. This gives them an average of $390,244 profit per their 123,000 employees – almost equal to the average revenue/employee of the rest of the list (some fun facts for your weekend gatherings)!!

What Are Your Key Ratios? — How do you compare to the industry average? Are they up or down from last year? What moves do you need to make in the second half of the year to improve them?

Maybe a Four Day Work Week? — one way to boost productivity, and thus your revenue and profits per employee, might be to try a four-day work week? This CNN/Money story reports how one New Zealand-based firm, Perpetual Guardian, tried this with their 240 employees. Since it was such a "resounding success" CEO Andrew Barnes is recommending to his board that a four-day workweek be made permanent. Notes Barnes, "Why am I not paying based on output? Why am I paying for days in the office?" Please take 1 minute to read through the results Perpetual achieved with this two-month experiment.

Final Fun Facts — quoting directly from Fortune, here are some additional data points from the Global 500:

• Together, the 500 companies accounted for $30 trillion in revenue in 2018 – an amount equal to 38% of global GDP. Don't let anyone tell you big companies don't matter.
   
• Amazingly, only 12 of those companies – or 2.4% – are headed by women, which suggests the world is making bad use of half the global talent pool. The number is down from 14 last year.
   
• Profits were up 23% last year from a year earlier, totaling $1.88 trillion.
   
• China now accounts for 111 companies on the list, up from just 29 a decade ago. The U.S. was down six to 126
   
• There were 13 fast-growing Fortune Global 500 companies that jumped more than 100 places in rank from a year ago, including Alibaba (No. 300), Tencent (No. 331), and Facebook (No. 274).

And remember when McDonald's was the ultimate symbol of global commerce? The hamburger chain fell off the 2018 Global 500 list.

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. October 2 – 5; January 15 – 18, 2019.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://scalingup.com/coaches.html.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.aligntoday.com – on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

Better Book Club — What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.