Bezos’s Grandfather Quote; Where to Get Talent; MTP; Rockefeller Update
May 18, 2018
2nd Slide Customers; AI Canvas; Mulally’s 4 Decisions; Italy July 13
May 31, 2018

Cool Drink; New Records Set; InfoTrust; ExO June 5

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

The two biggest market opportunities on earth, which 98% of us suck at…?
  Tom Peters

…and the Answer Is? go to 1:44 in this video overview of the ScaleUp Summit this week in New Orleans to get the answer — in Tom Peters' iconic style. Then enjoy the rest. Tom Peters, Linda McMahon, Judith Glaser, and Jeff Hoffman all received standing ovations from our packed ballroom of CEOs and CXOs of the top mid-market firms in the world. Our next ScaleUp Summit, is Oct 16 – 17, Denver. Please pencil us in for another impactful executive education program for you and your team. Outlearn the competition!

Happy National Wine Day (and Memorial Day Weekend in the US) and to kick off the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, this Fortune article reports that the drink expected to sweep the season is white port and tonic. Contributing to this drink's popularity is the dramatic increase in tourists to Portugal. Porto and the Douro wine region are stunningly beautiful.

Fortune 500 by the Numbers here's some fun facts – besides the cool new drink — for weekend conversations. According to Fortune's latest numbers released this week:

This year's Fortune 500 crop grew sales by 6% over last year, to $12.8 trillion, and their profits jumped some 13%, to $1 trillion.

Market cap jumped 11% to $21.6 trillion. These numbers represent an average 7.8% profitability. And with a combined 28.2 million employees this puts average revenue/employee at $453,901 (vs. $126,000 for mid-market firms)! Brand which gives pricing power – plus better process/technology – is what gives these large firms their much greater efficiency in generating revenue. It's why you MUST own a large portion of a narrow niche to give you the same pricing power. Then look across your functions to improve process.

Wal-Mart, Apple Top Lists Wal-Mart finally passed the half trillion-dollar revenue mark; while Apple remained the most profitable at $48.35 billion on $229 billion in revenue (21.1% profit margin). This gives Apple a profit/employee of over $390k – wow! Wal-Mart is also the largest employer with over 2.3 million employees. Amazon is #2 with a mere 566,000. This link will let you drill down into the list – always worth looking at the leaders in your marketspace and understanding their ratios in comparison.

Amazing Culture of Fast Growing Company in the US one of the regular attendees at our ScaleUp Summits is Alex Yastrebenetsky and his team at InfoTrust. This Inc. article highlights how this "best place to work" firm has created a powerful organizational culture which drives their growth. It specifically details five areas:

  1. Initial "Benefits" Of Working for The Company
  2. The Goal Is to Remove All "Life Friction" So Employees Can Focus at Work
  3. Unique Parental Leave Policy
  4. 50/50 Workforce of Men and Women
  5. Having a "Vivid Vision" and Clearly Communicating That Vision To All Employees

Please take 2 minutes to read through the specifics for each of these important actions that have created InfoTrust's culture. Thank you to Arnie Malham, Better Book Club, for sharing this article with me – and noting how what Alex is doing aligns so perfectly to the many insights Tom Peters shared with us in New Orleans. Congrats Alex and great seeing you and the team this week.

Have a Great Weekend!

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
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities – alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.aligntoday.com – on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

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.

Verne Harnish
Verne Harnish
Verne Harnish is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and chaired for fifteen years EO’s premiere CEO program, the “Birthing of Giants” and WEO’s “Advanced Business” executive program both held at MIT. Founder and CEO of Gazelles, a global executive education and coaching company with over 150 coaching partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past three decades helping companies scale-up. The “Growth Guy” syndicated columnist, he’s also the Venture columnist for FORTUNE magazine. He’s the author of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0); Mastering the Rockefeller Habits; and along with the editors of Fortune, authored The Greatest Business Decisions of All Times," for which Jim Collins wrote the foreword. Verne also chairs FORTUNE Magazine’s annual Leadership and Growth Summits and serves on several boards including chairman of The Riordan Clinic and the newly launched Geoversity. He is an investor in many scale-ups. A father of four, he enjoys piano, tennis, and magic as a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.