2nd Slide Customers; AI Canvas; Mulally’s 4 Decisions; Italy July 13
May 31, 2018
Leader Schedules; 72% Meeting Time; 43% Priority Time; 3% Customer Time; ExO Course Next Week
June 21, 2018

Kate Spade; Success and Suicide; WIN.ning; ExO Applications Open

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES: (serious warning – discussing success and suicide)

Winners don't have more stamina or built-in genius, they have just learned how to think in ways that get them the results they want.
  Rabbi Stephen Baars, author of WIN.

Kate Spade according to her husband, entrepreneur Kate Spade suffered from depression and anxiety and was taking medication when she died from an apparent suicide. I recently learned that it's not appropriate to say someone "committed suicide" any more than it is to say someone "committed cancer." It's a disease — and new research is uncovering signs someone will be more likely to succumb to this affliction than others i.e. successful at vs. just attempt suicide. Hint, it has to do with how they think about it. More below, but first…

Winners are not born. They learned how. You can learn how, too! Rabbi Stephen Baars has been sharing his wisdom with the executives attending our ScaleUp Summits for more than a decade. In his latest book, WIN. he notes that "Most of us believe that motivation creates success, but it's the other way around: It's knowing that you are going to succeed that creates motivation." Go back and read that again. "It's knowing that you are going to succeed that creates motivation" not the other way around.

Winners Make Hard, Easy Winners have learned how to make challenging goals easy, but easy doesn't mean lower. The trick is to take the goals you really want, and make THEM easy. Winners don't have more stamina. They just have better ideas. They don't have higher IQs. They just have great strategy. This book will change your thinking, just by reading it. SPro and book club members will receive this book next week. I encourage everyone to read this "quick read" three times – until the ideas come easily. These are simply powerful and powerfully simple ideas.

Entrepreneurs Have Higher Rates of Depression VC and serial entrepreneur Brad Feld has helped the entrepreneurial community open up and discuss depression. Notes this Fortune article, quoting Feld:

"As a founder, you are going to go through some rough spots. If those rough spots include a depression, that’s okay." He wants to end the perception that depression bars someone from being a successful founder or executive. "I reject that," he says. "More and more people are rejecting that." Instead, it's more analogous to a broken leg or diabetes-an undeniable impediment, but a manageable one if addressed.

Obvious is the link between depression and suicide. Keep reading.

Success and Suicide so how does one reconcile sharing a book about winning/success with depression and suicide. New research is shedding a light on signs someone is likely to die from suicide. Notes this Psychology Today article reporting on research looking at suicide notes:

The biggest difference was that the notes of suicide completers included much more detail about how they were a burden on other people and society at large compared to the attempters.

The article goes on to report:

In general, people do not commit suicide because they are in pain, they commit suicide because they don't believe there is a reason to live and the world will be better off without them.

That's the link between success and suicide. What is the envisioned future – better or worse?

The article goes on to detail a second sign someone is likely to commit suicide If you suspect someone you know might succumb to suicide, please read this article and then seek immediate help to change their thinking.

Howard Schultz Steps Down – Running for President? – and in other news, Starbucks' executive chairman stepped down from the company this week. Notes Howard Schultz in this Fortune blog post:

"For some time now, I have been deeply concerned about our country-the growing division at home and our standing in the world," he said. "One of the things I want to do in my next chapter is to figure out if there is a role I can play in giving back. I'm not exactly sure what that means yet."

Success or…for Starbucks and Schultz. Time will tell. Be careful what you wish for!

Exponential Growth a mindset of 10x growth is much more expansive (easier?) than the incremental thinking that goes with contemplating 2x. We hosted a great Exponential Organization webinar this week with Salim Ismail and the Growth Institute. He is one of my favorite business minds and has studied a hundred of the most influential organizations, learning how they reached the top of the mountain. In Tuesday's live webinar he and the Growth Institute team opened applications to their online program to help leaders achieve the 10x success they are looking for. If you feel like you are one of those leaders, and want to create that very plausible scenario for your organization, apply for your spot here:

Need More Copies of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)? Amazon continues to premium price the hardcover book. If you need a box of 20, the books (paperback) are less than $10/each

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:

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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.