Weird but Effective; Amazon Pricing Strategy; 9x Inc. 5000; LIVE Streaming Summit
September 14, 2017
5 Critical Questions; Top 10 Masterminds; Giving to Grow; Would You Hire This Guy?
September 28, 2017

Most Powerful Women; The Master Coach; Coach w/o Speaking; Sept 28 Hotel Cutoff

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Planning to Hire? — Topgrading's 7 most critical interviewing techniques assures you hire the right person 90%+ of the time – and more importantly, avoid hiring the wrong person. Check out the video below, in our education section, but first….

Hotel Room Cutoff Sept 28 — the fall ScaleUp Summit Hotel room deadline is extended to next Thursday, 28 September. Still time to register for the Fall Summit and book your room with the special group rate — see you in St. Louis Oct 17 – 18.

Most Powerful Women Fortune's 20th annual list is out today. 26 are CEOs running firms with a combined $1.1 trillion in revenue including Pepsi, IBM, Fidelity, and Lockheed Martin. #1 is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. There are insightful writeups and videos for each of the 51 women on the list – enjoy and learn from these outstanding leaders.

Gazelles' Newest Most Powerful Woman — Anne Keehn has joined as Interim President through Dec 31, transitioning to CEO if all goes well (date before getting married). On the founding team of Blackboard, the most successful EdTech firm in the dot com era, she was more recently with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for four years. Here's a link to her background where she's helped several firms scale — . Anne and I have known each other for over two decades and have been trying to figure out a way to do something together. Now is the time with our new global ScaleUpU city initiative that requires a robust EdTech component and a leader with global connections.

The Master Coach this is the title of Gregg Thompson's latest 2017 book. It's one of the three most important books addressing this critical skill leaders must master in the 21st Century. SPro and book club members will receive a copy next week. Go right to Chapter 3 titled "Coaching is Everyone's Business" – I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. Coaching is something we should learn to do properly with our team, children, non-profits, etc. Gregg is keynoting our upcoming ScaleUp Summit where he'll walk us through his powerful coaching model.

Coach Without Speaking yesterday HBR posted an interesting article about the benefits of coaching via instant messaging, texting, and email (might be best with your children!). What if you couldn't speak, which is what happened to the author. He goes on to detail how he's continued his successful coaching practice and the positive impact coaching through writing has had. The big benefits – people feel safer to share sooner and it's easier to "listen!" Please take 2 minutes to scan through for more insights into this powerful way to coach.

Noria Corporation Does NOT Focus on Employee Engagement (Gazelles case study) — I received a note from Mike Ramsey, President of Noria Corporation, the leader in industrial lubrication education (what a niche!) how he's integrated the tools from Scaling Up and the information from a workshop led by one of our over 230 coaching partners "into what we do and how we've built our company and culture." This article highlights how their meeting rhythm creates employee engagement so they don't need to focus on it. Notes the article:

More amazing is the culture they've created within their company. Two buildings, housing roughly 50 employees is an oasis of camaraderie and togetherness. Using their Core Values as building blocks they've designed an "atmosphere where intelligence is multiplied". It's gossip-free. It's collaborative. It's creative. It's fun. It's productive.

There is also a 12-minute interview where Mike details how they've created this amazing environment. It's worth the watch.

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? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.

And if you're interested in becoming a world-class certified Gazelles International coach, please go to gicoaches.com/becomeacoach for more information. If you determine that we're a fit and wish to join our premier organization, we invite you to contact our Dir. of Coach Engagement at [email protected] or 877.217.2253 ext.700.

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.