Nothing Incredible Happens From behind a Desk

Lis­ten to the Arti­cle (4:58)

Part three of our three-part series on Hazel Jack­son and Biz Group, pub­lished along­side our new case study.

In 2003, Hazel Jack­son launched a mag­a­zine. It was called Human@, and by her own account, it was a com­mer­cial fail­ure. Six issues, and it folded.

One of those six issues end­ed up on a table at a con­fer­ence in the UK, at a booth run by a team called Cat­a­lyst Glob­al. Wrong con­fer­ence for them, wrong audi­ence. But some­one picked it up, read an arti­cle about the team-build­ing work Hazel’s com­pa­ny was doing in Dubai, and called her.

From Print to Impact (0:54)

That call turned into Biz Group becom­ing Cat­a­lyst’s first inter­na­tion­al part­ner. Last year, out of 52 part­ners world­wide, they were Cat­a­lyst’s num­ber one.

“The mag­a­zine was a fail­ure. They found us.”

I’ve known Hazel for about 20 years, since not long after she start­ed Biz Group out of a tiny room that used to house a build­ing’s secu­ri­ty guard in Bur Dubai, the city’s old com­mer­cial dis­trict. I recent­ly sat down with her to talk about the moves that actu­al­ly built a 33-year, debt-free com­pa­ny. The mag­a­zine sto­ry was one of three. The oth­er two fol­low the same pattern.

Show­ing Up Before You Qualify

Hazel joined the Entre­pre­neurs’ Orga­ni­za­tion in Dubai before she tech­ni­cal­ly met the rev­enue thresh­old. EO need­ed more female entre­pre­neurs in the region at the time, so they gave her two years to grow into it.

“I played the lady card. It worked.”

Inside EO, she was intro­duced to Verne Har­nish and Scal­ing Up, the growth dis­ci­plines behind the dai­ly hud­dle, the quar­ter­ly rocks, and the BHAG that still run Biz Group today.

She lat­er joined two more peer asso­ci­a­tions that most of her Mid­dle East com­peti­tors skipped: ISA and ATD, both US-based. While oth­er region­al firms decid­ed the transat­lantic flight was­n’t worth it, she went anyway.

“I was a per­son that was out there look­ing and try­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate. We punched above our weight because we got on a plane and went where they were.”

At one of those ATD con­fer­ences, she sat next to a stranger dur­ing a ses­sion on a new front­line learn­ing plat­form. She spent the whole talk telling him how amaz­ing the prod­uct was. Turned out he worked for the com­pa­ny. He intro­duced her to the founders. Biz Group is now one of that com­pa­ny’s lead­ing inter­na­tion­al part­ners, rep­re­sent­ing them across the Mid­dle East.

Clever Sales Tac­tic (0:41)

She’s done the same thing with authors. In 2010, Hazel read Liz Wise­man’s Mul­ti­pli­ers and saw her­self in it, specif­i­cal­ly as what Wise­man calls an acci­den­tal dimin­ish­er. She picked up the phone and tracked Wise­man down. That call led to a face-to-face meet­ing, where Hazel per­suad­ed her to build a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram. Biz Group became one of the first firms out­side the US cer­ti­fied to deliv­er it.

None of That Hap­pens From a Desk

Every one of those moves came from Hazel, or her work, get­ting out of the build­ing. A mag­a­zine on a table in the UK. A con­fer­ence seat next to a stranger. A phone call that turned into a meet­ing in per­son. A flight most of her com­peti­tors decid­ed was­n’t worth taking.

It’s an easy thing to skip. You’re busy, the busi­ness is right in front of you, and a flight to a con­fer­ence feels like time you don’t have. I get it. I feel the same pull.

But the best things hap­pen out in the mar­ket, not in your office. The part­ner­ships, the ideas, the mod­els you did­n’t know you need­ed all show up in rooms you have to actu­al­ly be in.

There’s a catch, though, and Hazel was hon­est about it. Her team used to dread her com­ing back from these trips, because she’d walk in and unload every­thing she’d just learned, all at once. I told her I’d done the exact same thing to my own team the day before we spoke.

Her fix is a good one:

“I’m going to share every­thing, and then we’re going to sift through it all and decide what we do. This is not a request for you to action everything.”

Get­ting in the room is, com­par­a­tive­ly, the easy part. The real dis­ci­pline is com­ing back with one thing worth doing instead of twen­ty things worth mentioning.

Chal­lenge:

“We punched above our weight because we got on a plane and went where they were.”

Here’s your ques­tion: if you had two or three days out of the office next quar­ter, what’s the one move that could change your growth? What’s the one your team could make? Go big enough that it’s uncomfortable.

Watch the full inter­view with Hazel below.

Resources relat­ed to Hazel’s Story

• 4000 Dai­ly Hud­dles and Not One Skipped
• Ban the One and Done
• Biz Group Case Study: 33 Years of Human Capa­bil­i­ty Engineered
• Inter­view with Biz Group CEO, Hazel Jackson

Addi­tion­al Resources

Arti­cles

• Prox­im­i­ty: The Advan­tage in Get­ting Clos­er to the Moment in Demand
• The $100 Mas­ter­class in Proac­tive Service
• Unin­tend­ed Leadership

Growth CEO Interview

• Inter­view with Dec­o­rat­ed Air Force Pilot, Kim ​“KC” Campbell
• Inter­view with Bund­aberg Brewed Drinks CEO, John McLean

Growth Case Studies

• Cloré Beau­ty Sup­ply: Fam­i­ly-Owned Busi­ness Flour­ish­es Across Generations
• Push Oper­a­tions: How a Pur­pose-led, Peo­ple-cen­tered Busi­ness Achieved 5x MRR

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mask First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar

About Hazel Jackson

Hazel Jack­son is the founder of Biz Group, a lead­er­ship and learn­ing firm she built from a con­vert­ed watch­man’s room in Bur Dubai into a 60-per­son com­pa­ny serv­ing clients includ­ing Jumeirah Group, Emi­rates Air­line, and Almarai. Over 33 years, she grew the busi­ness organ­i­cal­ly and debt-free, a rare feat in the region. This year, Biz Group was acquired by Nema Hold­ing. Hazel recent­ly hand­ed the CEO role to her suc­ces­sor and remains close­ly involved in the com­pa­ny she built. Based in Dubai, she is known across the region as one of its most dis­ci­plined operators.