What are the most common questions about the Scaling Up framework? In this week’s Growth Whisperers podcast, Kevin Lawrence and Brad Giles are talking about the most frequent questions they are asked about the Scaling Up operating system – a framework to simplify and control the chaos that’s involved in growing a company.

The Scaling Up book and methodology questions are:

1. How long does it take to complete the One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP)? How often does it need updating?
2. How would you get your team to buy into the Scaling Up methods?
3. Who on my team should be involved in the Strategic Planning Meetings? My executive team, my whole leadership team?
4. What’s the number one thing that blocks companies from Scaling Up?
5. Do I need a coach to implement Scaling Up? And bonus number six…
6. Which of the ten Rockefeller Habits do you think is most important?

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles  00:13

Welcome to the Growth Whisperers where everything we talk about is building enduring, great companies. My name is Brad Giles, and as always joined today by my co host Kevin Lawrence. Hello, Kevin, how you doing today?

Kevin Lawrence  00:26

Great Brad. You know, I realized that say I’m doing great every episode. How about yourself?

Brad Giles  01:09

It’s autumn here. Autumn is a beautiful, beautiful time of year. Everything is good. I might even go as far as great.

Brad Giles  01:22

We like to start with a word or phrase of the day.

Kevin Lawrence  01:33

When I think of the word of the day, I would say? grounded. You know, I’ve had a bit of time with COVID, where I had a bit some time just where I couldn’t really do much of anything. Except for a bunch of thinking, a little bit of Netflix, and a bunch of thinking. And, you know, on my table in my place in Vancouver, I’ve got all these plans mapped out everywhere. And I was writing on my tablet, printed off a bunch of stuff. So kind of very re grounded and things felt like a mental reset. Thank you to some downtime. So that was me. So grounded. How about yourself?

Brad Giles  02:24

Yeah, for me, it’s gross profit margin. A bit different from yourself. But yeah, like I’ve spent a lot of time lately, because we’re seeing prices increase across the board. And just doing analysis with leaders and teams about gross profit margin, and how all the changing prices affecting their gross profit margin and the flow on effect and how much to increase your prices by so let’s see a stitch together grounded.

Kevin Lawrence  03:01

If you don’t manage your gross profit margin, your business is gonna get grounded and not in the way that you want. It’s gonna get grounded into the ground, and you won’t have a business. So that’s awesome. Well, let’s get into so what are we digging into today?

Brad Giles  03:17

Today we’re talking about the five most common questions that we get about scaling up book and methodology. You know, that book, you had something to do with that, did you?

Kevin Lawrence  03:30

Yeah, I did a little bit of work on that book a few years ago.

Brad Giles  03:33

But look, it’s something that we’re certainly very passionate about. And we know. And we’ve spent a lot of time with each of us. And it’s how we originally met about 10 years this is and yeah, it really does. It really does present a case of best practices on how to run scaling a mid-market business. And it’s not perfect, but you know, there was a lot of things that we certainly aligned with.

Kevin Lawrence  04:06

Yeah, it’s a framework to simplify the chaos, and give us control of the chaos that’s involved in growth, initially based on a book called Rockefeller habits. And when I got involved to help to create the new version of the book, we called it scaling up because a lot of the methodologies have determined, it was a great experience, because I interviewed 50 CEOs around the world who had very successfully scaled using the Rockefeller habits framework and grab their insights about what worked and what didn’t, and went into the creation of the new book or the updated framework called Scaling up. So amazing methodology as a framework to give you the tools and point you in the right direction of the things to think about as you’re bringing your team together to scale. So today, we’re going to dig into some of the most common questions about the framework.

Question number one. And oh, and with a friend we’re looking at the core tool is the one page strategic plan is to track the strategic planning on the page. And that’s like the bass line tool. And then there’s other tools in there. So related to people and execution and cash and some strategy. But the one page plan is really the, I would say, the greatest value in the system. It’s a simple tool. So the question is, how long does it take to create that or draft that one page strategic plan? And it’s kind of like asking someone how long is a piece of rope? Like, it depends, it all depends, in our experience, in two or three days, you can get a decent draft, you can get a B grade draft, where it’s good, because some of these things need time to sit and think and stew. So whether you spend two or three days, you can get a reasonable draft and get incredible alignment for your team. But man had to get it done. To get it complete, where you would say this is a plus quality work. Let’s get out the chisel and carve it into stone, like we nailed this thing. No bread. No, we talked about this before. But it’s a couple of years. I mean, some of these concepts like just to get the vision parts, right? You know, the purpose and the BA and the core values. To get it right, you got to do some iterations and get feedback and things like that. Those are six to nine months to get that part, right, just that part. So look, you can get a really good working draft that allows you to push your head in the right direction, aligned as a team. But to get it really mastered it’s going to be a couple of years. That’s my take on it. Brad, what would you add?

Brad Giles  07:01

I wanted to just re want to add on something that you said then. So why one page, you said the greatest value is probably the one page strategic plans. So why one page? Well, this actually comes back to Jack Welch, who was the CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch had a training facility in Croton Ville that he would send all of the best managers and leaders to, to learn from some of the best people from around the world. And managers would come away from there with these great big, thick, comprehensive, detailed business plans, and then go back to their offices wherever they were in the world. And then they would put them in a drawer, and they wouldn’t get used. And this became very frustrating after seeing this time and time and time again for Jack. So he said, If he can’t fit it onto one page, it isn’t important enough. And that really translates to my journey. Because in about 1999, I started a business and I built a very comprehensive business plan to the point where my accountant said, that’s the most comprehensive business plan that he’d ever seen.

Kevin Lawrence  08:14

Shocking, Brad, that you would do something comprehensive who would have thought.

Brad Giles  08:19

And it was good. But then a couple of years later, 2001, I came across mastering the Rockefeller habits, and then switched it to one page and that source become more effective over time. So business, a business plan needs, we need to understand all of the parts that make up a business plan in a competing environment that they’ve got to be important enough to put onto a page and not just filling boxes.

Kevin Lawrence  08:51

And it’s hard to put it just on what’s hardest to put it on one page. Yeah, I mean, you know, we have many clients come to us to help dial in and optimize their strategic planning. And normally, when we asked to review, either they’re doing nothing, which means they’ve scaled by luck, or they haven’t scaled, or these plants, they just give me a headache. And when we had one recently, that a client had an aide paid the one of the local, you know, consultancy firms to do it. I mean, there’s was a strategy of more is better. You know, volume is value, the more pages and the more documentation I looked at it, it’s like worse than that. In their structure. It was so complex. They were doing everything including the kitchen sink, the bathroom tub, the toilet, the solar panels on the roof, and the hot water heater and the damn swimming pool for good luck. I had everything going in every direction. I mean, it was so complex, even if it was brilliant, which it wasn’t even if it was US, it would be way too hard to follow. Like, it’d be like having, you know, a map with 1000 different lines on it confusing the heck idea.

Brad Giles  10:11

Here’s the cool thing about what you just said, and this is the biggest challenge that we overcome, or we have to overcome. And that is, that plan might have worked really well in a multinational. Okay, when is it but it might have, but we need to trends. So if you get someone who comes from an enormous corporate business, and that’s what they’re used to, and that’s what success represents even a consultant that comes in and write your business plan, then that’s going to be their language. But for us, it’s got to be, it’s got to be simple and effective. It’s got a, you know, people don’t have time to go through all this. And they don’t have the resources to go to the level of understanding the nuances to use your bloody terrible analogy of the swimming pool. And so it’s so it really matters that it’s simple and highly effective, because people don’t have time in the mid market, go to all of these levels.

Kevin Lawrence  11:18

And I would say they don’t have time in the big firms, either. They can just get away with mediocrity and complexity in some of the big firms because there’s so much, you know, market share or demand or whatever it happens to be. They don’t have to be as lean and nimble no matter what, the complexity doesn’t work anywhere in my mind. But no matter what, and we see. So the idea, it’s hard to get a complex now what’s also required to make that one page plan work is a lot of humility on the part of the consultant. Because it’s the most basic unimpressive damn thing in the world, when you look at it, when you get into it, it’s incredibly impactful. But the work product isn’t overly exciting, sexy or impressive. You can’t do a 50 page report, all you can do is use the flip charts from the room maybe and put them in a deck. But it’s so basic. For some people, they can’t, they’re their ego can’t handle doing such simplistic basic work. So it’s, and it’s very, insanely impactful. And that’s the other part, the way we look at it is look, there’s lots of little boxes, and you have to be succinct. And on my mind, a 10 year old should be able to read the plan and understand it. That’s a really high bar. That means it’s got to be so simple. And Right. which usually means that that’s why it takes time, it requires a lot of debates, to really get through the views in the room and boil down to the essence. That’s why it takes couple years. So as Brad said, one page, it’s got to be simple. It’s got to be really basic, otherwise, it doesn’t work. And you know, we’re talking about mid market companies here. But even a large company has complexity is generally a product that people who don’t know what they’re doing. So they just throw everything into it. Right. That’s my one of my favorite quotes that I don’t even know if it’s accurately attributed to him or not. But I’m told Mark Twain, but the research says Mark Twain, but a couple of places say maybe not. But it’s, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time. And that’s what strategy and the one page plan is about. It’s about simplicity. But it takes a lot of work to get there over time, which is fine.

Brad Giles  13:42

Yeah, it’s not just goal setting, right goal, setting my form a part of it. But if we said, we’re at $20 million business, we’re gonna go to 40 million in five years. That’s just, that’s just a hope. It’s the planning, that gives you the confidence. So let’s spin into these five questions. The first one, we kind of touched on already, how long? The question is, how long does it take to complete the one page strategic plan? And you said, How long is a piece of string? Well, I would respond by saying it depends on how long you cut it. So how often does it need updating? is the kind of second part of that? Well, I kind of look at this whole question as being it’s like brushing your teeth to switch from a string analogy to a different one.

Kevin Lawrence  14:30

Got analogies everywhere, so that’s awesome.

Brad Giles  14:33

Yeah. You know, brushing your teeth, it’s an all the time job, like you don’t say, I need to build a business plan. And then it’s done. It’s not like you say, I need to brush my teeth. And I’m not going to do it again. Like, you need to then do it the next day and the next day and it’s the same with the business plan. It’s going to last about 90 days. That’s the answer. There are some bits that will endure past that, there are some bits that will be stressed, tested or talked about more deeply in 90 days time, there are some bits that will have expired, because the priority that you said would have a 90 day timeframe. So the answer is, it’s really like an operating system as much as anything, which is it’s going to continue to endure and to focus you in the right direction.

Kevin Lawrence  15:26

Yeah, and to boil it down, I would say, Look, when you’re first getting going, you might look at a bunch of the pieces every 90 days, as you’re getting it sorted out. Once you’ve nailed it. And the plan is solid, you’ll update the quarterly section every 90 days. And the rest will reset every year. And once you get it going, it’s a once a year on the big picture, quarterly update what you’re going to achieve the next quarter.

Brad Giles  15:52

Yeah. But I would probably allow a couple of days to get with the leadership team to get a first draft of the one page strategic plan done. Yeah. Yeah, by the time you work through all of this stuff, it’s you know, to get that level of confidence, it’s a couple of days, and then you want to update it 90 days later.

Kevin Lawrence  16:14

Perfect. Question to how would you get your team to buy into the scaling up method? Well, there’s a couple of things here, first of all depends on you as a leader or a CEO, some leaders come away in every couple of weeks, they got the new religion of the week, and the team is new idea resistant, because there’s been so many new things thrown at them. So you know, often they think it’s the flavor of the month or the idea of the week, and you got to be careful with that. But at the root of it, once you’re clear the value, it can add, there’s a couple of things that we’ve seen, really, really work. One is get people to read a few pages of scaling up, especially the intro section to get a sense of barriers. Yes. And the overall view of the that is one thing, I would never ever, ever get people to read the whole book, it’s almost 100%, about 100,000 words, it’s the working title, when we did it was the implementation guide. It’s like the detailed how to of doing all solving all these different problems. Getting people to read the whole thing, before you’re fully committed is not a good choice. So read the first couple sections upfront number one, to get get a coach or an advisor to come make a presentation on it or another CEO who uses it or another executive at a different company. Now we have people on our team and you’re brand new, you’re new, and you’re your associate, and we’ve got a bunch of people on our team who do this. They go in and make a presentation about the framework, how it works and why it works. That’s another way to help get people bought in if you’re having some initial resistance. Sometimes people just want to do it so bad. They’re thrilled to do anything. But if you have resistance, there’s a couple of strategies.

Brad Giles  18:14

So often, what we see is either the leader, the CEO has read the book and got excited, or and they like, Yep, I want to get this or they’ve had a friend who’s been using it, or a colleague, and they’re like, this is the thing that you need to do. So that’s how it kind of starts. Yeah, I agree. Maybe get the leadership team to read the ballot, the barriers chapter. It’s like the first simple chapter. It’s completely digestible. And it outlines the problems. And you know, really, they’re all going to be nodding their head saying, yeah, like, that’s the problem. Yeah. And so then that kind of sets the tone, like, either you’re going to do it yourself, or you’re going to use a coach, that’s probably the two methods. Either way, just jump in and have a go at working together. Of course, you know, Kevin, you and I are both, this is what we do. So we’re going to advocate that you get a coach because it’s going to be much more effective. But no matter what you do, set a date or two and just jump in and start doing it.

Kevin Lawrence  19:29

And there’s different scenarios. I’ve got one CEO that I coach in the US and, you know, they’re, you know, well over half a billion of revenue heading towards a billion, and they have an existing process. And when I started working with the CEO, we looked at the process, it’s messy, and clunky, but yet it is their operating system. You know, as we got into it, and we started talking more about scaling up. He really wants to do it, and we’re looking for ways To make a smooth transition, so we’re engineering a transition to a simpler platform than what they have. Now, they had one of those very complex platforms. So in his case, it’ll happen over a couple of years because of the way that they’re scaling and what they’re doing. It’s already working, we don’t want to dump the whole thing upside down. So we’re engineering it. And again, like everyone, he sees the value and one of his colleagues who connected us is using scaling up and he goes, Yeah, windy is something that’s simple. So that was the point of it is, you know, find a way to get going, getting people to read, learn, talk to other executives, somebody make a presentation. And at the end of the day, your circumstance will depict how you do it, but find a way to get it rolling. And with your company, decide how quick you want to get it going, whether it’s a slow start, or like tomorrow, let’s just switch it on.

Brad Giles  20:55

So what’s the next question that we’ve got? Who on my team should be involved in the strategic planning meetings? Like my executive, all the managers? And am I going to upset some people like this is often a bit of a question? Yes, starting setting this up.

Kevin Lawrence  21:16

Number one rule, whoever you invite initially is going to be upset if you don’t invite them in the future. So be very careful about the initial invites, it’s easy to add people. It’s almost for some people, especially when it’s new, it’s almost insulting or demoralizing for some people to be uninvited. So the main thing is take some time on this. And better to start smaller if you need to, if that suits your circumstance.

It’s like a family, it’s very hard to vote people out of the family. And because it’s seen as being, you know, the power center and the decision making center not being a part of it, I’ve seen some messages from that. So let’s get so that’s that kind of pay, be careful here. But there’s two different perspectives on this. One, if we really need to hammer out and debate the strategy and make some big decisions. I prefer just the executive team and smaller, which is like six people. But the other version is, is if you’re more concerned with alignment, team building, DNA transfer, and involving the people who are going to do the work, it’s often the executive and what we call the leadership or, you know, the executives, direct reports, or most of them, not all of them. So that takes it to the 12 to 15 to 18 people, very different meetings, when you just have those five or six execs, it it’s a very it’s more strategic meeting. When do you get up to the 12 to 18, it’s more of an alignment meeting, both work, depending on your circumstance. And we do both all the time.

Brad Giles  23:33

It’s hard to be prescriptive for every situation. I would say once you get over about nine or 10 people, it kind of turns into a speaking gig. Rather than a facilitated strategic planning meeting. I would use slightly different language in that I would say the leadership team, and then the mid management team, but again, it’s just a depends on the size of the company.

Kevin Lawrence  24:00

An 800 person company, you’re not even touching the bid manager with 18 people, not for a smaller company that would be relevant for sure. Yeah. And I know we do, I would make the distinction. strategy versus alignment because, you know, we do strap planning meetings with like 20 people, breakout groups, people working on questions and sorting stuff out, like very interactive. And I know you do too. It’s just, it only really works for input to strategic, but he can’t make the decisions of that many people but input it in thought gathering flowing up, or tactical decisions is what I find. The key is you got to figure out what do you need to achieve? Is it more important? They get a few people to quickly figure out strategy strategic things. smaller group. If it’s more important, you know that you get more alignment and get a wider group involved for the alignment and grow have a bigger group. Now, we have some companies where we do both. We’ll do some pure strategic work with my clients that was in India, in Feb, myself and the three brothers, the directors that run it, the four of us met for a day in advance and did a whole bunch of the strategic stuff. And then we come to the team for two days. And then we share the strategic work, get feedback and get a pressure tested, and then do the annual and quarterly execution work with them. And it works out I’ve got a few clients where we do that work as they get bigger, that works very, very well.

Brad Giles  25:40

And I guess to close out that question, the only other point I’d make is, if you’re building a leadership team, to end to begin this process, you want to get a diversity of voices from all of the business, if your background as the later is sales, maybe you’re more aligned with the salespeople, but you want to have people from sales and operations and maybe marketing, like you want to have the heads there. But also you want to know that you’re getting in all of the corners of the business for one of a better term. So that’s number four. What’s the number one thing that blocks companies from scaling up?

Kevin Lawrence  26:19

I love that. What’s the number one thing questions? You know, it’s kind of like Family Feud. And what do people think every scene that Family Feud? We know like most things, then the answer is it depends. It depends. We can tell you common things that we see, like very common, but every company is different. I’ve been into companies where cash is the issue. I’ve been in companies where legacy products and old business models are holding them back. Sometimes they haven’t found the Honey Hole of demand. It’s a sales and marketing problem or positioning problem. Or, or business model. You know, you and I talk all the time in this podcast about the quality of the team. Yeah, sometimes it’s the damn CEO. Sometimes the CEO is in the way of the business or the founder, the founder, if there’s still I mean, it’s a little bit of everything. And you know, it’s, it’s a little bit of everything. But normally the common denominator is discipline around core areas. Yeah, it’s normally a discipline, we just don’t know where.

Brad Giles  27:43

Yeah, so scaling up is founded on these four principles of you got to have the right people the right strategy, you’ve got to execute correctly, and you’ve got to have the cash or the business model. Right, that element. So the answer to that question, what’s the number one thing is probably within one of those four areas? And it’s probably going to be, it’s probably going to be an issue that is there before you start, if that makes sense? And then how do you solve that, because if your business model isn’t perfect, it’s going not perfect, but if your business model isn’t effective, it’s going to translate. So it comes down to one of those. So the next question that we’ve got is, Do I need a coach to implement scaling up.

Kevin Lawrence  28:32

You know, it’s interesting, I’m going to I’m going out on Thursday, to learn how to drive my new race car, I got a new race car last season, never fully mastered the car. And of course, my buddies will gladly help me because so my buddies have the same race car, and they’ve been doing it for longer. But I hired one of the top racers. I know a young kid who races around the world, I got him coming out, I’m gonna warm up in the morning, get back into the car and get sorted. And I’ve got him coming in the afternoon. Because I want to learn how to master this damn thing. And I am going to hire a master to learn how to master it. And some people and by the way, it’s because I believe in shortcuts, smart shortcuts. Some people would do it all themselves and take six months and do it on their own, hey, whatever floats your boat. But this is business and time is money. And money is about getting a return on your investment. So like you can do anything yourself. It’s just know my default is I just had another consultant up with me last Friday, I was telling you about to give me some guidance on scaling our firm. Why? Because that’s what he’s done for 30 years in his life. And I saw growth someone who was an expert so you and I are both people who default experts. So that’s our view. On Brad. Obviously, we’re both quite biased as well. What else would you add to that?

Brad Giles  29:57

Well, no athlete ever achieved peak performance without a coach. Yes. You know, I mean, if I don’t know you, like me have probably built more than 1000 business plans. Okay. Yes, the iterations that we have seen the different nuances how it all plugs together, it’s, it’s simply second nature to us, and as many other coaches who you know, who are proficient in the space. So yeah, I think that, yeah, you can definitely do it yourself. There’s no doubt about it. And you can have amazing results. But if you’re in a scaling midmarket firm, you need to get the best results that you can. And if you’ve got someone who’s highly proficient in an area, that can pay massive dividends.

Kevin Lawrence  30:57

If you look at the value that the external person, but it’s actually believe it or not, I was saying to a CEO the day, you know, when we’re doing strategic planning, the value that we myself, you and our teams bring to this one is facilitation around the framework to help the team align and make decisions. Structuring, running and facilitating that meeting itself is a skill. And I think it’s worth the fee that we charge, because that is a very hard thing to have somebody do. And that way one of your team doesn’t have to play facilitator, they can be team member and thinker. The second is the wisdom that we bring from all the other companies that we work with. Yeah, so there’s two different angles. And for both of those reasons, it for a lot of people, they continue to have somebody do it. Now, the wisdom is always helpful and might be more helpful initially. But the facilitation, it’s just damn hard to run these meetings. We have one of our clients, who worked with us for quite a few years and is wildly successful. And I chatted with him this week, they needed some help, again, because they decided to take the meetings internally and run them internally. And over the last couple years. It just it didn’t work. They hired someone to handle it. They tried. And it just it the discipline faded away, which is not uncommon. So yes, you can. And there’s great benefits to having someone else, first of all the meetings happen, and you accomplish most of what you intended.

Brad Giles  32:33

Okay. Which of the last question, which of the 10 Rockefeller habits do you think is the most important? Well, I’m going to start off there, I’m not even going to give you a chance, because I reckon it’s number one, the executive team is healthy and aligned, right? If you don’t have a healthy executive team, like you look at all of the other nine things in the Rockefeller habits checklist, it’s going to be problematic. So I, I’d say, most important that thing, a strong, cohesive executive team, and then everything else can begin to occur after that.

Kevin Lawrence  33:13

Yeah, and I was there for so for those of you that aren’t familiar Rockefeller habits is a set of 10 habit habits in the book scaling up, originated in the book, Rockefeller habits a little we updated, and when we did scaling up, and the first one is about the team, second one’s around having clear line goals, the third one’s around meetings, the fourth one’s around accountability, then we get into customer feedback, employee feedback, etc, etc, etc. So I’m going to agree with you. And I’m going to also add number two. And when we start with companies, I look into places aligned tight team, and clear goals that everyone’s marching towards. And if we’ve got really clear goals, and a tank team, that’s a foundation we can roll with. And if we don’t get those two in place, you know, I know that we’re going to slip on a lot of critical stuff. Now, as always, the answer is it depends. It depends on your company and your circumstance. But as those two are critical in the long run, once you get the goals going, which we normally do in our first few sessions, that team piece becomes more valuable because the goals become like a basic, of course, you have goals, and you’re aligned. But getting that team strong becomes a massive focus.

Brad Giles  34:31

It’s just when you worked with a team for a year or two, you begin to see just how important the strength of that alignment within that leadership team becomes. Because all of the other bits can be undermined, if that isn’t there, and it becomes incredibly frustrating when we’re trying to do a lot of other things. So yeah, I mean, yeah, similar sign entering whatever.

Kevin Lawrence  35:03

I had a meeting last week with a company for two days, they’ve been around about 60 years. We started applying scaling up to it both two years ago. In that timeframe, already, the business is pretty well doubled a 60 year old business. The strength of the team is changed dramatically. We had a session where one of the key leaders in the room is no longer with us. But two of that person’s juniors were in the room, it kind of got promoted. You could feel the energy and the harmony of the team, the quality of the discussions and based debates was the best it’s ever been. Yeah, I’ve been running his quarterly meetings. And it was so obvious that one of the people was not like the others. And there needed to be a change. We saw the change. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. And we identified it as one of the biggest obstacles to our growth, we knew it was going to be an issue if we didn’t fix that, that team issue. And even if we were doing a talent review, we spent two and a half hours debating the talent review of all the other key people in the business and just the quality of the team. It was absolutely awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, let’s review here. So we’re talking about questions about scaling up great methodology, we both believe in it. We both have iterated on at other tools and other things to enhance it based on what our clients need. But the first question, how long does it take to complete the one page strategic plan? The answer is, you can get a good B quality draft in a couple of days to three days. And then you’re going to chip away at it and iterate it for a year or two. Before you could say it’s like a piece of work. Second question, how do you get your team to buy into the methodology? Well, it depends. But you know, getting them to read the first couple sections of scaling up. Or maybe have a coach come in and make a presentation and have a discussion around it and how they will see a get valuable, or it was Brad talked about, you know, sometimes it just got to get started. And as I shared, sometimes you got an engineer a plan to make a transition to a better platform like this over a year or two depending on your situation.

Brad Giles  37:22

Well, it depends. Ideally, six to eight executives. We want some diversity in the business, but it really depends on your situation. But we want leaders who are going to make decisions and we don’t want any people who are passengers. Number four, what’s the number one thing that blocks companies from scaling up? Depends. But we look to people strategy, execution cash, we’ve got to get those things right, whichever of those is the least Right? Or the ones that are not performing? Well. That’s what’s going to hold you back and what we’ve the problem that’s going to be solved? Do I need a coach to implement scaling up? Look, I hate to say it again, but it depends. You can do it yourself for sure. If you want an accelerated journey, if you want to really invest to get the best results, obviously coaches will create better results. And then finally, which of the 10 Rockefeller habits do you think is the most important? My contention is number one, the executive team is healthy and aligned. Kevin’s is one maybe plus two. What a good chat we’ve had today. Enjoy the question format bit of a change.

Kevin Lawrence  38:37

Yes it is, I really liked it to some good thinking on especially on a framework that we’re big advocates of So hey, thanks for listening. This has been the Growth Whisperers podcast with Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence. If you want to get more we’ve got both have excellent newsletters and you know and we’re here to support and you know, help you scale. Brad you can get his newsletter and go to a site evolution partners.com.au And for myself, Lawrence and co.com Hope you have an awesome week and continue to scale and grow.