In the face of personal loss, Jeannie Arthur found herself searching for a new purpose. Little did she know her journey would take an unexpected turn towards scaling a remote team. With doubts and a lack of confidence, she stepped up as CEO and embarked on a rapid growth journey. But what happened next? How did this remote team achieve such unprecedented success?

In this week’s episode, we learned from Jeannie Arthur, the former CEO of Qunifi and current Group Chief Transformation Officer at Dstiny. Jeannie shares her journey of joining Qunifi during the pandemic and successfully scaling the remote team from four people to 70 employees with an impressive $20 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just 18 months. Her background as an engineer, management consultant, and entrepreneur in B2B SaaS businesses brings a unique perspective to the discussion. Jeannie highlights the importance of intentional communication, remote fit during hiring, and democratising culture and engagement in a remote organisation. Whether you're a CEO or COO leading a remote team, this episode is packed with practical ideas to inspire you in your own journey to success.

Download and listen to learn more.

On today’s podcast: 

• Scaling a remote organisation 
• Exploring intentional communication and engagement
• Democratising culture in a remote organisation
• The challenges of finding the right people for remote-fit
• Getting the team involved in driving engagement

Follow Jeannie Arthur:

Dstiny

Sedex

LinkedIn

Book recommendations: 

 Team Topologies

The Effortless Experience

Scaling Customer Success

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In a world where growth and innovation are the lifeblood of businesses, two seasoned experts unveil a secret weapon for entrepreneurs and business leaders. Matthew May and Pablo Dominguez shatter the perception that lean principles are solely for startups and scale-ups. Brace yourself for a mind-bending twist as they reveal how lean thinking can revolutionise go-to-market strategies for companies of any size. 

Matthew May and Pablo Dominguez are the authors of the book What a Unicorn Knows: How Leading Entrepreneurs Use Lean Principles to Drive Sustainable Growth. Matthew works for Insight Partners, a private equity VC firm in New York, where he runs the Lean Scale Up program, helping scale-ups remove obstacles to growth. With a background in strategy and a decade of experience with Toyota, Matthew brings a unique perspective to the application of lean principles. Pablo, also with Insight Partners, supports their advisory teams and has a strong focus on sales effectiveness. With over five years of experience working with portfolio companies, Pablo brings valuable insights to the table. Together, they offer practical examples and templates in their book to help businesses of all sizes drive consistent growth and innovation through lean thinking.

Download and listen to learn more.

On today’s podcast: 

• Diving into the Unicorn Model
• The five foundational principles of the Unicorn Model
• Improving the quote-to-cash process by removing waste
• The value of frontline employees
• The importance of leadership to foster innovation 

Follow Matthew May and Pablo Dominguez:

Insight Partners

Pablo’s LinkedIn

Matthew’s LinkedIn

What A Unicorn Knows

Book recommendations: 

Greenlights

Just Because (Chidlren’s book)

In Pursuit of Elegance

The Elegant Solution

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Do you want to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing seamless experiences? Wondering how to achieve this result effortlessly? This week we had a discussion that you will find inspiring. Our guest? Best-selling author, Bill Price. Bill will be unveiling the ultimate solution to create a frictionless customer experience that fosters enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Best-selling author of The Best Service is No Service, and The Frictionless Organization, Bill Price is a renowned expert in customer experience and service. His journey to becoming a guru in this field began when he joined Amazon in 2006. At Amazon, Bill was relentless in his pursuit of creating a frictionless customer experience, focusing on removing any confusion or need for customers to contact the company. This philosophy led to a fourfold increase in revenue without hiring additional customer service staff. Bill's approach was centred around delivering on promises and constantly monitoring customer satisfaction through leading quality metrics. His work at Amazon and subsequent clients has helped businesses of all sizes simplify their operations and create more value for their customers. Bill's passion for putting customers first shines through in his storytelling and examples, making him a sought-after consultant and advocate for exceptional customer service.

Download and listen to learn more.

On today’s podcast: 

• Changing the Customer Experience at Amazon
• Embracing criticism for continuous improvement
• Why you need to go beyond average metrics
• Examples of frictionless organisations
• The importance of understanding your customers

Follow Bill Price:

Website

LinkedIn

The Best Service Is No Service

The Frictionless Organization

Book recommendations: 

How The Mighty Fall 

Setting The Table

Feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the lack of progress in your efforts to transform your company's culture? Fear not, this week, we have an amazing guest on The Melting Pot to bring you proven strategies that can help you achieve true and intentional culture transformation, leading to tangible business results.

This week, Dominic Monkhouse talked with and learned from Dr. Jessica Kriegel, Chief Scientist of Workplace Culture at Culture Partners. During their conversation, Jessica delved into the world of workplace culture and challenged the notion of generational stereotypes. Her passion for culture transformation was born out of a negative experience early in her career, which led her to research best practices for creating a positive and impactful workplace culture. 

In this episode, she debunks the stereotypes surrounding millennials and shares her insights on how intentional culture transformation can drive tangible business results. Jessica offers valuable advice for leaders looking to transform their organisations.

Download and listen today to gain a fresh perspective on culture transformation, employee experience and learn how to achieve your desired results through intentional culture building.

Download and listen to learn more.

On today’s podcast: 

• A simple way to define culture
• Debunking generational stereotypes
• The Culture Equation to build a culture that drives results
• Creating intentional experience to drive people’s beliefs and actions
• Why leaders need to foster positive accountability

Follow Jessica Kriegel:

Culture Partners

LinkedIn

Unfairly Labeled

Book recommendations:

The Oz Principle

Change The Culture, Change The Game

The Way of the Pilgrim

Everything is illuminated

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Have you ever achieved some success and hired people, only to realise that managing people is not for you? Have you become a disillusioned leader?

Being a founder is a wild ride - full of exhilarating highs and crushing lows. After starting a "ridiculous number" of businesses himself, Scott Ritzheimer discovered the secret entrepreneur map with seven stages that nearly every founder goes through: from dissatisfied employee to startup entrepreneur, to reluctant manager, and all the way through to becoming a visionary leader. Scott has been in the trenches and emerged with critical lessons learned that he is keen to share.

In a short period of time, Scott has launched over 22,000 businesses and, whilst doing that he has seen over and over again how the patterns of failure and success repeat themselves. But when leaders get through that challenging journey, they can become visionary founders again. In his book, The Founder’s Evolution, Scott dives into the seven stages that every founder goes through and educates you how to take your leadership skills to the next level, to conquer the journey – and you can get it for FREE (see link below).

Download and listen to learn more.

On today’s podcast: 

• Recognising the pattern of success
• The Ever-Changing Challenges of Growing a Business: From Execution to Leadership
• Transitioning from Founder to CEO: Learning to Hire and Lead Executives 
• The Importance Of Recognising The Different Stages In Your Organisation’s Progression
• Learning How To Manage People In a Growing Business

Follow Scott Ritzheimer:

Website

LinkedIn

The Secrets of a High-Demand Coach

Get your FREE copy of The Founder’s Evolution

Scott’s book recommendations: 

Predictable Success

The Founder’s Survival Guide

Renegades

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This week on The Melting Pot, we learned from the founder and managing partner of the CEO Advisory Guru and best-selling author, Adam Coffey. Adam started his CEO journey working for Jack Welsh at General Electrics when it was the biggest business in the world. He's got a new book coming out, Empire Builder, which is a playbook on how to build a billion-dollar business. 

Adam spent 21 years as a CEO of three national companies for nine private equity sponsors. He's made billions of dollars in exits and completed 58 acquisitions.

In this episode, he talks about the difference between buy-and-build and organic growth and how he did that in some of his businesses. He also talks about culture, how to avoid buying the wrong business, how he does due diligence thinking about the CEOs, and the difference between trapping a CEO and letting them run their company post-acquisition.

Download and listen to learn more.

On today's podcast: 

• A meticulous approach to acquisition
• The role of the CEO as a motivator
• Building a sustainable empire
• Educating about Private Equity
• Culture and profit: mutually exclusive?

Follow Adam Coffey:

Website

LinkedIn

Book recommendations: 

The Millionaire Next Door

Blue Ocean Strategy

Good to Great

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Fully remote work isn’t for everyone. For instance, some people get their energy from having a community at work, whilst others get it from elsewhere. Some can deal with the ambiguity that comes with working remotely, and others struggle with it. Our guest this week believes that working remotely is not just a decision over having an office or not, but an operating system. And that means that you need to curate every aspect of your people operations. 

This week on The Melting Pot, we learned from Jessica Zwaan, author of Amazon Best Selling, Built for People, and founder of Being People consultancy. She’s also the Chief Operating Officer at Whereby, a calm and user-friendly video call solution that integrates directly into your platform using our API or SDK. 

In this episode, Jessica joined us to discuss the importance of cultural responsibility and effective performance evaluation within organisations. She delved into the different spectrums of responsibility at different levels, emphasising the crucial role of HR leaders in driving strategic success. She also explores the challenges of traditional HR practices and shares the innovative strategies they’re implemented at Whereby to encourage the team to book holidays in advance. 

Download and listen to learn more.

On today’s podcast: 

• Working fully remote. Does it work for everyone?
• Creating a sense of community remotely
• The three spectrums of responsibility
• Calibrating the role of managers in assessing performance
• The philosophy behind Built For People 

Follow [Guest Name]:

Website

Built for People

LinkedIn

X

Book recommendations: 

Severance

Customer Centricity

Four Thousand Weeks

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This week on The Melting Pot, we delve into the world of venture capital, IPOs, and the limitations of traditional investment structures. We learned from Nic Brisbourne, a serial founder of VC firms and founding partner at Forward Partners, which has some rarity value. It's one of only a handful of VC firms in the UK that has gone through an IPO. Every year, they get 4,000 pitch decks, from which they only interview 400. Ultimately, they only invest in 1% of the people they meet. That's a very wide funnel at the top and incredibly narrow at the bottom.

In this episode, Nic dives into the complexities of recruitment and the importance of making the right hiring decisions. Along the way, he unveils his proprietary framework for assessing founders and shares valuable lessons on the IPO process and the structure of venture capital firms. 

Download and listen to learn more.

On today's podcast: 

• Forward Partners investments
• The recruitment challenge
• Traditional vs Innovative VCs structure
• The CIDL proprietary framework to assess founders

Follow Nic Brisbourne:

Forward Partners website

LinkedIn

Twitter: @brisbourne

Book recommendations :

The Great CEO Within

Breath

Thanks for the Feedback

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Do you want to create a customer-centric culture that prioritises exceptional customer experience? This week, we enjoyed learning from the internationally sought-after speaker, author, and organisational consultant Joseph Michelli. Joseph started his consultancy journey working for the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. Since those early days in his career, he's worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, including Starbucks, Zappos, Mercedes Benz and Ritz Carlton. 

In this episode, Joseph shares some great stories about excellent customer service he has seen throughout his career and how leadership plays a pivotal role in prioritising a customer-centric culture. He dived into his work at Ritz Carlton, Mercedez Benz and Starbucks, all experiences from which he wrote fantastic books.

 If you want customer service to be at the heart of your strategy. Joseph explains what do you need to do. How to map out the customer journey, finding those high-value touch points. 

An energising conversation. Download and listen to learn more.

On today's podcast: 

• A passion for being of service to others
• The Ritz Carlton's standard of service
• The pivotal role of leadership in customer service
• Exploring the power of emotion
• Shifting towards technology-aided service

Follow Joseph Michelli:

Website

LinkedIn

Fish Throwing at Pike Place Fish Marketplace in Seattle

Book recommendations: 

The Experience Economy

The Airbnb way

The New Gold Standard

The Starbucks Experience

The Zappos Experience

Driven to Delight

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This week on The Melting Pot with Dominic Monkhouse, we learned from David Shonthal, ward-winning Professor of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management and co-author of The Human Element. Overcoming The Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. 

You will know this feeling if you're an entrepreneur or an innovator inside your business. Something that makes sense to you is being resisted by everybody at every turn. It's often why people leave larger companies and go to smaller ones. Or start up their own where they feel there would be less resistance. It's true for a while, but some of these elements will creep back in if that business succeeds. 

David has been involved in entrepreneurship, design and innovation for over 20 years, and his work has led to the creation of over 300 products, services, and new ventures worldwide. In this episode, he dives into the four types of friction that stand in the way of new ideas going forward. He also explains why it is important to recognise human behaviour to drive change, whether in B2C sales or B2B. 

A fantastic conversation with David about how to take your idea and move the organisation to adapt to the change.

Download and listen to learn more.

On today's podcast: 

• There's more than one flavour of entrepreneurship
• The Friction Theory Framework
• The four frictions against innovation
• How recognising human behaviour can drive change

Follow David Shonthal:

Website

LinkedIn

Twitter

Book recommendations: 

The End of Average

Demand Side Sales

Competing against luck

A Man's Search for Meaning

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