For You Leaders

If you are trying to manufacture your own luck, it might be time for you to start reflecting on a quote that greatly influenced today’s guest, Blake Garrett. Blake is the CEO and Founder of Aceable and AceableAgent, a hyper-growth startup based in Austin, TX. As you’ll hear today, the Aceable that exists now was not Blake’s original idea. In this episode, Blake tells the story of how he left Ernst and Young to follow his dreams of creating a company, the important reason why he wanted to start a company, and the major roadblocks along the way.

You’ll learn the two-step process he used to hold himself accountable and get around roadblocks. You’ll also learn how you, too, can manufacture your own luck.

Don’t miss the next episode with Blake we’ll dive into Culture, Leverage and Getting $#IT Done. Blake provides even more great advice and tactics on how to build the right culture and get the right stuff done.

If you missed the first episode with Anthony Bucci, co-founder and former CEO of RevZilla, be sure to listen now. He explains how he and his co-founders scaled RevZilla from an idea to over $140 million in revenue without raising any outside money.

Anthony is a self-proclaimed nerd when it comes to people issues. In this episode, he will challenge your thinking on hiring, leading and managing. He’ll give you a powerful concept we recommend our portfolio companies: the 5-15. Anthony mastered keeping signal strength throughout the business, and he explains in great detail how and why you should use a 5-15 with every direct report.

Anthony also shares about how he debugs his own psychology by utilizing mentors, board members, and outside executive coaches. 

We spent over 2 hours with Anthony covering a wide variety of topics. To break down the episodes into digestible bites, we’ve broken up our interview into three parts:

Episode 1: You’ll hear the process Anthony and his co-founders used to start and generate the idea for the company that became RevZilla. Anthony also goes into great detail about how they differentiated themselves and quickly scaled from $0 to over $140 million in annual revenues. Anthony shares why and how they achieved hyper-growth without raising money.

Episode 2 (Today’s Episode): Anthony’s provides specific details of how they approached promoting and hiring, ahead of scale. He offers insights and lessons learned about how to scale people, processes and product - before everything breaks. He also shares what how he utilizes executive coaches, mentors and advisors.

Episode 3: Anthony brings it all home by sharing his perspectives, experiences and journey of merging with another company, stepping down as the CEO and what it is like moving from the fast lane to the family lane.

There’s a reason why nothing kills faster than success: everything breaks at scale.

Today’s guest is Anthony Bucci, the co-founder and former CEO of the incredibly successful company, RevZilla. As CEO, Anthony navigated RevZilla doubling in revenue almost every year – without raising any outside money.

Anthony provides a unique retrospective on today’s podcast. He’s had a chance to reflect on his experiences inside the rocketship company. He now wants to help normalize the journey for anyone listening to this podcast.

We spent over 2 hours with Anthony covering a wide variety of topics. To break down the episodes into digestible bites, we’ve broken up our interview in three parts:

1. Episode 1 (Today’s Episode): You’ll hear the process Anthony and his co-founders used to start and generate the idea for the company that became RevZilla. Anthony also goes into great detail about how they differentiated themselves and quickly scaled from $0 to over $140 million in annual revenues. Anthony shares why and how they achieved hyper-growth without raising money.
2. Episode 2: Anthony’s provides specific details of how they approached promoting and hiring, ahead of scale. He offers insights and lessons learned about how to scale people, processes and product – before everything breaks. He also shares what how he utilizes executive coaches, mentors and advisors.
3. Episode 3: Anthony brings it all home by sharing his perspectives, experiences and journey of merging with another company, stepping down as the CEO and what it is like moving from the fast lane to the family lane.

Be sure to subscribe on iTunes (or Spotify or Overcast) to make sure you don’t miss one of these compelling episodes.

Other topics from today’s episode include:

• The process Anthony and his co-founders used to generate the idea for RevZilla
• Why RevZilla didn’t raise any money and how it helped (and hurt) them
• If you have raised growth capital, the lessons you can learn from a company that never raised money
• How everything breaks at scale and what Anthony and the Revzilla team did to predict and prepare (as opposed to seeing and solving) for explosive growth
• How to evolve from Founder to Maker to Manager to Executive to Servant Leader
• The advice he gives to other entrepreneurs about raising money
• How to get smart money’s advice without raising any money
• The obstacles RevZilla faced scaling the business
• The concept of Strategic Pillars and the specific pillars RevZilla used to get and keep people focused
• How RevZilla differentiated between other online stores, like Amazon
  
  

Today, we’re continuing our conversation with serial entrepreneur, Brett Hurt. If you missed the first episode, make sure to listen to learn the resources Brett uses to scale, how to communicate with investors and a lot more.

This episode is jam-packed with insights and actionable advice from Brett. We spend a lot of time talking about exactly HOW to create a thriving culture. Brett shares a unique but powerful way to develop your company’s values so they stick and are memorable. Brett’s built amazing cultures in his previous businesses (including Bazaarvoice, where they won best place to work as a small, medium and large business) and his current company, data.world.

Brett also dives deep into the role of the CEO. His unique perspective will cause you to rethink and possibly redefine the role of the CEO.

Topics include:

• The most valuable conference Brett makes sure to attend every single year
• The criteria Brett uses when deciding whether to invest in a company or fund (currently Hurt Family Investments is invested in 55 companies and 12 funds)
• When is the right time to create your core values in a companies growth
• How to create values that reflect your company’s personality
• How to get your teams involved in creating your core values
• Why the founders of data.world chose to make data.world a B Corporation and why you should consider creating a B Corp
• What does passion have to do with creating a business?
• What is the role of a CEO?
• What to do when you have a bad day as a CEO
• How being fully present where you are is more important than work/life balance
• The out of office message Brett uses to let people know he is not available
  

More Leadership Podcasts from Dando.

Today we’re talking to serial entrepreneur, Brett Hurt.

He’s a co-founder and the CEO of data.world and a founder of Coremetrics and Bazaarvoice. Brett also owns Hurt Family Investments with his wife, Debra. They’re now invested in 55 startups and 12 VC funds.

Brett’s had the privilege, both firsthand and through his investments, to see the practices that work (and don’t) for scaling a business. In Part One of our interview with Brett, he shares two practices he wishes more CEOs would utilize: investor communication and continual learning. He shares the exact way he communicates to his investors and the resources he personally uses to learn on a daily basis.

Dive in to hear more about how you can start these simple, but impactful practices today.

Other topics include:

• The role his daughter had in creating data.world
• Why Brett joined forces with his co-founders and created data.world.
• The ambitious hopes for data.world
• A surprising talk he had to give to iconic leaders - and the results
• How and why to communicate with investors
• Resources that Brett uses to learn, grow and pay it forward
• What Brett wishes all the CEO’s he’s invested in would do consistently
• A lot more
  
  

It’s not a secret, people and their issues are a huge part of any leader’s life. It can be the best and worst part about being a leader. 

The good news is today’s episode is full of simple, actionable frameworks around developing and leading people. We talk about how to hire, how to fire, how to develop and why people are such a big issue in the first place. We also highlight the one question all great leaders ask, at least once a quarter, about every one of their employees.

Our guest today wrote an excellent book on people. Trevor Throness recently wrote, The Power of People Skills. He shares his unique experiences and practical advice he’s learned working with leaders of scaling businesses

This podcast is full of application, including a powerful tactic that’s changed the way thousands of companies think about people. Listen now:

Topics include:

• Why people issues are so hard
• Why we get hiring right about a third of the time, wrong about a third of the time and just so-so another third of the time
• What to do about the mediocre hires
• How to identify the four types of performers in your business
• The one question you should ask yourself about every employee
• Why we make people issues harder than they need to be
• How small changes can result in massive results within a business
• How to attract vs. recruit the right people to your business
• Advice Trevor and Kirk wish everyone would take
• Why leaders are judged in a vacuum
• Much more

Sports analogies are overdone in business. Don’t let that get in the way of hearing the powerful messages from today’s podcast guest, Clint Gresham. Clint is a former NFL Player, Super Bowl Champion and author of Becoming. Today’s podcast is rich with raw and real information on what it means to be a work in progress in business and life.

The Super Bowl means many things to different people. You might think of the brilliant (or not-so-brilliant) ads in the commercial break. Or you look forward to the halftime show. Or you maybe you actually want to watch the two best teams in the NFL play each other.

But if you play football, your ultimate goal is to win the Super Bowl. It’s a clear goal you either meet or you don’t.

But what happens when you reach your ultimate goal? Do you feel like you’ve “made it?” Do your insecurities disappear? Do you suddenly feel fulfilled?

As Clint, will tell you - the answer is no. That may seem obvious, however, Clint’s vulnerability in what he shares about being a work in progress, the false gods we create in our life and how to live an authentic life will inspire you. 

People on the outside looking in at success probably think you’ve got it all figured out. It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re still a work in progress. It’s what Clint’s new book, Becoming, is all about.

In this episode, we dive into how top athletes and the best coaches like Pete Carroll, Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban take a unique approach to setting goals that consistently deliver success. You will love the message and more importantly be able to take the ideas Clint and I discuss and make them actionable in your life today.

If you missed the last episode of the For You Leaders Podcast, make sure you listen to it first. Our guests, Matt Laessig, COO & co-founder at data.world and Bryon Jacob, CTO & co-founder at data.world, explained the powerful concept of Strategic Pillars. If your business does any sort of strategic planning, make sure you listen to the previous episode.

Today, we continue our conversation with Matt and Bryon. They tackle several critical topics: meetings, how leadership should show up in meetings and how they manage raising young families at the same time they are building a startup.

While meetings may sound like an unsexy topic, they are incredibly important. First, most communication and therefore execution (or the lack thereof) happens within meetings. Second, there is a large amount of salary sitting in meetings every day, in any organization. In this episode, we’ll explain how to calculate exactly how much money you are spending in meetings every year.

You owe it to yourself to at least have a passing grade on the massive investment you’re making each week, month and year. Matt and Bryon share how to make sure you get a positive ROI on your meetings within your business.

Other topics in this episode include:

• The Rafa Rule
  • How to decide: Is it ok for people to be on their technology during meetings?
• Why leaders need to be present in meetings.
  • The consequences of not “showing up” in meetings as a leader.
• How data.world evaluates their meetings.
• The easy steps you can take to make your meetings suck less.
• How one company had a huge financial turnaround thanks in a large part to paying attention to their investment in meetings.
• How these two tech founders approach family, work, and life in general. 
• The power of simply being intentional in everything you do.

Be sure to also check out: 10 Steps to Make Your Meetings Suck Less 

Do you have a question about scaling up or strategy we can answer? Shoot us an email at questions {@} ForYouLeaders.com.

We’ll answer the questions in an upcoming episode.

Most businesses have a great strategy that isn’t executed or a poor strategy that isn’t corrected quick enough.

It doesn’t have to be that way. As our guests today explain, the key to executing the right strategy starts with the powerful concept of Strategic Pillars. Strategic Pillars are simply the 3-5 strategic battlefields your business has to win to be successful.

Today’s guests are Matt Laessig, COO & co-founder at data.world and Bryon Jacob, CTO & co-founder at data.world. They both have a highly-accomplished resume with stints at HomeAway, where they learned, hands-on, the power of strategic pillars. You’ll even hear the story about how HomeAway made a drastic change to their business using Strategic Pillars.

If your business has a strategy, this is a must listen to episode. It’s full of practical, real-world advice to ensure you develop the right strategic pillars - and how to use the strategic pillars to drive alignment, agreement and acceleration  - for your business.

Other topics in this episode include:

• The lesson of Strategic Pillars:
  • What are they?
  • How do other companies, like Amazon, use Strategic Pillars?
  • Why do they use this concept?
  • How it replaces the traditional business plan.
  • What are some examples of Strategic Pillars?
  • How the simple concept can drive lasting results.
• How often should you change the strategic pillars?
• What happens when you do change the pillars?
• When to create your strategic pillars.
• How to create your strategic pillars with your team.

Do you have a question about strategy that we can answer? Shoot us an email at questions @ ForYouLeaders.com We’ll answer the questions in an upcoming episode.

Dando Leadership Podcast