My Quest for the Best with Bill Ringle

How to avoid and recover from the distractions that can derail your progress with Scott Belsky

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Scott Belsky, author of The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

Scott Belsky and Bill Ringle discuss the pitfalls to avoid and the practical tips for getting back on track for small business leaders.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com  for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

Interview Insights
Top 3 Takeaways from this Interview
  • Self-awareness is the only sustainable competitive advantage in business.
    • Hardship brings your teams together and equips you to endure for the long haul.
      • Nobody wants to inflict pain on their team, but quick and controlled pain is better than a drawn-out infection.
        • Read the Show Notes from this Episode
        • Scott shares how he learned about his work ethic and personal empathy from his father, an orthopedic surgeon. [01:39]
          • He shares how his father’s lessons had helped him when he was tired and unfocused as a young man. [2:49]
            • Shares his experience as he wrote The Messy Middle. [3:29]
              • He talks about the “relative joy of creating.” [5:04]
                • How you define when you’re in a Messy Middle and how you orient others that this is part of the project. [7:59]
                  • What are some effective ways to harness that conviction when leading your teams? [10:13]
                    • Scott imparts advice about dealing with the long game. [13:39]
                      • How to effectively develop teams. [15:56]
                        • The consequences of fake wins at the expense of hard truth, and how to move forward from it. [21:15]
                          • How to deal with your team truthfully in the context of Elizabeth Holmes’ very public, disastrous experience. [22:53]
                            • How Scott leads organizational change. [26:27]
                              • My Quest for the Best Lightning Round begins [28:50]
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                                Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

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                                Click to listen and subscribe to your favorite place to enjoy podcasts below so you are the first to know when a new episode is released.

                                My Quest for the Best is the podcast where ambitious small business leaders discover strategies and tactics to unlock their growth potential.

                                Give us a 5-star rating and positive review to make it easier for other small business owners to find and benefit from our work!

                                Expert Bio

                                Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, early-stage seed investor, and now serves as Adobe’s Chief Product Officer. Scott’s passion is to make the creative world more productive, connected, and adaptive to new technologies. He founded Behance, the leading online platform for millions of professionals in the creative industry to showcase and discover creative work, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012.

                                Scott actively advises and invests in businesses that cross the intersection of technology and design, and help empower people. He is an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, Carta, sweetgreen, and Periscope as well as several others in the early stages.

                                Through his work as a founder and investor, Scott has become an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower creative people and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. He is the author of two national bestselling books, Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle, and Scott founded 99U, a publication and annual conference devoted to productivity in the creative world.

                                Contact Info for Scott Belsky

                                Web address: http://www.scottbelsky.com/

                                Travels from: New York, NY

                                Social  Media Links:

                                  • ​Books Authored by Scott Belsky

                                  Resources Mentioned During the Interview
                                  • Scott’s professional website http://www.scottbelsky.com/
                                  • Fred Wilson, VC investor
                                  • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou.
                                  • Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest.
                                  • Teresa Amabile, PhD, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School, originator of The Progress Principle.
                                    • ...more
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