Mads Singers Management Podcast

We hear a lot in the news these days about “diversity” and “inclusion” and it’s often best to speak to someone who is working on these issues each day to get a sense of the state of affairs.  Today I welcome one of those people, Genesis Amaris Kemp, to the Mads Singers Management Podcast.  Genesis is a self-proclaimed “enthusiast” for inclusivity and diversity and has a book that outlines her thoughts on the subject: Chocolate Drop in Corporate America.

Genesis and I started the episode talking about passion and I shared how fortunate I was to have stumbled across my passion via a great boss.  She was such a great manager that I ditched my planned career path to study management so I could become as good as her.  One of the problems I run into when I chat with people is they aren’t getting out there often enough to find their passions.  Pro tip: you’re not going to find your passion sitting on your couch.

Part of being a great manager is being able to give feedback, but it’s also the hallmark of a great employee to be able to take feedback.  I’d love to say that I was a natural, but it actually took me years to be able to just say “thank you” and thoughtfully consider what had been shared with me instead of just getting defensive and resentful, which of course led to total lack of productivity on my part.

Part of the “feedback” that the corporate world has been receiving is the need to be more inclusive and diverse in the workplace and in leadership roles.  This has even led to a quota system in Norway that mandates that 40% of the seats of boards of publicly traded companies must be held by women.  That’s actually been discouraging to friends of mine who earned their spots before these quotas.  I also recently fielded complaints from those who looked at our speaker list for the SEO Mastery Summit: “Why aren’t there more women?”  We simply didn’t have a lot of women apply.  Genesis and I talked about the relevance of quotas, the importance of making sure there’s a wide range of individuals of different ethnicities and cultures in given businesses, and the need to ensure that those individuals can see a path for them to rise and spread their wings, to not just be seen, but be heard.

The trap of “checking the box” or “tokenizing” diversity is always lurking, even in our subconscious, so it’s worthwhile to challenge our assumptions and look to improve our workplaces for ourselves and our team members.  Enjoy this episode with Genesis!

Key Learning Points:

 1. Genesis gives us her definition of passion - 1:45

2. Mads relates how a great boss changed his career path and allowed him to stumble across a passion - 3:20

3. Mads reminds us that hearing feedback isn’t always easy - 7:30

4. Mads goes on to warn against the defensiveness that is almost a reflex when hearing negative feedback - 10:30

5. Genesis defines diversity, inclusivity, equity, and equality - 12:40

6. Mads underlines the high stakes of hiring in a small business - 17:35

7. Mads shares his own challenges in finding female speakers for a conference he runs - 22:55

8. Genesis warns of “check the box” syndrome - 28:45

9. Genesis also warns of divided employee resource groups (ERGs) - 29:30

10. Mads reminds us that mentors love to help those who are passionate - 37:30

Resources Mentioned:

Chocolate Drop in Corporate America

Connect with Genesis Amaris Kemp

1. Facebook

2. Email

Hiring is one of my favorite topics to discuss, and my guest for today’s episode of the Mads Singers Management Podcast, Mark Webster, had so much good information to share about that topic.  Mark is Scottish but has spent enough time in the US that his accent is somewhere in the mid-Atlantic.  He currently runs Authority Hacker, which he co-founded in 2014.  Authority Hacker educates website owners about the ins and outs of SEO.  In a previous life, he ran a digital marketing agency with 30 team members.  He also holds a small portfolio of affiliate websites.

One of the first things Mark talked about was the importance of hiring superstars.  “We want A+ people or nobody,” he said.  I couldn’t agree more: the cost of a bad, or even a “not so good” hire is significant.  Mark agreed, noting that one of his big mistakes in the past was not firing a bad hire quickly enough.  He noted that in big companies they get a “performance improvement plan” and three warnings, etc. but those small businesses don’t have that kind of “luxury.”  A business can be significantly damaged while you drag your feet on what should be a simple decision: letting a bad fit leave the organization. 

Mark also shared some great tips to mentally frame the recruitment process.  Firstly, he thinks about recruitment as a funnel.  You want to get “leads” (applicants) and you can only do so by really compelling “copy” (job descriptions).  He then shared that 10 out of every 50 applicants are people he really wants to pursue.  He also gave his thoughts on various online assessments (I mentioned my love for DISC) and he also shared some questions he likes to ask:

• “How would your last three bosses/clients rate you on a 1-10 scale?  We do check references.” He says this even though they might not have time to check references.
• “Are you more interested in the job or the company?”  If they don’t mention the job at all in their answer Mark knows it’s not a good fit.
• “What sorts of books/podcasts/youtube channels do you read/listen to/follow?”  If it’s mostly trashy fiction, we know these aren’t people who are dedicated to personal development.

I loved hearing these, so I added one of my own, “Do you do better working on your own or on a team?”  I’m not so much interested in the answer than in the way the question is answered.  If the person answers right away, I know that is the true answer.  If they pause and answer more slowly, then I know they are telling me what I want to hear (or at least what they think I want to hear).

Mark and I talked for quite a while and could have gone on for even longer, but I wanted to be respectful of his time (and yours), so I had to wrap it up at some point.  If you’re interested in thinking through your hiring process more thoroughly, this episode is for you.

Key Learning Points:

1. Mads points out the costliness of a “not so good” hire - 4:54

2. Mark argues that you can outsource many things in a startup, but not HR - 6:41

3. Mark talks about a mistake regarding bad hires - 10:15

4. Mark shares his conception of recruiting as a “funnel” - 14:50

5. Mads talks about the concept of “recruitment as sales” - 24:11

6. Mark agrees and talks about “pre-selling” the company during a final interview - 24:40

7. Mads notes that the best hires love challenges - 25:25

8. Mark offers a framing question that helps him weed out candidates - 27:32

9. Mads adds on to that point, by noting the way that a particular question is answered gives a lot of information - 28:22

10. Mark adds some additional unusual questions that help him gain information about candidates - 33:45

11. Mads underlines the importance of having forums/opportunities to connect with staff - 45:41

Connect with Mark Webster

Authority Hacker Podcast

It’s often said that a business is a way for the founders and employees to bring their theories to life.  Sometimes those founders have enough energy and vision to drive multiple businesses.  Today’s guest for the Mads Singers Management Podcast is Matt Diggity and he is very much one of those types of founders.  His businesses include (drum roll): Diggity Marketing (a blog about digital marketing), Leadspring (a firm that builds authority, monetizes, and eventually sells affiliate websites), Authority Builders (a backlink service), Search Initiative (a client-facing SEO agency), Affiliate Lab (a course that teaches the background of the services that Leadspring offers, for the DIY type), and Chiang Mai SEO (during times when gathering in numbers is permitted).

If you were paying any kind of attention to that impressive resume, you’ll see that Matt has a lot of SEO superpowers and is simply deploying them in multiple ways.  In order for him to do that effectively, he’s got to have great management skills.  That’s actually how our paths crossed originally.  I came out to one of his team’s in-person events to give them some management training.  I covered a lot of what I talk about in my management course, with a special emphasis on 1 to 1 meeting and recruitment.  Those two activities, apart from the day-to-day management tasks, like strategic thinking and networking, comprise the very heart of great management.

Matt shared how much he loves assigning responsibilities, rather than tasks, when he delegates.  I agreed, saying that if team members are clear on the expected outcome, they can feel free to tweak the process in order to get to that outcome.  Delegation also assumes knowing where someone is coming from, and I think DISC can go a long way to helping people solve that problem.  Matt noted that he liked DISC because unlike Meyers-Briggs, which gives you 16 possible variants, it only has four measurements to examine.

Part of how you can get to understanding the urgency of delegation is auditing your activity: seeing how you are spending your time and noting what kind of income those activities generate.  When you see that laid out it becomes so much easier to let tasks go that you simply don’t have to do, not least of which because you are nowhere near the best person in your company to do those things.

Despite all that he’s got going on, Matt is mindful of parenting and he had a lovely thought for current and aspiring parents: “There is no amount of time that is ‘enough’ to spend with your child.”  

Enjoy this conversation!

Key Learning Points:

1. Matt notes the revelation of there only being two main functions of management once things get put in place - 3:08

2. Mads reminds listeners that if you can’t take a month off, you don’t have a business, just a glorified job - 4:50

3. Mads emphasizes the ineffectiveness of doing tasks that should be outsourced - 8:15

4. Mads talks about the “boxes” that DISC helps create - 15:30

5. Mark shares the helpfulness of assigning responsibilities rather than tasks - 20:15

6. Mark underlines that delegation assumes A-players - 31:25

7. Mads discusses an alternative way of framing a job search - 34:35

8. Matt tells listeners a key lesson about parenthood - 39:15

Resources Mentioned:
The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway

Connect with Matt Diggity

Diggity Marketing

Seven years ago Martin Ebongue was living in France, working at a job that he enjoyed.  But he wanted more freedom, and since he had already built some online businesses with good revenue streams, he was able to quit that job and go on a world tour for 18 months.  He ended up settling down in Bali, which is where he was when he joined me as a guest for an episode of the Mads Singers Management Podcast.  

One of the big themes of discussion for us on this episode was delegation.  Martin stressed the need to let go of your ego: “I’m not always the best person to take care of a certain task,” he noted.  But it’s not enough to just come to this realization.  There also has to be a process for delegation.  Martin’s process involves him going through the task once himself before handing it over to someone.  That person then confirms that they understand exactly how to accomplish the task (and if they don’t they can ask).  This seems to work well for Martin as he has only had one team member leave in the last seven years.  

I shared that one of the biggest pain points that should lead people to delegate in the first place is the burden of being a subject matter expert (sometimes in multiple fields).  That means that people are always coming to you for decisions, creating bottlenecks.  Martin agreed, saying that while it may feel like a burden to create a process in the first place, that’s only a short time commitment which pays outsized dividends in giving you more of a personal life.

Martin also believes in having a team culture that looks for collaboration rather than competition.  Given that his team is spread out across three continents (Europe, Africa, Asia) that’s a powerful mindset to keep the team collaborating.  This collaboration extends to the hiring process.  Martin’s first two employees were simply excellent freelancers that he ended up bringing on full-time.  He began to realize that people who have achieved mastery in a certain field tend to know others who have also achieved mastery in different fields.  This led him to start looking for potential candidates from his team’s recommendations.  There are so many different components to a great team, and different candidates bring different skills and personalities to the table.

Along these same lines, I was recently chatting with a coaching client about a new hire he was very excited about.  “If only I could get one more like him,” he said.  “Well,” I said, “why not ask him?”  Winners know winners.

Martin is one of those winners and I know you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Key Learning Points:

1. Martin shares the locations of his remote team - 2:43

2. Martin discusses the importance of letting go of your ego in delegating better - 3:45

3. Martin talks about how he empowers his employees once he has delegated tasks to them - 6:35

4. Martin outlines his process of delegation - 8:02

5. Martin states that he has only had one team member leave in seven years - 11:15

6. Martin notes the progression of some freelancers to becoming his first hires - 16:05

7. Martin emphasizes the importance of asking your people to help find new hires - 17:30

8. Martin stresses the short-term pain that needs to be overcome in creating new processes - 20:20

9. Mads talks about the hazards of being a subject matter expert - 25:18

10. Martin opines about the time of team culture he wishes to foster - 29:08

Connect with Martin Ebongue

Facebook

SaaS is such a key part of the business world in general so it’s always great to go behind the scenes with someone who is actually in the trenches, building and managing a SaaS.  Jeroen Corthout, our guest for today’s episode of the Mads Singers Management Podcast, is building Salesflare, a B2B CRM servicing a few thousand companies.

While you might think of a SaaS as the company that would be most likely to be built by a distributed remote team, prior to March 2020 Salesflare was 100% in-person in Antwerp, Belgium.  Jeroen had believed that everyone “being in the same room” was always going to be the best-case scenario.  But what he noticed as the team was forced to go remote via governmental regulations and lockdowns, was that the “same room” philosophy was lazy.  “It meant we were relying on accidentally overhearing something.  There was no system in place.”  That system was put firmly in place as 2020 continued, down to how the team would keep track of decisions in meetings (Google Docs visible to all) and how they could see people’s reactions when they weren’t all in the same room (having everyone tiled during a team call so that everyone could be seen).

This intentionality in communication had long been a hallmark of how Salesflare dealt with customers.  Every developer periodically spends a week on the customer-facing side, to get a sense of what is going on there in terms of customer feedback and technical issues.  Jeroen noted that AI will play a role in software development in the future, but for now it’s up to him and his team to try to anticipate what the customer is thinking using processes like developers listening in on calls or watching chats.

SaaS businesses face several dueling pressures.  One is the question of profitability vs growth.  I was glad to see that Jeroen wasn’t chasing profitability at any cost: he was clearly aware of his niche and stated that at the beginning of the episode.  He also shared his desire to improve the hiring process as the company grows in the future.  The other dueling pressure he has to deal with every day is building vs communicating.  The development team has to build a great product and tries to extract from customers what they like, but more importantly, why they like it.  This communication with the customer is key, and Jeroen encourages this early on by not only adding every potential customer on LinkedIn, letting them know there’s an open door should they wish to talk but also by adding more “free trial” time as those new users complete more tasks within the CRM.  

If you, like me, find the SaaS trend fascinating, this episode will be a great chance for you to understand it more, from someone who is living it day-to-day.  Enjoy!

Key Learning Points:

1. Jeroen talks about the essence of what SaaS has to deliver to be competitive - 3:00

2. Jeroen shares the two main jobs of any successful software company - 4:10

3. Jeroen discusses systems he has in place to make sure his team understand how customers are thinking - 7:37

4. Jeroen notes the need to stay in touch with his team and with clients (and how he does both) - 8:14

5. Jeroen explains the process his team uses to improve the product - 9:40

6. Jeroen opines on the game-changing nature of his team going remote due to Covid - 14:54

7. Jeroen stresses the importance of morning standup meetings - 19:35

8. Jeroen ruminates on the push/pull tensions of growth and profitability - 25:50

Connect with Jeroen Corthout:

1. Salesflare
2. LinkedIn

Sometimes entrepreneurs can be so focused on working for themselves that it’s considered shameful to ever go and work for someone else.  But when you have such a limiting belief, you miss out on the opportunity to learn.  Our guest for today’s episode of the Mads Singers Management Podcast, Effie Parnell-Hopkinson, is someone who didn’t limit herself and came away from a job experience with some lessons that helped her level up.

Effie has spent some of her careers as a bodybuilder and while studying for her undergraduate degree people started to ask her (unsurprisingly) about proper eating and exercise.  After enough people were asking, she started a health coaching business while getting her Masters in nutrition.  At some point along the journey she met Dr. Emil Goliath, who also had a health coaching business.  They became business partners (and started dating) and that’s where she is today, handling operations for Health Evolved.  

Knowing she had come from a business owner background, I was keen to find out what she had learned during her stint working as an employee in another business.  “Nobody really knows what they are doing,” she said wryly.  “Everyone is learning and making mistakes, and even though a business may look like it’s succeeding from the outside, there are real challenges on the inside.”  I couldn’t have agreed more.  So often in my business coaching experience, I’ve seen people who own jobs, not businesses, precisely because they haven’t taken the time to create systems or properly delegate.

They don’t teach those sorts of skills in school, and Effie and I agreed on the importance of apprenticing for someone successful.  Don’t focus on the money but instead treasure the incredible knowledge and lessons you are going to get from someone who is further along in a journey than you are.

One of those key lessons you might glean is making sure that remote teams have proper expectations, especially given time zone differences.  People need to know how and why they are doing something and should be given all the resources they need at the very beginning.  Effie added on that part of proper delegation is getting to know the team member better during onboarding.  If you know where they want to go personally and professionally, you’re more empowered as a manager to help them get there.

That also means hiring for cultural fit, which you can only do if you have taken the time to write a job description that properly spells out not just what the job entails but what kind of company you are.  I noted that when dealing with hiring that no hire is always better than a bad hire.

This chat with Effie really flew by and I think you’ll appreciate and enjoy her perspectives.

Key Learning Points:

1. Mads discusses the “shame” that is sometimes spread in the entrepreneurial community about working for someone else - 4:25

2. Effie shares her struggles in working for someone else after having her own business for so long - 5:25

3. Effie notes some insights she gained from having a job - 7:14

4. Mads talks about the “free lessons” on offer when you apprentice for high-level entrepreneurs - 10:12

5. Effie shares a “paint it done” strategy she uses for delegation - 13:20

6. Effie opines on the importance of clear expectations when working across multiple time zones - 18:00

7. Effie talks about the importance of hiring for cultural fit - 24:52

8. Mads shares that “no hire is better than a bad hire” - 26:25

9. Mads notes that the brand of team software you use is less important than the team being properly trained to use it - 28:15

Resources Mentioned:

Dare to Lead by Brene Brown

Connect with Effie Parnell-Hopkinson

1. Facebook 

2. Health Evolved by Dr. Emil

It’s not often that we’re able to speak to someone who has managed in three different cultures, and that’s why I was so excited to welcome Alex Zuev of Ardor SEO onto the Mads Singers Management Podcast.  Alex is a self-proclaimed IT geek and started his career developing payment systems in Russia similar to Paypal.  After success in that field, he started his own business and as part of the bootstrapping process learned how to do his own SEO.  Soon enough he was helping others with that, too.  He has spent time working and living in China in a digital marketing position for Alibaba.  He’s also lived and worked in the United States, specifically NY.  Today, Alex and his wife make their home in Asia, Vietnam specifically.

With such a CV, I was keen to get into all the cultural differences in management he’s witnessed.  One of the first points he discussed was the gap between a boss and an employee:

• In China there is an enormous gap between the two, with a pronounced dislike for foreigners in the management ranks
• In the West, particularly in the US, there’s more of a collaborative relationship, akin to colleagues
• In Russia there’s a mix of the previous two systems

What does that mean on the practical level?  Well, during his time at Alibaba, he had to fight for three months so that his team could get direct access to developers so that problems could be addressed pre-emptively and directly instead of in the slow and plodding manner of large corporations.  Once that connection (and correction) was made, Alex saw a 2X/3X improvement in the quality of work, but if he hadn’t known to be persistent, that improvement wouldn’t have ever happened.  

That’s one of the reasons he prefers working at smaller companies: it’s easier to get your ideas implemented (or at least heard).  It also means you can be thinking in the same ways by running things like a book club in your team.  As new ideas from these books get bounced around from discussions, they can also be directly applied to processes and procedures.

Speaking of processes and delegation, Alex’s ultimate delegation trick is automation.  He’s a big believer in using technologies to “set it and forget it” with processes whenever possible.

Alex has a wealth of information and experience and we could have spoken for much longer than we did.  Enjoy! 

Key Learning Points:

1. Alex discusses the value of empathy in communication - 9:20

2. Alex shares his experiences working with Filipinos - 11:41

3. Alex notes the importance of personality testing in hiring - 14:06

4. Alex talks about the differences between working in a small firm and a big one - 15:27

5. Alex addresses the Chinese dislike for foreign managers in their ranks - 19:55

6. Mads talks about the upside of challenges - 23:15

7. Alex preaches automation as delegation - 27:45

8. Alex opines on the value of a company book club - 31:13

Resources Mentioned:

Clockwork by Michaelowitz

Connect with Alex Zuev

 Facebook

It’s not often that you’ll hear a guitar strumming in the background of the Mads Singers Management Podcast, but that’s precisely what my guest Chris Wilson was doing at one point when we discussed the changing ways his team gave music lessons post-Covid.  Chris graduated from the Berklee College of Music in the 1990s as a guitarist and started teaching in his apartment.  Before long his practice grew and pre-Covid he and his team of 25 were servicing 650 clients at the Academy of Music and Art just outside Chicago, Illinois.

One of the challenges that Chris faces is that there are no long-term music instructors in his team.  A lot of these people graduate from arts programs, as Chris did, and want to do something in that field.  So they will go to auditions or try various options while teaching, whether that’s in music, dance, or theater (all of which Chris’ academy normally offers).  Sometimes they teach for a few months, sometimes for a few years, but if they end up working in the arts, they will stop teaching, and if they don’t make it in the arts, they leave the field entirely.

While Chris can’t control the circumstances of his crew of creatives, he has found a way to keep them teaching with him as long as possible: offering flexibility...within reason.  Understandably people in the arts will sometimes need to leave for an audition suddenly and will need to deal with their group of students.  Chris and his team have found ways to accommodate that, but it all starts with that attitude that everyone is there to help everyone else.  Options include:

• Getting a fellow teacher to substitute for you
• Making a video for your current students, asking if they would like to delay lessons for a week

Anything is possible...except just leaving without telling anyone.  

While employee retention is key, so is employee training.  It’s not that obvious, but being qualified as an artist doesn’t make you a great teacher.  Chris realized this right away and put together a mentoring program making sure that the newest teachers had time and conversations with the most senior teachers.

We also talked a LOT about books that impacted each other (linked below) and Chris shared his passion for proper delegation, which for him means giving as much support as possible to someone when you delegate, not assume they know everything and abandon them.  We also talked about the adjustments he and his team have had to make during Covid (music and dance lessons are fairly easily done online, theater productions cannot be done at all).

It was fun to have a musician on the show and I think you’ll enjoy our discussion.

Key Learning Points:

 1. Chris tells of the (accurate) warning he received that there were “no jobs waiting for students of the arts.” - 1:30

2. Chris talks about being part of the gig economy - 2:53

3. Chris shares his initial mistake in management, then how he rectified it - 5:20

4. Chris notes that being qualified as an artist or musician doesn’t qualify you to teach - 10:04

5. Mads chimes in, noting that often the best way to learn is to teach - 12:41

6. Chris observes that many creatives are, indeed, shy - 13:43

7. Chris points out that delegation should not be abandoned - 15:07

8. Chris talks about the transitional nature of his workforce - 20:00

9. Chris and Mads talk about the benefits of remote work post-Covid - 26:40

10. Mads questions the point of being angry...ever. - 35:00

Resources Mentioned:

1. The E-Myth by Michael Gerber

2. The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

3. Work the System by Sam Carpenter

4. Success Principles by Jack Canfield

Connect with Chris Wilson

 The Academy of Music and Art

Employee engagement is a secret weapon of fast-growing businesses, and today’s guest for the Mads Singers Management Podcast, Tonya Sowles, is someone deeply passionate about making sure team members are engaged, not just counting hours until they clock out.  She’s a general business consultant specializing in HR.  While she is a Senior Certified Professional for the Society of Human Resource Management, she’s also got an MBA and over 20 years of business experience.  She loves helping owners maximize their people in order to maximize productivity and profitability.

That’s precisely where we started our conversation.  Tonya shared the shocking statistic that worldwide only 15% of employees are engaged with their work.  “Engaged” means:

• Proactively solving problems
• Championing ideas
• Cheerleading for the brand and helping to recruit

Tonya said that even the best companies sometimes only have a 20% engagement rate, which means in a company of 10, there are 8 employees who might not care.  

In my experience part of how you get employees to care is to invest in them.  A famous quote that guides me in this area is an exchange between two executives:

“What if we invest in them and they leave?”

“What if we don’t, and they stay?”

Tonya champions the idea of weekly time blocks to talk with the team in general, and agreed with my oft-repeated advice to meet 1-to-1 with your direct reports each week.  She also had some harsh words for “employee evaluations” as they often are currently used.  She prefers instead more frequent “check-ins” which are borne from the open communication she seeks in having weekly time with her team members.  It’s in these check-ins that we can discover personal and professional goals and see how their work life is aligning with those goals.

In those check-ins you can get to know your team better (something that DISC can help accelerate in the beginning).  The better you know your team and show them that you care about their advancement, the likelier they are to be engaged and not be part of that large percentage that are just clock-watchers.

Tonya’s passion for engagement comes through in this episode.  You’ll enjoy it!

Key Learning Points:

1. Tonya talks about the importance of employee engagement - 3:30

2. Tonya, like Mads, encourages weekly time blocks to chat with staff - 7:05

3. Tonya shares why she doesn’t care for “employee evaluations” - 8:57

4. Mads discusses his single biggest management ROI - 11:18

5. Tonya warns against the dangers of training your team to “wait for permission” - 16:07

6. Mads emphasizes having a diverse set of skills (and personalities) among your team - 20:23

7. Mads shares the joy of telling his team he’ll be gone for a while and will be unreachable - 24:05

8. Tonya notes the problems with “shoebox accounting” - 27:33

9. Tonya discusses employees who are left to fend for themselves - 28:10

10. Tonya explains why having employees is much more than having enough money to pay employees - 38:35

Connect with Tonya Sowles

1. Sowles Consulting (Facebook)

2. Triple P Group for Small Businesses

3. Tonya Sowles (LinkedIn)

While we frequently talk to entrepreneurs on the Mads Singers Management Podcast, we also enjoy speaking with top leaders at companies.  Today’s guest, Esbe Van Heerden of OnFolio, is one of those leaders.  She’s spent five years building and running online businesses, with a heavy focus on operations. 

Esbe started our discussion by explaining the challenges of rapid growth.  In her case they went from five team members to 25, and from 25 assets under management to 52.  That meant that as systems were developed, they sometimes had to be abandoned because they didn’t work at the new scale.  But she was also constantly reminded that any system is better than no system.

I readily agreed, noting that the number one challenge I see in my personal coaching clients is a lack of willingness to trust the process.  So many business owners are just looking to replicate themselves instead of putting in the hard work necessary to build a business, which means creating processes, delegating tasks, and trusting people.

Part of delegation is setting expectations, and Esbe shared that one of the areas that she’s recently improved in is setting expectations and KPIs for her team.  Not only does this make them easier to manage, but it also makes it easier to let them go when they aren’t meeting those expectations.

If your staff are properly managed by clear expectations, that means it costs you less to deliver services, which is one part of raising profits.  The second is making sure that you laser-focus on your niche, the one thing that you do really well.  When you are laser-focused you can charge your clients more because you are going to be delivering a better quality of service.

This is a major mindset shift for entrepreneurs who must come to focus on the “one thing” mentality as opposed to the “cash grab” mentality.  In the latter case, distractions disguised as revenue drag you away from building a sustainable business.

Sustainable businesses are kept that way by making sure you have the right clients.  Esbe recently did an audit which led them to drop ⅓ of the clients in their portfolio, which, in classic fashion, were roughly the 20% sucking up 80% of the time of the company.  While some of those clients were legacy clients, people who first helped the company get up and running, being in business often means making the tough, not the easy, decisions.

Esbe will often pause to think about what she wants to say, and I wish more people had this thoughtfulness instead of just rushing to answer questions.  I think you’ll appreciate her answers and her way of answering.

Key Learning Points:

1. Esbe talks about the challenges of a rapidly growing company - 2:30

2. Esbe recounts the creation and evolution of the company wiki - 5:33

3. Esbe shares her perspectives on the difference between management and operations - 11:40

4. Mads warns about the frequent problem of owners bottlenecking their own businesses - 14:20

5. Mads parses the difference between owning a business and owning a job - 19:46

6. Mads shares the importance of shifting your mindset as a business owner away from a “cash grab” mentality - 21:37

7. Mads argues for narrowing the scope of what you do - 23:07

8. Esbe talks about dropping the bottom ⅓ of their clients to focus on the top ⅓ - 24:15

9. Mads talks about the benefits of laser-focusing on your niche - 27:14

10. Esbe notes that it’s easier to let people go when there are KPIs and expectations in place - 31:45

11. Mads reminds us that we don’t know the quality of a plan until we execute it - 40:20

Connect with Esbe Van Heerden

[email protected]