A BHAG — a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal — can play to your strengths. It’s not meant to be reasonable in any way; instead, it’s designed to inspire you to transform into something interesting.

A BHAG also isn’t meant to be a financial goal. No one really cares that you want to be a billion-dollar company. But you can accomplish a compelling BHAG if you can translate that financial goal into something that is aligned with purpose. Take your financial goal, figure out what your impact will be on the world, and create a goal that pumps up your ego and ignites your passion.

Once Bill set — and started talking about — his BHAG goal of reaching 5 million leaders before retirement, he found opportunities through podcasting, public speaking, and engagements beyond what he ever could have originally imagined. Ten years later he is actually on track to reach his BHAG and is proof that pushing yourself far outside of your comfort zone is the key to reaching even your most outrageous goals and turning your dreams into reality.

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Contrary to popular belief, the American dream, as well as the classic statement wristwatch, are not a thing of the past. Today’s guest shares an incredible story of bringing both to life while legally battling an industry supergiant along the way.

R.T. Custer is a Colorado-based entrepreneur, speaker, and co-founder of Vortic Watch Company. He helps founders create a life of freedom through community, connection, and mentorship and is on a continual journey toward the American dream. Today he shares his "David vs. Goliath" story as he took on Swatch.

Watches are not currently made in the United States, but after learning that millions of pocket watches were created in the U.S. between 1850 and 1950, R.T. designed a way to create a 100% American wristwatch by upcycling an antique American-made pocket watch. The idea was crowdfunded and appeared to be a viable business model until Swatch served Vortic with cease and desist papers and a threat of copyright infringement.

A six-year legal battle ultimately resulted in victory, and R.T. learned a lot along the way about what it means to take on an industry giant and stand firm in what you believe in. The law is rarely as cut and dry as most of us assume it to be, and corporate bullying combined with navigating an unprecedented refurbishing business led to a landmark case that eventually won in court. This proved that the American-made dream is still alive and that fighting for something new and different just may be the key to finding the success you’ve been dreaming of.

Interview Links:

R.T. Custer

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

The purpose of your company is the why or the what. There is something that you care deeply about that is motivating you to keep working toward your goal.  At that motivational center you’ll find decision and action arise in the brain. 

What are you proud of?  That is where you will find the why of your work. Consider a person that matters a great deal to you – what you would tell them about the work that you do? That is the why behind your efforts. 

Too many people get stuck on getting their purpose just ‘right’ but, trust me, just good enough is a perfect place to get started. Don’t let perfectionism stop you from getting started in the first place. Just start working with a draft and let it evolve naturally as you continue along your path toward success. 

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Good sales pitches aren’t about what you have to offer. An effective sales pitch is all about what you have to offer that the other guys don’t have. When you can identify that selling point, you’re headed in the right direction to close the deal.

April Dunford is an executive consultant, speaker, and author who helps technology companies make complicated products easy for customers to understand and love. She is a globally recognized expert in positioning and market strategy and has launched 16 products to market across her 25-year career as VP of marketing at a series of successful high-growth startups. April advises leadership, sales, and marketing teams through training, workshops, and keynote talks.

April offers invaluable insights from her latest book Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win. She goes deep into the art of effective pitching and selling and shares the specific framework she has used to successfully pitch products at companies like Google, IBM, Postman, and Epic Games.

Nobody likes buying insurance. Shopping for B-to-B software is nobody’s favorite pastime. And when it came time for April to buy a new toilet, she learned just how painful buying can be. Sorting through features is overwhelming, and the sheer number of decisions that have to be made around making one single purchase can be enough to make anyone give up and head in the opposite direction.

40 to 60% of B-to-B tech purchase processes end in no decision. When buyers are overwhelmed by their options and feel that they don’t have access to the information they need to make an informed decision, the easy answer is to prolong the decision altogether and not buy anything.

Overwhelmed buyers need a guide — not a pushy salesperson — to help them identify the most critical elements of their purchase and make a decision. Customers don’t really care about the features themselves, they care about what those features are going to do for their business.

There is always an alternative to solving a problem, and customers need to clearly see that their best option is to buy from you. The question you are trying to answer isn’t “why pick us,” it’s “why pick us over the other guys.” Identifying the key differentiators and highlighting that value to others is a critical first step to closing the sale.

Interview Links:

April Dunford

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

When we become a master of something, it naturally flows through us. We feel powerful and effective. Flow state happens in peak moments of mastery, and these two are greatly interconnected.

The beginning of mastery is to give up the idea of ever finishing. Bill is still deeply at work in the areas of his life that he is mastering. When we say we are done with something, we want to put it behind us. Instead, consider what it means to never be done learning more about the things you want to master.

Leaders who are engaged and mastering leadership and applying those skills to all areas of their life will find themselves regularly in flow state, and that is a powerful place for a great leader to be.

Resources:

20,000 Scaleups

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Everything is a negotiation. From the boardroom to the lunchroom, finding common ground is critical to getting what you want.

Keld Jensen has more than 30 years of experience in international management, negotiation, and communication from his post as managing director of a listed Scandinavian company. He is the founder and former CEO of Centre for Negotiation, a consulting and training organization that has worked with private industry and governmental bodies in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa.

Keld is also the author of the book, Negotiation Essentials: The Tools You Need to Find Common Ground and Walk Away a Winner, detailing common business interactions that you didn’t know were negotiations–and, how to approach them.

You might think that only CEOs are great at negotiations, but Keld will tell you that is wrong. Every single person has to navigate 8‒10,000 negotiations a year, and it’s not only in contracts. It's just as much about where to go for lunch as it is about how to move to the next step in striking a deal.

Keld shares a variety of experiences that he has had with negotiations. Too many people think that negotiations mean confrontation or conflict or that there can only be one winner. By changing your perception of what negotiation is all about, you can consider the possibilities of what everyone can gain from negotiation.

From pausing negotiations for a client who is dealing with cancer to the success of those who uphold the Golden Rule, Keld highlights the ways that effective negotiations can be the secret weapon that leads to success.

Interview Links:

Keld Jensen

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

If you insist on hanging onto your business for too long, you are keeping it weak. If you insist on hanging onto your team too tightly, you are keeping them weak.

Too many leaders hire helpers and then micromanage them, or stay at their jobs for too long each day and week. They don’t vacation often enough and they don’t retire soon enough.

Great leaders pass the baton firmly to their team. It’s a powerful function of leaders who create groups of leaders that they can trust. Give people opportunities to make mistakes before you are completely gone.

This creates powerful leaders who appreciate what you have done for them and builds not just one good thing in your business, but a lasting organization of a great team and a legacy and culture of leadership that is unstoppable.

Resources:

20,000 Scaleups

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Your slides aren’t working in your favor. The key to selling is the stories that you tell, and your pitch needs stories that engage people so that you can connect in ways that close the deals.

Nir Zavaro is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He regularly tours the world, on a mission to help as many people as possible become better storytellers. Using his experience, storytelling fundamentals, and methods, he brings a fresh perspective on how to implement these into businesses, working with founders and CEOs in over 30 countries.

Every person on the planet has a unique story to tell. Too many people lean on slides as a crutch to get through a presentation, but slides should be the bonus, not the basis of your pitch. YOU are the presentation and you need to connect with the audience and tell your stories — with or without slides.

How can you determine if a pitch or a session was a success if you aren’t able to recognize the emotions and feelings of those that you are interacting with? Storytelling isn’t the soft skill that so many say it is, it is an essential skill that needs to be continually practiced and honed.

Niv and Bill share a variety of situations that can create connection by tapping into the emotional aspect of storytelling, from skiing to handling crises in the emergency room and understanding the language of different cultures. The stories you tell have the power to draw people in and connect with them in a way that a slideshow never will.

Interview Links:

Nir Zavaro

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

Do you know how to do the kind of planning that makes a real difference? Most of us spend more time working on the less important things that happen in between planning and then push off the planning that really matters for a future day that never comes. This results in sloppy actions and random results.

Bill recommends scheduling out annual, quarterly, weekly, and even daily planning. Every scheduled planning event matters. Get consistent with your planning, and then let everything else fill in between.

The plan itself doesn’t matter as much as the act of regularly planning. When you get the rhythm right, you’ll be a great leader who is able to run things with ease.

Resources:

20,000 Scaleups

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.

The playbook for navigating the transition from manager to leader has only become more difficult in recent years. Today’s guest understands the challenges leaders face and what it takes to be an effective leader in today’s workplace.

Adam Bryant is the senior managing director of The ExCo Group, a leadership development and executive mentoring firm. He is a respected and noted expert on executive leadership who has interviewed more than 1,000 leaders for the “Corner Office” series he created at The New York Times and for his four current leadership series on LinkedIn — with CEOs, CHROs, board directors, and prominent Black leaders.

After years of interviewing CEOs about their business strategies, Adam pivoted toward what he found to be a much more interesting topic — how leaders get to where they are. The key distinctions between managers and leaders are highlighted in Adam’s new book, The Leap to Leader. Adam encourages anyone who is considering making the leap to write down three questions — what is the difference between management and leadership, do you really want to lead, and who are you as a leader? The answers to each of these questions will help identify your strengths and potential as an effective leader.

There are three key currencies of effective leadership. Insights, storytelling, and framework are the languages that leaders speak to connect with and inspire their teams. Leaders are the chief storytellers who provide a sense of alignment and shared narrative for the team. If your team can quote you or copy what you are always saying, you’re doing your job right.

Quiet quitting, return to office, and the great resignation have posed incredible new challenges for leaders. The human element of leadership requires leading from the front unless you are told to lead from the back. The contradictory advice that comes to leaders abounds, and Adam’s advice is to remain cautious and simplify — but not oversimplify — the challenges of leadership.

Interview Links:

Adam Bryant

Resources:

Growth Navigator Coaching

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.

Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.

We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

Did you enjoy today’s episode? If so, then please leave a review! Help other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they, too, can benefit from the ideas shared in these podcasts.