Verne Harnish Keynote Speaker - Gazelles

this person is known as the growth guy he is the founder of the world-renowned entrepreneurs organization you know it at Yoga and he's also the CEO of a global executive education and coaching company known as gazelles he's a global syndicated columnist of fortune he's the author of three books the newest is scaling up he is about money he is about success he is about growth and he's here on this stage ladies and gentlemen burn Hornish what's interesting it takes about 25 years in order for a company to really hit its inflection point you only launched in 1976 and by 2001 9600 ploys is decent but it's you know it's hardly putting a dent in the universe and it was really when he launched the iPod that everything else happened so quick question if we could let's have the lights up for the rest of our presentation here I want to see a show of hands how many of you guys have been in business for less than 25 years I want to see a show hands alright you still have time all right now those of you over twenty-five years you know is it's exciting you know so Jim Collins been a dear friend and Jim's research is clear that our most productive time is over 50 in fact Peter Drucker wrote twice as many books over 50 than he did before and so we have time as well so there's been my passion for 33 years just how do we get these companies to scale up we know we know that this journey is you begin to scale up your particular business can be tough I mean it literally feels like at times you're the only one carrying the entire weight up that s-curve so I want to take our framework and I want to share five very practical ideas five decisions that you absolutely have got to get right if you're going to go ahead and scale it it whatever it is that you plan on doing and so first what is the most important question you've got to own number two what are the two words that you absolutely must own in the marketplace number three how do I decide what I focus on next and the number four what is the ultimate truth if we are going to put that pile of cash together and then a long way I want to share some kind of critical routines that I think are helpful now I want to get into this first practical idea and that is around the question and every one of us we anchor our scaling up people would you enthusiastically continue to work with all the people you've got around you and one of the things that I have learned in the 33 years of being out there in business is that you have to avoid the a-holes for sure because they will waste so much of your time along the way by the way they said there's no I in team they found it it's hidden in the a hole right there sure enough and one of the things that absolutely I know I've learned it gets in my way gets in the way of our clients is this three-letter word called ego e G oh because one of the things in the 21st century but I think we all have to come to grips with is that you are absolutely not smart enough alone to drive up your business the entire intellectual capital of your team is not sufficient I remember when we decided we need to get global and so we need to just update our CRM system I needed something in the cloud that would really work for us around the globe and so my IT team that we outsource in India had put together over five weeks that's unbelievable excel spreadsheet that listed 24 CRM systems I didn't even know that many existed and we're starting to pour through the features and benefits and their talents can take us another five weeks and I realize it was literally screaming in my head Jim's words and I said who do I know that knows more about this in a little pinky than I do in our entire being I said ah Jim Cecil I know Jim up in Seattle the nurture guru I know I know Geoffrey more and I quickly sent off the emails to both of them said look guys you know my business here's the spreadsheet I'm staring at blindly which should we choose and independently and within minutes they both email back and suggested the exact same CRM system and that decision was made in three minutes so I put out this book called scaling up last year and I actually thought that was a great looking cover it was black and white it was thick and I put it out to about 500 of our world they basically said my baby was both ugly and stupid it hurt man it hurt and so that's what the crowd created and we've been real proud of how well it's done and so what are you going to do to tap in to a whole lot more brains in order to scale up your business now I want to get strategy and our key question there is can you state your strategy simply again I was down in Australia and I saw this we are number one in the number two business now as Geoffrey introduced I am known as the growth guy and by the way how do you know if you own a couple of words you go to the search engines any place on the planet you put those two words and you see if you own that critical viable real estate and I do the problem is this nobody searches for it I mean when's the last time anyone sitting around saying man I need a growth guy unless it's like viagra related that ain't my deal guys that's not my deal and so I screwed up you know they often say you know no one's worthless they can at least serve as a bad example and that has been me now we think we know the two words we need to own and we're getting about it but you got to figure this out let's now shift execution and there it's all about relentless repeatability and it's about keeping the main thing the main thing the probably is easy to say but how the head do I figure that out so I tell you a story about mark so he's getting ready to take the company public in 2012 but that December he wakes up in a cold sweat like the rest of us and so oh my god we are about to screw up we have missed the most important trend on the plan and that's people aren't using their their PCs anymore they have switched to to mobile in Facebook and all the competitors had not made the switch so every quarter one of the routines he puts up a big white tent and all their employees are required to 10:00 at the time he had 3,200 employees he had 2,000 local 1,200 around the globe and they're all thinking he's there to announce the fact that we're going to be focused on this pending IPO by that's a pretty big thing to do to go public yet he hardly mentioned in passing what he said to his team was what I need you to do I'll handle that distraction what I need you to do is I need you to laser focus keep your head down continue to focus and deliver and get us mobile now the meantime he gets public $38 within a few months that stock literally crashes in half even as a rival for Fortune were sitting there beating him up maybe the boy wonders luster is gone but he kept focused and the rest is history even Facebook has limited time limited resources limited effort like everyone else sitting here in this audience and what you have to do is always always apply your effort to that constraint now I'm not talking about problems we are not a company that's about solving problems we'd rather go after what's working and do more of that no this is about the constraint that's out there and if you don't focus your energy on what's constraining the growth of your your speaking business whatever it is next you're spinning your wheels and by the way often who will help you fix that constraint is the right who built around owning the two words in the marketplace that will build your brand when Steve job realized the next constraint was retail that nobody could retell his products like he could he said we got to get in the retail business just like you figured out iTunes was the real constraint he needs to control the distribution of music and the hardware manufacturer to go that direction and then go to retail was crazy but it was all driven around a very very simple decision where's the constraint so then he set up a mock retail store and for three hours every day dragon his friend Larry Ellison over there on the weekends in six months when they launched everybody was just blown away that they created the largest most successful retail store on the planet it doesn't happen by accident so how do we convert this all into cash how are we going to make literally a ton of money legitimately out there all right if you want to make a ton of money here is the ultimate ultimate truth you have to give away two hundred pounds so I'll tell you a story I so I launched gazelle in 1996 on the eve of the birth of our our first son Cameron and I it was a great ride we took it from a half million two million to two million to 4 million getting ready to go to 8 million I'm going to be an ink 500 company and then 9/11 hit and it slapped this silly and I literally lost a million bucks in eight weeks we almost lost our home I had to let all the team go at just before Thanksgiving my only positive was well now at least have the holiday month off you know you try to generate whatever positivity you can I came home to Julie and I mean I'm telling you we are in trouble but I said look I trust this universal truth and we committed to donate over the next 36 months the largest chunk of change I had ever even conceived I would give away and you know what it worked and it was crazy what had actually committed to give away in 2002 I ended up taking to the bottom line ten times that but it was ultimately this guy John Whitehead and I had a chance to serve on a board for many many years with John and at one of the board meetings I pulled John us I said John what have you learned in life and he thought about it and then he said you know what to always do a little bit of retail business every day and he said let me explain that he said you know as co-chairman of Goldman Sachs you know you got the big office and all that stuff but I always made sure I went down to the trading floor to see if there was somebody one of our new employees that could use some help when I became Deputy Secretary of State I told my staff that as busy as I was bring me one person every day who was in trouble a couple who had lost their passports in Paraguay and just needed somebody in government to pull a string and help them the most important routines at least for me over the last decade was to make sure I car about 30 minutes to 45 minutes every day and go help somebody who's asked for help and that because he ultimately it only comes when you give first and so let me wrap up here first who's the top 25 that's going to help you scale up the business number 2 what are those two words or a few words the idea the space that you can absolutely own number three then as you're trying to scale up it's always focusing your effort where the constraint is and then the ultimate lesson around cash is man you got to give it before it comes you got to give before you take now we talked about the critical routine of learning but I want to share just one last one and this comes from Marshall Goldsmith and I got to tell you this has transformed me and my team and our clients more than any other idea I can share with you that was important that you cannot do this thing alone that you need what he calls a peer coach not a mentor I got all kinds of mentors and always have been privileged and blessed to have that but this is someone different this is a peer this is my friend Sebastian Ross who ultimately it comes down if you want to be a better father better husband and a better leader of your business it comes down to what you're going to do more or less of on a daily basis and so at the end of the day to keep scaling it requires these three things NSA thank you so much you

Channel: Verne Harnish

Views: 23,363

Rating: 4.8227849 out of 5

Keywords: gazelles, keynote, speaker, business, public speaking, Orator (Profession)

Id: eVNCRJ4L0AY

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2015