Bill Gallagher Podcast Transcript 14/07/2022
Transcript
So good Morning, good day good.
Welcome to wherever you are.
I'm Phil Rose, I'm your scaling coach for the day and today I'm talking to an even bigger scaling coach.
I'm talking to Bill Gallagher Bell and I met in Dallas, TX back in February, April, May.
This year I lose track of time.
Sometimes I think about those things.
It's been such.
A blur, but when I heard Bill talking and I've listened to his podcast, I realized this man has an expert in what he does.
He's got a number of businesses under his belt.
Already and he works closely with Verne Harnish to help Verne and others scale their business as well.
So welcome Bill Gallagher to the Sparks by IGN and podcast.
What does scaling coach mean to you?
It means I was smart enough to grab the URL the domain name.
Like it like.
I think I think actually in the UK I think I I tried to get scaling scaling up and scaling Coach UK and various people have taken those before Neil Lewis I think so it's always nice to get the the URL in there in the 1st place but.
You've been doing this for a long time.
Yeah yeah for all.
Last 10 years.
And really, when you consider the part time and other related leadership training work and stuff that I did beforehand, all that coaching, that's 17 years now, so it's been a long time since I I started working in this thing.
And I started as a sideline while I was CEO of one of the earlier companies.
That I lead.
Uh, so yeah little little while and you know, really, there's two things about it.
OK.
One is I love working with.
Entrepreneurs business leaders because they do stuff they do stuff.
They do stuff that impacts the world and really practically and selfishly, they can pay me so as opposed to like working with kids or things.
Like that which is all fine.
There's some value in in that other focus, so I've been focused on that for a long time now.
Certainly it's a place that I could play that I had experience as a CEO and entrepreneur.
So that's been my focus is helping businesses and leaders grow.
Yeah, I love that and and and a lot of people say to me.
What is it you do and I say, well, I help businesses scale and I I, you know one of.
The things I do with.
Any cnames scale with purpose?
So when people ask you.
What is it you do what's?
The what's the thing there scaling coach Bill Gallagher.
Actually does for business owners.
Well, really I help people solve 2 problems.
Uhm, there's there's one of two problems that people come to us, so everybody that we work with has huge goals and there either have stopped growing or the growth is slowed, it's either stopped, contracted or slowed, and so our focus is on getting growth going again.
So that's largely around strategy and purpose, and things like that.
And then the other thing that we do is help people deal with growth, and that's probably a little bit more common.
But things come and go over time, so the other one is they're growing, but it's just taking more time, more money, more effort.
They're losing their themselves in it, and they're trying to bring some order back to things or they're worried about.
Suddenly the growth is going to stop and.
So that's the that's the other side.
One of two problems that we work on, both dealing with business growth.
Yeah, and and and and I I get.
There, in terms of both.
Building business growth.
A lot of people say I want to grow and in fact not everybody says they want to go.
'cause some businesses they're quite happy doing what they do they.
Say is that the mum and dad business and they they want to continue in order.
Yeah, they don't.
They don't stick with us.
They don't know that that's that's a good point, but what is it?
They come to us for what you know they did.
They say they want to grow or what's the end result class?
Think about it.
People want the end result, they they want the growth they want.
What comes from it.
So what's the thing they typically want when they come to talk to you?
Well, how do they find you in the 1st place?
And what is that they want from you?
Well, so everybody finds me in different ways.
It's a referral.
It's a discovery of the show, but I would say most of it is referral, so a CEO or a friend or somebody.
Said I, I love what you're talking about you should talk to Bill or Bill helped me or that kind of thing, or hey.
Check out scaling up and then they talk to them. They say hey, we're looking for a coach like this and they're like oh of R 200. Some coaches Bill is the guy for that, you know. Like whatever it is there matchmaking there.
OK, and your work I you've mentioned some of the clients you meant in terms of you know you're in Denver the other day, but you seem to work all over it.
So if you look at a geographical region you were exclusively in the Bay Area, or do you?
Go outside of that on a regular basis, like.
No I.
You have work across almost every continent and dozens of cities.
I I've gone wherever there's something of interest to me.
I'll go and do it you know I've LED workshops in Pakistan.
I've LED workshops and coached companies in the UK and across the continent in Asia, all across the US, Canada.
Not in Latin America, but that's me because.
They'll often do business more in Spanish, and there are plenty of really good coaches.
I don't know who worked that area.
Yeah, I met a few of them in Dallas back in a in in April as well, so it's nice.
Yes, yeah.
To know that so.
So, so one of the questions I often come back to.
You know, we talk about, you know, having an itch and one of the areas that I work with in specifically within igneum and and look at those businesses.
Around this thing about purpose, and we all know that purpose.
I, well, I believe purposes meaning a lot more for people.
Recently, in the last five years we've seen it, but he, I think during the COVID pandemic, people have thought about, you know what's my purpose?
Why I don't want to do what I do and we see a lot of businesses struggling to find staff.
And you know, since I've been in California for that period of time, I've notice.
There's lots of vacancies.
There's lots of issues that we're seeing the same issues back in the UK in.
Terms of lacking staff.
People have gone off to do something different.
They've decided they want something else.
And and my philosophy around this is that a lot of businesses want to find purpose, but they don't know how to get it.
So I wonder what's your take on that and what you're seeing around the balancing purpose versus commercial gains for business.
And you've got to do both in my view, but what's the?
What's the thing you're seeing?
Right, so so as as you noted, I'm a scaling up coach and and scaling up.
We tend to work on lots of parts of the company, the people, the strategy, the execution, the cash, four big things around the way companies run critical decisions and it involves.
Tools and practices and things like that.
But the company, the organization that you have for me is like the front in the back.
Of the hand.
There's all these things in the organization.
On the one side, and then there's.
You as a.
Leader on the back and move In Sync.
So I like to say that you have the company you deserve.
You deserve the company you have and the company starts to run away.
And then you're like oh, what's happening?
To me, and and then, if the company is doing things but you're on the other side of it, you'll tamp down on it like you'll suppress it.
I think purpose is already there for the company and for you, but we don't know what it is.
Often in the beginning, and it's not articulated, but a leader who knows their purpose and who knows the company purpose and sees the balance between the two is much more interested in growth.
Than a leader who?
It you know is just making stuff up or trying to figure out like whatever so so so like struggling away at things so purpose is really the beginning of our work with.
Companies are very, very early on.
When we do the vision summary purposes right there at the top center, right, so the provision summaries.
Are like core sort of strategy simple high level one page.
And purpose of Simon Sinek would say is the why of.
The work of art and harness would say what do you care about, but it's that thing that we that we have and the whole point of purpose is emotion, right?
To make it.
Feel something for the business now.
Same thing is true of your life, right?
What is the purpose of your life?
You know, we've.
Read the books or seen the things the the movies eat, pray, love or wherever.
Where people go off on some discovery journey all over the world and then in the end they realized something that was always there inside them the whole time.
Right, so these external things help us to see things about ourselves, but it really is right within you, and it's something that you make up, right both for yourself and your business that you actually care about.
So what do you care about right?
Yeah, yeah.
What do I care about like at the end of my life?
You know, hopefully it's long, successful and you know awesome and groovy and all that.
And then and.
But at some point nobody gets out alive.
I'm going to die just like everybody else.
And then the people that I love the most will gather around, right?
My kids, my wife.
My surviving family members, maybe a few people I worked with.
And some of my friends and they'll say the nicest things about me.
We hope.
Yeah, they always do.
They they focus.
On the nice things and then they.
Go to lunch.
Yeah, and it's pretty much always lunch.
Uh, in in most cultures and you know they have a thing and then they.
Gather around and they deal with.
The whatever they missed, right?
So when those.
People gather, I just want them to say that I was one of the good guys that I was generous that I was a contribution to them.
But then when I think about my work right?
Yeah, yeah.
I want my work to be a contribution to make a difference or the companies and the people that we work with and the the planet and the people.
The communities that they belong to, so I don't tend to work with a company that isn't out to do some good.
A company that's all, take, take, take or.
I don't care what the legacy is.
Isn't a company that works with me for very long.
If we work with each other by accident, it ends pretty quick.
Click, and usually in first few minutes of an organization we figure out the purpose.
Now with the purpose in hand with my life purpose clear with the company purpose clear, the desire to grow is much greater because when you have something you care about deeply as an individual as a company.
Your desire to see it like impact and be big in the world is is right there.
So uhm, I think that's the beginning of the growth, right?
So leader and company In Sync like the front and the back of the.
And purpose is the emotional driver.
Now why does the purpose and the feelings matter?
Feelings 5 the passion and the action, the caring, the thing that gets me up in the morning that gets me like excited about what I'm going to do in the day is is all purpose related?
If you want to not be in that expensive arms race of talent recruitment and retention, you'll use purpose.
Yeah, yeah.
If you use.
Purpose and culture effectively.
And and you do the self work that goes along with it to be In Sync with it and have it be something that's honest.
That's authentic.
That's real.
Then then.
Then you'll end up with a purpose that engages people the way it engages you now, not everyone right I I interviewed woman years ago to work for a company that we worked a lot on our culture and our purpose with and that kind of thing.
And then she started telling me about this other company she used to work with and they and what they did.
And I knew a lot about this other.
Company and I knew some of the leadership and that kind of thing.
And I smiled and I said, that's really fascinating.
I love that you've shared that experience with me.
Yeah, thanks so much for coming in today and we'll we'll be in touch in a few days, but you know, I didn't tell her in the process that, Oh yeah, we're exactly like that company or we'd like to be and there's no way you're ever going to work here.
Yeah, very different and and it's interesting 'cause that's the.
Differentiator I I might have just said I I avoided the argument of it at the time, but I might have just said listen, we're a lot like that.
I don't think we should keep going any further.
I said something like, oh, I find that company kind of fascinating.
It was about as far as I went in that, but you know, to just to avoid an argument.
For it
And and I love your thinking about that feeling piece in it.
'cause that's the bit, it's.
The emotional bit.
But it's the bit that gets you.
Out of bed.
In the morning, as the busiest leader.
The business owner has.
That feel of what they want to create.
And but you mentioned then there is.
If you've got the growth mindset and the purpose mindset, that's the thing that helps the business scale.
But you've almost got to get that purpose piece first.
And then believe that you can grow this thing with purpose and then have a system makes the scaling up rings.
But the bit I think is more than this talent and the capability in the culture that comes together because of the purpose and sticks with you because of your purpose.
OK.
Right, so let me speak to this other thing the the personal side of the leadership side.
So I said that the leader in the organization are like the front in the back of the hand.
And So what happens though is there we're working.
We're going up and down, and you know, we're growing along as a business.
And as we do that.
Then we have moments where we feel overwhelmed and we look to the future based on how hard we're working now and we pull the company down or we stop it, or we do whatever.
'cause we're worried that.
If I 10X to 100X this company, I just don't have that in me. I I I still want to have time with my family.
I still want to have, like you know, whatever and and we have this notion that bigger is more of everything in a linear fashion.
And it's all nonsense, right?
Here's the thing.
To remind yourself that I learned fairly early on in my career, working for another company.
The leader of a multi billion dollar organization or a multi $100 million organization.
Does not work, probably even twice as hard as you do.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
So I could be a.
1000 times bigger of an organization.
And I won't work twice as hard.
I might even work less hard than you do.
I might carry less stress now.
We all carry a certain amount of stress.
It's probably that our setpoint for stress or appetite, like our capacity.
And we push on things.
If you think about like the analogy of like training, I don't have you ever done any running or?
Anything like that?
I I was.
Out for mid run fasting this morning.
Before I got on the call with you every day, every day.
Fantastic as a runner or any other pursuit.
Each workout is a hard workout pretty much.
Yeah now, even though you might, maybe you do intervals one day and you do a long run or recovery run or that kind of thing, but taking like for like those are always going to be harder 'cause you're always upping against yourself in your game and right like that kind of thing so it's always going to be hard.
You're always going to have a certain thing.
'cause that's your tendency, right?
A leader of a multi billion dollar global organization still has to.
Eat, sleep, go to the bathroom.
They still have relationships and family lives, and some of them have good ones, and some of them have crappy woods, right?
Just like the the leader of a very small organization or a or a, not a leader at all.
Yeah, yeah.
A front line, uh?
Team member also has issues with with family and money and that kind of thing.
All of these things are so.
The the same so the the.
The thing to get is that if you simply shift your approach, you develop certain skills of leadership.
You can actually scale your organization and scale your leadership infinitely.
OK, OK.
So I would say yeah, I would say it starts with purpose, right?
So purpose I share.
How do we engage purpose, right?
I express myself and what I care about.
Oh, I'm really passionate about ending hunger.
I'm really passionate about making information accessible or I'm really passionate about housing or whatever.
It is fueling businesses or any number of things that you.
Yeah, yeah.
So I see a world like this.
I'm passionate about that I saw this.
I wanted to fix it.
That's like expressing where the passion, the purpose, the emotion.
And is and lives with vision and self expression.
And we like let that out and and take the lid off.
Uh, are sharing with people are are are communicating or pitching are like they are evangelizing for our business, right?
We take the lid off that now we have lit up people, some of whom are really like personally connected to what we're doing, but that's that's not yet leadership, right?
That's the beginning of something.
So the next thing is.
What's in it for you?
Why would you?
Come work with me on this thing that we're passionate about.
Yeah, so next bit is engaging people getting people to see the opportunity for them and to say yes.
OK chat.
So when we engage people we get them to see opportunity and commit and take action right?
In that that's selling that's hiring.
Uh, that's partnering all of these kinds of things.
And in yes and action now.
The interesting thing is, it's not really so much.
About the pitch.
At this point, the skill to develop, sort of the engaged thing that follows the passion.
The emotional thing is listening.
So if I'm really.
OK.
Listening and and by listening I also mean what we do with our eyes, right?
So if I'm noticing you.
And I'm interested in you and what you're doing with your life and what you care about.
If I ask questions.
If I bring curiosity, then when I eventually invite you to partner by work with like that, it's natural, effortless, really aligned and the effectiveness of that that engaged thing.
Now, because I listened and I paid attention, what I said naturally occurred, like an opportunity for you, you said yes and you started taking action.
So now we're really beginning leadership.
I've got people lit up there now.
They've now seen opportunity for themselves.
They've committed they're taking action.
Right, the next thing we have to do is really common to our work, and that's like planning, right?
Yep, Yep.
So we plan we coordinate, we figure out who works with what.
We figure out where, what?
The steps are.
And all that kind of thing, and that's.
All pretty good.
But then setbacks happen, people get discouraged.
Right, like things don't go as planned.
Yeah, yeah.
And and then so you could re plan.
Except people get discouraged and they forget why they said yes.
So the last piece of the leadership work that I do is coaching.
So I'm a coach.
OK thanks.
But I both leaders to coach and coaching is really about reminding people.
Of what they cared about.
And why they said yes and what they're working on.
Helping them to figure out new paths to it and to take ever bigger risks and challenges.
And things like that to step up more right, inviting them to be bigger than they currently see themselves as.
Yeah, I I left that set.
So tell me.
People back to.
What were you passionate about?
Why did you say yes?
What are you working on?
How's it going right?
Closes the loop and I call this connection of four leadership disciplines.
The leadership flywheel.
OK, and I love that and you've talked about this on your podcast before this.
This leaves you apply well because the bit you mentioned there is the coaching that.
Brings it back there.
So people and individuals slowly go off track from where they were, and therefore your ground bringing them back onto track to what you know why they exist.
Well, how do they engage the people they're working with?
How do they reconnect that purpose?
And actually, you said there it's just about reminding them, and I've seen kept.
Without them realizing actually, This is why I'm back in the business, especially when it gets tough when the going gets tough.
You've got to be there as a coach, walking alongside them to get them back on track again to enable them to pick things up again.
So one in terms of that leadership slide where you.
Mentioned there's five.
Elements in there.
So those five element.
Four element OK mum is hearing.
So four key elements of the pollution flywheel.
So talking through that, what are those key things?
What are the?
Which was the.
Most important, if you could say there's one of those more important than the other, whatever.
No, in a flywheel they're all important, right?
We start with purpose.
Then we help connect with people and find the opportunity for them.
Action begins, then there's planning to do and then the coaching reminds us and brings us back into the process like loops it back around so it always begins with purpose, but.
You could find yourself anywhere on that and needing to move around and and move on to the next thing.
And The thing is that leadership then really becomes easy.
And easier and not always busy, right?
Like there are setbacks that we have as leaders in organizations.
We get knocked down.
We get wiped out right?
You get tumbled as a boy.
I body surfed a lot on a beach near our house and I would get out there and you get tumbled and sometimes you you'd get whacked into the bottom.
And there might be rocks or sand or core.
Well, and you'd get tumbled around.
You'd get back, but then you get back up again and you and you write again.
And it's thrilling and you know, it goes on until you know until you retire you so like there's moments that are exhilarating that are fun.
There's moments that are terrifying.
There's moments that are painful.
Right, and that's
Just our lives.
But the notion that you can't have what you want.
No, you can have a great romantic life.
You can have a great financial life.
You can have a great family life.
You can have great health.
You can have all of those things as a leader, just like you can have all of those things as a non leader or a smaller leader.
There the two aren't tide and you could lead a global movement or organization and and have all of those kinds of things and and you might not.
Because look, we're human and we struggle in different areas, you know, but it has nothing to do with the size of the organization that you.
And I think.
As you lead a big organization, very often the people and the organization will also help take care of you because you're a leader for them and they need you and they need you to be good and well and that kind of.
Thing which is almost a bit more of the flywheel in that case, isn't it because your flywheel they're starting?
With purpose and you.
Right?
Right, they need you.
You need them.
You become interconnected, like the front and the back of.
The hand right?
I love that.
So this thing that if.
OK.
You look if you look at it.
And you look in the mirror and you think about it, there are times when you've resisted saying yes to something or committing yourself or declaring something because you were afraid of what it meant.
But if you could get that, the really big things that we do, we're going to do with other people, not alone, right?
And this has nothing to do with introvert extrovert.
I'm a super introvert, but I'll step up things and I'll do things in a big, public way.
And then I just need a little personal time, like quiet time alone or with another person, right?
Like like reduce but so it has nothing to do with that.
But we step up to big things with less fear or more courage, right?
Courages like oh, I'm afraid.
But I'm going to act anyway, so I see something.
I'm a little nervous about it, but I recognize it.
And then I lean in and I say yes.
We're going to Mars.
Don't do it.
Yes, we're going to build a reusable rocket ship.
Yes, we're gonna like whatever it is, right?
And and it's interesting because I think that bit coming back to what you mentioned there about that you can have it all.
And I think the bit that really resonates to me is a lot of business owners holds themselves back 'cause they're worried about losing out on one thing or the other, or they're not sure they're gonna be able to get there.
Exactly, yeah, oh, I don't know if I wanna do that.
Thank you.
I don't know if I'd like my life.
Oh I like to kite surf or I like to you know oh I I want to still have time with my kids you can have time with your kids.
Yeah, and I think the key is a lot of businesses don't learn it, so so getting it all is the key there, but a lot of people don't and they they made that decision to stay small because they don't have to do it.
So the key, but I'm hearing there is that their leadership level that coaching piece helps them keep them back on track or why they did a bid into their face but also helps them keep them sane.
But then there's another bit which I'm hearing.
Or if you talk about scaling up, we talk about people, strategy, execution and cash.
So the thing about this to my doing the business to enable the people you've got in it to take some of the strain because you don't have to work twice as hard as me to run that multi billion pound business.
Actually you need people in the team to do it for you.
And I wonder if that's the bit that that that's driven you in terms of you think back when your experience of growing the business that you were in.
You know you joined scaling up.
10 or so years back.
But in terms of those businesses, I wonder.
If you had had scaling up.
Or a process like this?
I wonder where it could have taken you.
What would you have done differently if you knew this you now?
Well, listen.
I I did, I did have scaling up, so I first learned from Vern back in.
OK.
The early 2.
Thousands and uh, through the then the young Entrepreneurs organization and we brought the practices into our businesses to varying degrees, and we had huddles, and we had annual and quarterly and half yearly planning and we did had priorities.
My paperwork.
And we had a theme and we had dashboards and we had scorecards and we had all these kinds of things.
And I still couldn't get away for a couple weeks without being on the phone and going through emails and things like that because I hadn't evolved my leadership, so we had done all of these things.
OK.
Tip bearing degrees.
There are some things I did very poorly in those days before I had a coach that cost me millions.
Uh, very clearly, but the biggest thing was the shift in my leadership and and it really came down to becoming a better coach.
So as I implemented all these things, but I still worked the way I worked. I was like a lid on the business, but in in 2009 coming out of or in the middle of a recession, we realized that we were hitting a moment in the kids in our lives where we said.
We were going to travel and get away.
So whether I had a company or not, and whether we survived or grew or not, we were going to get away and I spent then about 9:00 or 10 months asking a question in a couple different.
OK.
Forms of people.
So people came to me with problems and then what I used to do is I would help them figure out the solution of the problem and give them resources or make decisions or things like that.
And I stopped doing that.
Then when I realized I needed to get away and that I was the problem and I started asking.
What do you think we should?
Do yeah, yeah and.
Second question that I asked was what are you going to do when I'm gone because I told everybody I was leaving for a month now leaving for a month in lots of Europe is not a huge deal, but in the United States and North America leaving for a month as a leader is a huge F and deal.
And we don't take a holiday in the same.
Way but so.
Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't my mental to be going away for the summer or even for a month.
And I just kept asking a question, what are you going to do when I'm gone and so everything people brought to me?
I said great.
What do you think we should do and what are you going to do when I'm gone and I just kept asking that question and grappling with that?
With everyone as much as I could remember to do it, and I use sticky notes and I used other kinds of reminders and tricks to remember to do that.
Yeah, yeah.
And then and then I took my family, Italy.
Now two things really, really great happened out of that one.
I got a fantastic month away with the family right?
We went sailing.
We went, driving around.
We ate well like all the things you do.
In Italy, right? It's really.
Love it, love it.
Quality of life and uh, and we had this monumental experience when the kids were of the right age like.
Uh, 1214 or something like that. To really appreciate it.
But the other thing that I got is a company and a team that got a lot better at managing themselves at running their business, and that was the beginning of what led to my exiting the business and becoming a coach like I changed the business into something that required a little less attention and we made further structural changes.
There are pretty dramatic ones to the business, but we still own that business.
It just looks profoundly different than it ever did in the.
Past so OK, so the bam here near it is about so so you could implement all the tools you can bring in the people strategy execution, the cache tools you could go to that, but the fundamental shift you had to make.
Within your leadership style to enable you to.
Ask that question.
What are you going to do when I'm gone?
So you could then.
Step out of the business and they were the business to run so your flywheel.
So we're still working.
Your business is still turning over cash making money.
But the key was you as leader.
Could step out.
Of the business step out of the day today and and it it.
It really reminds me when I set up my business back in 2004, my accountant gave me that good old book, The E Myth revisited by Michael Gerber.
My cat, you go visualize and and she.
Yeah, yeah.
Said before I fell before you.
Set up your business go.
And read this book and.
And I fell into that.
I became Sarah running my Chocolate Factory.
If ever you've read the book recently, Sarah was running her business and then you know she gets stuck in it and.
She ends up hating chocolate.
And I've talked about this quite lots of clients because I think a lot.
Of people do.
Get stuck in it.
They come up with the product they love and then they can't extricate themselves from it because they're so entwined in the Bay.
Yes, but what you did to enable you to.
Go to Italy was ask that question.
What are you going to do when I'm gone?
And then picking stepped up to help you run that business and they run it for you rather than you having to run it for them.
Is what I'm hearing.
So the before then I had a.
I had the purpose of the company articulated and really well known and really engaged everyone in the company.
We'd done that work.
Look everybody.
OK.
Their job and why they were there.
I spent time with each of them on the opportunity for them and that kind of thing they were committed.
They were taking action and we had a regular practice of planning.
And re planning and all of that bit so all those parts of leadership were there except the coaching and it's funny.
'cause I was already coaching and thought of myself as a coach and worked as a coach, but I hadn't really applied it to the way I ran the business until that point.
Right?
And at that point it was like sometimes sometimes if I'm honest.
It was pretend coaching where I'd I'd go through some thoughtful things, and then I tell people what to do.
So I shifted, was that pull back and it and it was in part like I I boxed myself into something that I was going to have to deal with, right?
And we.
So hey, I'm leaving town and in a certain amount of fear had me doing that because either that was going to F.
Up my trip or.
F up my company or a little bit of both, and so I really worked hard on that for nine or ten months by committing myself to going on that trip.
So I said we are going on it.
I bought tickets to go.
So on it, uh, I marked time and everyone calendar to go on it, right?
So that really held me accountable for doing the work I needed to do as a leader to become a proper coach.
Yeah, and and and and there's two things come to mind for that as well.
Being a proper coach because I think you and I can.
Sit here as coaches.
To other businesses and help them develop.
Other things, but the key there is you as leader stepping up as coach.
Rather than having a coach coach you to do it, you actually had to do it yourself.
You had to become that coach as the leader and other people, I think.
Don't think of this up themselves.
They think of themselves as the manager or the the founder.
Or the entrepreneur?
But actually at heart.
They've got to be the coach.
To the business, because otherwise they can.
Always beat the bottleneck.
Right, so I think leader.
Is a more apt term for sure.
You're a founder for sure.
You're an entrepreneur.
You may manage things, but you have to lead people.
Yeah, I think it was Rick.
Hot weather
Admiral Ricketts, who said that I'm not sure about it but but I believe he said, you know, we management is kind of a silly thing.
You manage things, but you lead people and.
Uhm, it's useful to remember that we lead people, right?
So and and what are those critical tasks and disciplines skills that a leader needs, right?
We have to.
Inspire people and you're drawn to some of them.
I know some leaders every time we we begin this conversation, we find some are great evangelists.
They love to fire people up, but then they're terrible at getting people to commit to things or it's kind of accidental.
People say yes.
And then I think other people are are detailed planners.
And then a very few are skilled coaches.
It's a far less common of the four things, but but you actually need to develop some capacity or some access.
To all of.
In leveraging your strengths and tendencies right?
I'm I'm verbose, articulate I.
Talk a lot, right?
So I have to learn to listen.
And even if it's not my nature, I have to design occasions, reminders, things like that to remember to listen in in order to do that.
So the speaking and the sharing part comes really easy for me.
The planning I design in regular.
I have a certain amount of planning and then the coaching thing is is really like also not in my nature.
I'm not naturally empathetic.
I have to think about what's going on with people.
I have to stop and notice I have to.
Slow down, but what inspires me for my life yeah, is being a contribution what inspires me for my life is is connecting with other human beings so I have to learn and develop and access that life purpose in order to be a good coach.
Because it wouldn't be in nature, I would just be bossy and full of advice.
That's more my nature.
And I love that in terms of you actually taking that time out to find out what the thing that you need to do is because from your perspective, you once you get clear around that for yourself, you can work it out.
But then you can work out where your strengths and your weaknesses are.
You know we often talk and use tools like Gallup strengths in scaling up and other tools as well.
To help you understand what these things.
Are but the kids work for you?
The gallant strikes right there.
The the coach strengths Kit Yep.
Perfect, we need to talk about that another day.
In that case, that's another topic I'm going to bring up.
With you but not today, not today.
So it's a builder in one thing you mentioned.
I think you've really covered this when we were talking before the show we talked about.
You know, the things to cover and you talked about leadership, talk about purple and you said about secret sauce.
Now I think you've told me it already.
But if I've.
Missed it.
What is that secret or?
What's the thing?
That for sure.
I haven't told you the secret.
In fact, you didn't really open at the beginning, but I have learned a secret to growing your business.
And I encounter a lot of people who'd really just like to double their business.
And I would say doubling your business is really, really hard work.
People spend years doing it and and some of them never do it and and the problem with doubling your business is it's pretty incremental, all the thinking.
All the work is incremental.
We make refinements, we fine tune things.
We work on.
Removing some barriers, but there's nothing very transformational about doubling your business.
However, if you want to double your business, it gets really easy and it happens really fast.
If you sincerely, uh, and consistently engage in 10X thinking, so if you start to think about a 10X or better, so you could go 100 X.
You could go global.
If you start to think about what would it look like, how would I like you know, whatever the business.
Is what what it looked like to be 10 times bigger.
Well that will.
Force you to make profound changes in the way that you work and think and what you do.
That will make doubling happen quickly and easily. It'll happen along the way to your 10X goal as a natural outgrowth of something.
It's a little bit like.
You know, I know.
As a runner, I.
I one of the coolest things that I've learned about running a marathon is that it makes running a half marathon really easy and fun.
Yeah yeah, I agree with that.
I agree with that ever I've never run an easy marathon.
But I would say after running a couple of marathons, the half marathons became a piece of cake. So that's the thing that I'd say like play a 10X game. Think about global.
Ambitions for your business.
I hear you've got an airplane overhead there, so think about global ambitions for your business and 10X100X nationwide.
Whatever it is, that's not just like a double kind of thing, and the growth will get a lot easier.
You'll have to start to think transformationally about things 'cause you can't just incrementally get to 10 X.
I I love.
That, and you're using your marathon example.
I can exactly.
Relate to that.
As well, when I run my 10th marathon.
It everything was easy.
Running my first marathon, I remember I remember going to do my first ever half marathon. I run it and remember the time one hour, 44 minutes and 58 seconds and I remember I just beat my 1:45 barrier. But I remember finding that.
Half Brandon so hard.
And then as I went through a marathon training and I did more and more.
Marathons I would just pop out and run and run a half marathon.
The drop of the hat and I loved them and one day I remember my friend.
Right?
George was was.
He challenged himself to run 10 marathons back to back.
So I joined him.
I decided to join.
He was running five mile loops of our local town and just doing he was doing 5 and a bit loops of the town and I decided one day just to go join him.
One of those loops and I just rocked up turn up there and end up running five and a bit loop so the town with my little marathon that day.
My wife hated it, 'cause I just I literally.
Just popped the shops to see George for half an hour.
And 3 1/2 hours I came back home run that marathon but the key you mentioned there is actually it's about connecting your scale.
You know build build when George went to run his 10 marathons.
Back to back.
That was about 10X in 'cause he knew a.
Marathon was tough.
So he 10X it said how to run 10 back to back marathons. And actually I love your point there actually. So the.
The single source you're saying that is panicking.
Well thinking big then just in double s.
Thinking 10X think, think exponentially and the growth gets a lot easier.
Yeah, yeah.
Not incremental.
So so so so the key is.
There's a couple of things coming to.
Mind for me.
In OK so so texting your thinking leading with purpose getting on board your leadership flywheel to start you driving that bringing coaching in their coaching as a leader the whole load of tools you talked about.
Yeah, well, they're very.
Very connected, right. As soon as you get your business purpose in your life purpose, your willingness to play a 10X game. Your interest in italics game just jumped way up. So when you when you get clear about your purpose, right?
It's so motivating when it's really clear for you and you start.
To share it with.
People, the desire, the willingness to play a 10X game to really like upset things is way increased and I've worked with and come across.
Yeah, yeah.
Lots of people I.
I remember a guy here in the Bay Area.
Great company.
I'm working in the educational space.
And and he's like I love like every time I hear you talk I want to grow my company and that kind of thing.
But I just I like worry about what that's going to mean for my lifestyle.
And what if things get like altered in the company.
Yeah, yeah.
Honey, and so I I said, you know, it's really that's a self imposed constraint.
It doesn't have to be like that like you could be how you want it to be.
And and ultimately, he didn't do it the the the fear won the day in that case.
But really, what was holding him back was fear of losing.
The life and the self that he knew and he just you know.
He just didn't lean into it.
That's OK.
And I guess that's one of the big things, isn't it because?
Most business owners constrain themselves based on their thinking, so if you want a 10X your thinking, you've got to think differently.
You've gotta do thing that you've got to think out of the box in terms.
Of where it's going?
To go because.
To grow a business takes time, takes cash where we go, burn and you talk about growth, sucking cash.
We've got to think those are things, but if you think about 10 Xing is thinking OK, how do I change my?
Lifestyle around that.
Because I don't want to be working more than 168 hours, I'm given in a week 'cause I can't physically.
Do it and the key thing is how do you feel that leaders?
You can't, but.
You will work.
With leaders you will engage other leaders and the only way you're going to get there.
In fact, I've seen a few leaders.
Who have tanked?
The growth that we started to put in with companies.
I had one leader of a fairly large company.
One of our billion dollar companies.
Who would send people he like tried to Superman it?
He tried to work all sorts of hours and that kind of thing he'd send people like an e-mail at three in the morning when he was up stressing about things.
Ask him if they wouldn't be prepared to talk about something at the 9:00 AM.
Thing, and then they'd wake up and you know 6:00 AM or something.
They check their e-mail and suddenly they'd have like a huge like freak out and their day would start like crap because they're like, oh, I have to be prepared to answer this for the CEO of the billion dollar company.
At the 9:00 AM meeting and I am like I'm I, I have coffee in me, yet right?
So I'd say that's a real problem.
So there's somebody like trying to work too hard.
Instead of empowering people to fulfill their vision to contribute to something, and so on.
Yeah, yeah.
That's not like just giving a lot of orders and working a lot of hours.
Produces very unhealthy environments.
And I think.
That's the key, isn't it?
Because it's not about adding in.
More hours is not about doubling what you do.
It's not about becoming, you know the Superman to do it.
It's about understanding how you empower others, how you coach them, how you develop them, and how you know you talked about the Admiral Rickets power piece around leading people.
And that's through the inspiration.
A bit, I think we've we've covered many different things in this.
And we said we expect to speak for 45 minutes, and I think we've covered about 45 minutes now.
And the key I'm hearing there is, you know you've got so many elements of this and and when I asked you about leadership firewall and I said to you, just so you know which is my support.
You said they're all important.
And I'm here and there that all of these elements come together in terms of helping you build it.
It's not about one thing, it's about all these things together, because, as you found, ten years plus before you enter Italy, you tried to do this English, but it was when you made that difference and when you tried to poach differently and show up differently than made the difference, so so one final question.
Well, you mentioned about the the the eulogy at the funeral.
You know we're all going to get there one day and you mentioned the fact that you know one day people who made sitting around the round this box and they'll be talking about Bill Gallagher and Phil Rose and saying hey what great guys they were.
What's the way you want you remember what's?
The weird thing you want them to say, hey, Bill, he was a great guy because.
What was it?
Well, I said.
At the beginning of the show, I want to be remembered as a generous contribution.
I want to be remembered as making a difference for the people who I who I worked with and really like helping people contributing to people to be better versions of themselves to realize their dreams in my business or business purposes, helping.
Leaders build a better world, so the companies that I work with for a long period of time are doing something good in the world.
Sometimes they don't realize it when they start working with me.
But they're drawn to doing something that's a net gain.
That's a contribution that it's not an energy suck or a a selfish take.
It's it comes from a place of abundance and value creation, so that's the kind of companies that we work with.
They're doing good things and and and, and that's really my work.
Is helping people realize whatever it is that matters to them.
I love it. Love it and then I can say this last 45 minutes. I think you've lived up to that in terms.
Of contribution, 'cause I'm sure listeners will have got a lot out of this.
And you said halfway through the one thing that you're you're very good at is talking articulately, and I think you've done that really well over this last 45 minutes.
So thank you for entertaining and bringing some of the key messages here around.
How do you build a business with purpose?
How do you lead with purpose and how do you coach your purpose?
So Bill Gallagher.
Thank you very.
Much one final.
Question how do people connect with you?
Where do they go?
Find Bill Gallagher?
In the Bay Area.
So scaling coach.com is our website easy to remember.
We'll find you well, Gallagher, thank you very much.
It's been a pleasure talking to.
You appreciate it yeah bye bye.
I hope you've enjoyed listening to this podcast as much as I've enjoyed recording it.
This is just one of the great conversations I've had the privilege of being part of since I started recording the sparks Baking in podcast.
So please go back and listen to some of the others.
There's some great content in F, some great contributors and also while you're.
At it please leave.
Review of this.
Because that helps other people like you find this content and we want to bring about the change that we really know matters to people.
It helps us grow, but also think about what actions you want to take.
There's no point just listening passively.
We want you to pick it up and do something with it.
So what's the three key thing you want to do?
I can't hold you accountable, but if you want to.
Drop me a note. Phil at igneumconsult.com. We're always keen to listen to what you have to say and actually introduce guests to us that you do think will bring relevance to other people. We wish. Well, give us a call. Let us know what you think. Give us review.
Thank you.