Greg Voisen
Welcome you to the show. Good day to you, or should say, Good evening to you. Verne, how you doing?

Verne Harnish
Greg, it's good to see you. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Greg Voisen
Well, I appreciate you being on the show, and I'm going to do a brief intro so people know who you are, and we're going to talk about your company and the many books you've written and how it can help business owners and people who are out there coaching as well. So Verne, thanks again for being on he's the founder and CEO of scaling up. It's a globally recognized organization dedicated helping businesses achieve exponential growth. He's known as the growth guy. Verne has over four decades of experience building leadership teams towards success. He's the author of multiple bestsellers, including scaling up how a few companies make it and why the rest didn't, which has become a cornerstone for entrepreneurs and business leaders worldwide. In addition to being a seasoned entrepreneur advisor, he's the founder of entrepreneur organization EO, which has grown 17,000 members across the globe. He's passionate advocate for strategic thinking, disciplined execution and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. If you want to know more about him and the scaling up business, go to Growth institute.com that's Growth institute.com there you can learn more about him. Well, thank you so much for being on. You know, the name of your company is, G, A, z, E, L, L, E, S, and I wanted to know number one, make sure I pronounced it right. How is it said?

Verne Harnish
Well, that was the old, old name we have been we changed the name to scaling up.com and that's where people can learn more about me. Is scaling up.com we changed the name years ago because nobody could spell it. Greg, oh, that's why these I didn't know how many else it was. Look, I thought it was a clever name because it was the technical term that David birch at MIT had given to growth companies in the economy. It's still kind of a term recognized by economists around the world. But look, we're not economists, and we thought it would be good to call the company after what it is that we do for firms, and that has helped them scale up. So that

Greg Voisen
is, I'm glad you, I'm glad you changed the name, because the actual other name is still out there and it shows in little spots on your website. So Well, look, there's a lot of business listeners to listen to this. This is we have business and personal growth, wellness, spirituality, or the four genres, and you've written a lot of books, but many businesses struggle with this scaling and sustainability. I know because I'm a professional business advisor, what is the common mistake leaders make during the scaling process? And what would you tell people, because you're the advocate advisor, and how they can avoid it?

Verne Harnish
Yeah, you know, I think in a word, it's getting defocused and trying to do too much. I fortune just did a piece I pointed to on the founder of Kind bars. I mean, look, this isn't Google, this isn't Facebook. This is, you know, a energy bar.

Greg Voisen
He was on my show. He was actually on the show here a couple of times.

Verne Harnish
Well, you know, he exited for 5 billion, and they asked him, like, what was the thing you most had to focus on? He said, keeping us focused on just bars. Everybody wanted us to go, given our brand into all kinds of different product lines. And he said we had not fully realized our potential in bars. So I had to just keep us focused. We saw the same thing with Google, Greg, you know, their word was search, and they took it from Yahoo. Yahoo never recovered. Nobody could figure out why we needed Yahoo. And then Google got distracted. You know, Nest thermostats and Google Glasses and all this other stuff. They form a new brand called Alphabet. Yet last year, they finally woke up and said, you know, 2 trillion of our 2 trillion valuations due to search. We think our next trillion is going to come from search. And because they got distracted, they let OpenAI and Microsoft and everyone else jump in there and stuck

Greg Voisen
away. There's some other business snuck away

Verne Harnish
search. So that's the key, is to find a very precise job to be done for enough customers. And I'd rather you trade chase that customer type around the globe then get distracted with product line extensions and everything else that happens.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, there's a difference between iteration and truly extraordinary innovation. So you know, when you look at companies like Apple and it's another iPhone 16, or iPhone 15 to 16, or whatever it is that's an iteration of the product. You know, when people are truly whether they're spending five or 10% of their money on truly innovating something new, and what would you say? Because the reality is, they do need to innovate at the same time they need to keep track of their core business. But you can't lose sight of innovating. And I know that Google created the goggles this. I'm sorry Apple did, and it was a true failure for them. Yeah, those, those goggles, just didn't do anything. Yeah,

Verne Harnish
we know, in a practical sense, you need one innovation about every five years, and then it's iterations in between that. And that's a good, I think, kind of routine to get into five years, yeah, and, and the key is for you to address a real key constraint. So if you think about it, you know, Amazon started just in books, and that was the key. They stayed absolutely focused and started in books and stayed in books. Their next innovation was, alright, let's go ahead and add a bunch of other stuff. Then they figured out one click, you know, that was the real breakthrough. And they've, they've written one click forever. But then they ran into a psychological issue where people just didn't want to pay for shipping. You know, e commerce got stopped at about 4% of global, you know, retail commerce, until they introduced prime and got rid of that psychological barrier, which also, by the way, fueled the cash that they need because they were so unprofitable. You know, if you look at if you look at Costco, they've had one innovation membership fee, right? If you look at IKEA, they've had one innovation, and that is flat pack furniture. Now they've continued to iterate that flat pack furniture and their business model, but you don't need a lot. You can write, write it forever, right?

Greg Voisen
I think the the new documentary that just came out from Netflix is called buy now, which it shows about the consumerism and how Apple has really pushed, not Apple, Amazon has pushed this. Just push the Buy Now button, because that's the that's the way we get it now. You know your framework really emphasizes and this is important in any business. It doesn't matter if it's a three person operation or it's a 5000 purpose OP by operation, people, strategy, execution and cash if a company can focus on one initially, which area would you tell them to kind of prioritize? And if so, why? And I have my own thought, and I would say that it's cash flow. But the reality is that because cash flow is what kills most businesses. Yeah,

Verne Harnish
well, it is a flywheel, Greg and so what we emphasize, and we have a set of assessments that help you've got to enter wherever you think you need to enter on the flywheel. You're right. If you're not going to make payroll on Friday, it does this no good to go work on the other three and say, well, we'll get to cash a year from now. I mean, the business, you're going to be out of business at the same time if you're missing a key leader in the organization. If you don't get that in place, that's going to stop that flywheel, or you could have nailed strategy. But if your execution is sloppy, then that's where you need to bring your focus. So our framework is really designed to be flexible enough that each company situation is unique, just like we are as unique as our fingerprints. And so our goal is, and job is, to figure out, where do we enter that flywheel in order to then get get it spinning faster. Well,

Greg Voisen
the thing for my listeners is, at scaling up.com, you offer all kinds of free downloads. You always have, even before you were like the download King. So there's, you know, a lot of these forms and things that you could use immediately. They're there. So I just want to let them know that they could take advantage of that and and do it, and they get that at scaling up.com,

Verne Harnish
correct? Yeah. And I would, I would emphasize they'll see, next the picture of the books, there's a link, actually, to a free one hour. Course, it's 15 minutes on each people, strategy, execution, cash, and it's not a teaser. It really provides value. Look, I'm in this thing missionally, because I watched my dad scale up and then lose it all in the 73 recession, and Greg never recovered. And so if I can keep any entrepreneur from going through, my dad and our family went through, hey, it's been a good life.

Greg Voisen
That is probably what drives you every day. So that's what's important. There's always history somewhere, and there's always something that happened to someone that makes them so passionate about what they do. And I'm glad you told us that quick little story, because I had a similar story in my family. So you know, we talked, you talked about leaders and leadership. I have as many people on here, from Stephen Covey Jr to who you know, Marshall Goldsmith, talking about leadership. What qualities make a leader effective in a scaling company, right? And how can they develop those qualities in themselves and their teams? I think it's shifted. I just did a book here recently where Marshall Goldsmith wrote with with this other gentleman who's the head of Junior Achievement, and it was called Modern achievement, right? And really an interesting book around leadership. What would you say has happened in the world of leadership, and what qualities does a leader need today, in 2024 and going forward, versus some of the qualities that maybe we were talking about in the olden days don't apply as much. Yeah,

Verne Harnish
well, you know, it's interesting. One of the things that Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, said, is, what we don't need is managers. That's what we have technology for. And Hubert Jolie, who wrote a great book the heart of business, I if there's any book that I encourage people to read instead of mine. It's his book on the turnaround of Best Buy, you know. And he 10x the valuation of a very, very tough business in a very tough business environment. And he now teaching at Harvard, where we host our CEO summits, and I've got a new appointment to Harvard, the global scale up fellow is he said, I think it's maybe even time to get rid of the word leadership, and he called it careship. Keith Ferrazzi, last week came out with a new book, and he called it teamship Instead of leadership. But I think it really comes down to one word, and that is, if you're going to get your people to care for your customer, your company and you they have to know that you care for them, and that's why, I think what our real focus is as leaders is to care for our people, who will then care for our company and Our customers. Well

Greg Voisen
as these leaders build a company and it's scaling, and it's in need of more capital, and it's in need of more innovation, and it's need of more engaged people like engagement levels are low. How can leaders ensure that their company's culture, because that's a that's the key here remains intact as they scale rapidly, and most of these companies today are in some level, as I would say, transition and flux, and it seems to be more consistent because we're moving so fast, so somebody, they have to be nimble, they've got to be all kinds of things. But what would you what would you advise and love

Verne Harnish
good? Well, let me back up just for a second. I don't want people to think that leadership is what the CEO does. I mean, the owner has to drive valuation and hire a CEO, and the CEO does have four jobs, and that is aligned around people setting the culture strategy. They are the strategist. We've got to then execute flawlessly, and then we've got to really be clever with our capital allocation. So it's and they got to get the right senior team together so they've got a lot of stuff they've got to do in order to make sure that they're driving the company. But if we're going to talk about employee engagement, the I prefer the definition of a CEO being the chief energy officer. What we're really looking at is every decision, every word we make, words cast spells, really either raises or lowers the energy. So there's two very specific things. Number one, setting an ambitious goal. The research is very clear that attainable goals are low energy and ridiculous goals are low energy. People want to be part of something that's ambitious. And man, when that rocket came back and landed on the landing pad, I mean the energy in that room of people who work days and nights in order. Elon

Greg Voisen
Musk, there he goes. Again. He does. And

Verne Harnish
if anybody, if, if you think, if you think as people hate Elon hate him bad. That could be further from the truth. But he's, he's accomplishing big things, and people want to do that. Second, Gary Hamel said, people do want coached. They don't want managed, but they want coached. And so what are the things we do to be a great coach? We can talk about. But number three, and this is the point I want to make. Gary said,

Greg Voisen
can I ask you a question? I hate to ruin your job, please. But from from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to Elon Musk, it's, it's been said, and I've known, I've had interviews with Guy Kawasaki. I've had people that have worked with Steve Jobs. I've had people that have worked actually, my brother in law used to be Elon Musk's attorney, and here's the statements that they'll make. These men and women are brilliant. They are beyond brilliant, okay, but they're miserable son of a bitches to work for. Meaning they aren't really good with the workforce. I mean, they just want shit done, and they want it done now, and they will tell people, I don't think that bodes well or so. What would you say to these guys? Who knows one of them might be listening to podcasts? You know so well.

Verne Harnish
That's why I want to differentiate the CEO, the founder, from all the other people in the company. I, in fact, am a big proponent of not doing one on ones, for instance, as is Jensen at Nvidia, as is Brian Chesky at Airbnb, founder. CEOs suck at being coaches. They shouldn't be, and that's why they brought in an outsider in their case, Bill Campbell, the famous Bill Campbell, who came on and not only coached, and by the way, Steve Jobs had lots of coaches, starting with Regis McKenna and all the way up to Bill Campbell. And then Bill, you

Greg Voisen
know, at Airbnb, the coach was chip Connolly, exactly at Airbnb was the elder statement, right? And Chip and I have known each other for years, and he said, Oh, my God, I was working in a culture. Here I am in my 50s with these 20 something kids, right, right? So I think it really was valuable for the owner to realize the value of a chip. Connolly, and here's my point. Elon Musk, Steve Jobs need to recognize the value of having somebody like Bill, of having somebody like chip, versus them trying to do that themselves, because they're not good at

Verne Harnish
exactly so your question is, how do we get everybody else energized? We there's no problem with Steve being energized, with Elon being energized, with Brian Chesky be energized. They're the founders. They're in founder mode as right as Paul Graham said, what do we have to do to keep everybody else energized? And that is first set a big vision. That's what excites people. Number two, make sure that they've got the coaching. What was the last decision Steve Jobs made before he knew last well,

Greg Voisen
he basically brought in what's the guy's name? I'm trying to think that he brought in a great CEO.

Verne Harnish
Well, Tim Cook was already there. The last thing that he did is he established Apple University. He brought in the Dean from Yale, and he said, Look, I'm not going to be around anymore to teach and show the way. So we've gotta, we've gotta codify that. And I think it's a big reason why Johnny Ive was there to watch the soul that was designed Tim Cook was the CEO, watching people strategy, execution and cash and Apple University was there to teach everybody the apple way, very, three very important components. But let me get to the final thing that Jim Clifton discovered at gamba, the thing that really determines engagement and excitement and energy. And he says, Nobody believes this, but the research is clear. And then I'll share an analogy and a real story. Do I have a best friend at work. So what does that mean? I did work decades ago for Hewlett Packard, and I think one of the things that was exciting is that every Friday everybody would dump out of their offices on campus and go to a barbecue every Friday afternoon. If you watch Top Gun Maverick, I know it's a movie, but the scene that I show over and over and over to companies is that beach scene where they're out playing football and the commander comes by to kind of chew out Tom Cruise. What are you doing? We've moved up the deadline. You guys are out here playing, and it's, I get a goose bump every time I play that segment where Tom looks at the commander and said, Look, you wanted me to put together a team. Now you've got your team. I mean, these were the a a of a players, but they were set up competitively to choose the four teams, and hangman didn't get chosen, but it was hangman who saved the day at the end. So we've got a I've got a student, Jack little he was in my second MIT class I ever hosted back in 93 through 95 he went on to build math work 6500 employees globally, 1.2 billion in revenue. And I had dinner with him a few Saturdays ago, and we got talking about this, and he said the single most important thing they do is He most recently spent $25 million flying in all 6500 employees from around the world and their families, and putting them up in hotels and renting out Disneyland so they could all have fun together. And that's really at the heart of our quarterly thing. So with remote work, it's got even tougher for us to have those human connections, but if we can at least have one good friend at work, and where does that come from, your best source of talent is referrals, because you're likely going to refer in a friend or somebody you know, and the way you set up your onboarding can either create that friendships or not. So what's the company consciously doing to bond people? Like Tom Cruise did get taking everybody out on the beach and playing football?

Greg Voisen
Well, you bring up such an important point. I think, you know, recently, just last week, there's a psychologist on Adam Dorsey called super psyched, and he was talking about the loneliness epidemic. And I really do believe that in this country, you know, and not just this election, way before the election and the bifurcation of people and all that, there has been kind of this loneliness epidemic that's occurred, right? And now you got people that are at opposing views or opposing sides. I think we need to come together. And that brings me to a question, you know, when a company is going through an upheaval and then to remain, and when I say up people of growth, like, just like we're riding a rogue wave, man, we've really got to get on it. We got to stay on it. How can leaders ensure the teams remain aligned with the company's strategic goals, and especially during periods like I said, of this rapid growth, because stuff is being thrown at these people so fast, so quickly, to make decisions on and make choices and move forward to move the company's progression.

Verne Harnish
Yeah. Do you have children? Greg, I do, yeah, and I've got four. And if there's anything that Tom Meredith who really helped Michael Dell, scale Dell taught Michael and taught me was the same thing you learned in parenting you do with your company, you have a handful of messages and you've got to repeat yourself literally 100 times. So what does that mean? Practically? Who bear? Jolie said it in his book The heart of business better than I ever did, which is you don't have a strategy if you haven't named it. And that's part of that words cast spells. So for instance, when he went into turn around Best Buy, he called it renew blue. No military mission goes forward without without a name in the in the movie, it was called dagger. I don't know if you saw but Warren Buffett just went all in and Domino's stock. He's exiting Apple going into Domino's. Domino's stock is up 7,000% since it went public. It's outperformed Apple and Amazon and alphabet and their CEO, the beginning of this year, announced their five year strategy, and it's called Hungry for more and more is all capital letters, and it stands for the four pillars of what it is that they're going to focus on. Mark Zuckerberg last year called it the year of efficiency. This year, he called it all in and AI, what does that mean? First thing you gotta do is you have to name your strategy so that people can point to it, so that there's a rallying cry, and then you gotta repeat yourself a lot. So as you're walking around the company, you're like, Hey, Greg, what are you working on? Well, is that getting us more efficient, or what are you working on? Is that getting us more or what are you working on? Is that getting us, how are we using AI to do whatever? Elon Musk gets the famous algorithm that they actually have to a mantra they have to repeat during their daily huddle. So what's the key you pick, you pick a strategy, a focus, you give it a name, and then that's the power of the daily huddle, if we come back full circle. Jim Clifton said, Okay, everybody wants coach. So how do you coach people? He said, All you have to do is ask him one question, and that is, what are you working on? And what's in your way of achieving it? Now you've got all the coachable moments you need. Is what they working on aligned with the strategic direction, one of the four pillars of more, if you're at Domino's, or is it going to get us more efficient if it was last year at Facebook, and then what's in your way of achieving it? Then says, maybe we need to fix a process. Maybe we need to hire somebody. Maybe we need to get you some training and development. Maybe we need to get rid of it because it's stupid. But and that question is embedded in our daily huddle. So if I were to really answer your question, simply, you want to keep everybody aligned when things are moving fast the daily huddle. That's the first thing Steve Jobs did when he turned Apple around. It's the first thing Brian Chesky and the boys did when the pandemic hit, they went into a daily seven days a week, not just five days a week, and people laugh at us for pushing that, but that eight minutes will save everybody an hour and a half a day, if it's done correctly and it drives a line.

Greg Voisen
Well, you said, have a name and then have a huddle. And I do agree with you, because you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, you know, it's kind of rinse repeat, rinse repeat, until we get there, right, and then look for the challenges that are blocking it from occurring. And you know, you did just speak about technology. So I have a question for you. You know, AI is truly just been so rapid. You talked about Warren puppet going from moving out and investing into Domino's versus Nvidia, right? And you think about how fast these chips are occurring and what AI is doing to change the course of scaling business. So how can leaders like either embrace this, which most of them are, jump into it, use it to their advantage and really help it scale their business, probably even quicker.

Verne Harnish
Yeah, well, I think you need to hire some teenagers and and I mention it. So my latest column I just submitted for Chief Executive Magazine features co distributing out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Coe distributing, they distribute office furniture. It's not Google or meta, it's office furniture. Yet, for the last five years, Greg, they've had a partnership with the University of Pittsburgh's data analytics department. None of the schools have an AI department. Yet, if you were to look in your junior college, your major university, it's called data analytics, and he's partnered with the professor, and every semester, he's had them do a data analytics initiative for his company, and the breakthroughs that they have had, because they don't have any biases, and they're young, and they're up on the latest technologies, and they've got time to work on it. He is now, now, just now bringing it in house, and he's hired two of the students that had worked on several of these initiatives. So to me, it's the least expensive and quickest way for you to really get some expert help for hardly anything. He pays him. He pays the professor that he funds the class $10,000 a semester. I got just John de Julius, the customer service guru. I got the class at Harvard. They're doing a project for him, and Harvard's not allowed to even take any funds. And they're going to solve a major constraint that John sees in his set of businesses with a group of students that I know will they'll nail the solution.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's, it's real practical advice, whether you go to your local university or junior college or wherever it might be, but you're right about hiring younger people who have the time, but even on top of that, give them an objective say, hey, you know, we're going to study the data we're getting. You know, in a lot of cases, to companies, it's like, I think it's Rita McGrath, who was on here not that long, about about seeing around corners. How does predictive analytics really help me envision push my company into the future and really see what might be that I don't see that right head on, right? And very smart advice for you to look at analytics and then slice and dice it. I think it's, it's, I think it was, I'm trying to think of the lady's name, but she wrote a book called the watchman's rattle. And the the interesting thing was, is, who's up in that tower ringing the bell about what's actually going to happen, what's what's coming. You know, we know that predictive analytics, as you know, has been a huge factor for these large insurance carriers pulling out of California, Florida, whatever, and saying, Hey, there's floods, there's fires. We We can't lose any more money we've already lost. So using this stuff in the computer and having young people that understand it, and getting in analytics for any kind of business, whether it's furniture or whatever, is a great way to go. So look, and

Verne Harnish
you know, it might be helpful too. I mean, the first project he had him do was figure out where he should put his next warehouse that is a form of prediction, and they were willing to look at data that he would never have considered because they're not biased towards the business. Not only did they choose Houston, but Greg, they said you should be in this block in Houston, and that's where he's got his new quarter million dollar facility. The next is he said Netflix is good at predicting what people would like to see next. That's why they're the largest movie studio in the world. And he said, we got the same problem predicting what would be the next hot version of Office Furniture. AI, the engine that the students built, is now about 86% accurate in predicting this is the wood color that's going to be hot this next season. This is the design. And then AI is designing the furniture. AI is doing the pictures. AI is producing the video and the copy, where he used to have to mock all of that up, and it can do it in, you know, essentially minutes that would have taken months before. So it's really helping real problems, real business. Yeah, I

Greg Voisen
was watching a documentary on Leonardo da Vinci, and it's almost like the Leonardo da Vinci of the 21st century, right? Because, you know, when you look at a mind like Leonardo's, and truly what he predicted, you know, yeah, all these things that he predicted way before anybody had it's fascinating if you read his notes, right? So look, you You're like the master in scaling up. That's the name of your company

Greg Voisen
master at really scaling. And what are most what are the most overlooked aspects of really execution when scaling a business? And how can leaders really kind of address them? Because it's one thing to say, hey, we're moving along. We're making $20 million a year. We're meeting all our bills. We got an ibita of 12% we can just keep going right, whatever that might be. But you know, a lot of and I want you to address this too many business owners in succession, who have businesses like this, and you deal a lot with small businesses, at some point, they want to exit, right? And they want to get as much as they can for their business, okay? And so when you scale, you have to know why you're scaling one and two. What is the ultimate exit strategy. So what advice would you have for all of those mid sized businesses out there that are listening to this about scaling and exiting?

Verne Harnish
Yeah, well, it, you know, it's realizing that wealth is only true created through transactions, you know? So Michael Dowell did the transaction of the century. He took his company private, then he took it back public. Those two transactions put 50 billion in his his pocket. So let me bring it back down to our mere mortal status. One of my founding board members, Ted leonsis, sold his little company, red gig, when he was in his 20s, for 5 million to Harris communications. Harris then blew it up, and he was able to buy it back for a million. So he netted four then he resold it to AOL. He was Steve case's partner. They scaled out AOL, then they did the Time Warner transaction, which was hundreds of millions, and then Ted took chips off the table, and he then bought the sports teams in Washington, DC. The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs make is they don't exit sooner than later. Who should and when should you exit when you're the most excited about the business, because that's when you're going to get everybody else hyped up about it. And look, anyone who's going to buy it, they can see through you faking it. But if the business is truly on fire and has caught a wave and is doing well, that's the time. And now we always hear the few exceptions, the you know, the Michael Dow who hangs on, or the mark of Zuckerberg, but come on, the rest of us are not those handful of guys and gals. Instead, you're better off exiting when you're excited about it, because if you wait till it slows down, you just left millions on the table, and you can always buy it back. Whoever bought, if they blow it

Greg Voisen
up. I did. I did a business where that happened twice. That happened, they sold it, and then they bought it back. A half of what they they sold it for, and then they had all the capital that they had to do it. But here's a really good question for you, and not that the others weren't, but most business owners, whether it's a family business or it's, it's, it's being run by a CEO, there's this at some point, somebody founded this company, and there's this big question when they exit, which is why They don't exit sooner? Around relevance, what would you tell a mid sized business owner today who's hanging on because he or she is worried that I'm not going to be relevant anymore when I sell this business, and I really have to have this internal psyche and spiritual connection to making sure that I'm relevant?

Verne Harnish
Yeah, well, I want to bifurcate that question. Okay, first I want to deal with I thought where you were going is and rightfully so. The founder should be concerned that when they leave, something leaves with them that ends up destroying their baby. And what I've concluded is they have to be clear, what is the soul of their baby? What's the soul of the business? And you can outsource and delegate everything but the soul. And so let me tell you a story, and then how do you fix that? So I had a guy that owns a $600 million construction company. He's taken 30 years to get up the S curve. It's quite successful. And he said, about four years ago, he started turning it over to some of the younger leaders, and it's not going well, and so that's why he called me. He says, I can't figure out. I go, all right, Dave, what's the soul of the business? He goes, I don't know what you mean. So here's how you figure out the soul. What was the key to you getting here? And he knew that answer. He said, Look, we do very complex projects, but we have never missed a deadline, not in the Great Recession, not in the pandemic, not in supply chain challenges. We never have missed a deadline. He said, in the last 48 months, we've missed four I go, there it is. So I give you permission, Dave, to go back in and get maniacal. Be a little bit of an a hole if you need to get micromanaged, if you need to, but you need to get that fixed, and then you can't leave till you found somebody who's as maniacal and good at that piece of the soul as you. And that's what Johnny Ive was for Steve Jobs. Mean Apple 10x that's market cap in the next 10 years after Steve's death. I know because Johnny Ive was there. Johnny then left in 2021 literally 10 years later. And you know, there's about a 36 month cycle on new ideas to market. I think that's why Apple is not the number one market cap company today. They just got passed by NVIDIA here a couple of weeks ago, is they, I don't think they've got anybody watching the soul, which was always designed in apple. So, entrepreneur, what's the soul of your business? Customer, service, on time, delivery, design. Customer, whatever it is, you've got to watch it like a hawk or and then find somebody who can when you leave. And then, what do you have to do to be relevant? You're absolutely right, man. Guys go crazy when, yeah, especially, especially because if they're not getting a monthly all of a sudden they forget everything the company was paying for, you know, their car payment, their, you know, their vacation, whatever, and now they're having to eat their seed corn. I don't care if they pulled out 100 million, if they have to spend $1 of that seed corn, they go nuts. I

Greg Voisen
know that was true, yeah. So

Verne Harnish
what we recommend is, one, they buy themselves a toy as a gift. Number two, they take a year off and they write a book about their experience. That is the good, best way for you to spend that first year, because now you get all the stories. You get to recall, and you get to go call up your friends, your customers, go get the detail.

Greg Voisen
You go on the speaking tour, and you're

Verne Harnish
producing something you're making

Greg Voisen
come to work for scaling up

Verne Harnish
and and, and then somewhere over that year, they'll figure out. The second thing we recommend is go to the halftime Institute. That was four,

Greg Voisen
oh yeah, oh yeah. Definitely,

Verne Harnish
for this reason,

Greg Voisen
it's gonna the halftime Institute. I highly recommend the the guy that's running it now was just on the show maybe six months ago, and everybody that's gone through that has done well as Bob Woodward initially, not Bob somebody. What was Bob? What was Bob's name? Bob Buford. I said would, yeah, Bob, you said that. I

Verne Harnish
couldn't think of buford's name either. But yeah, yeah,

Greg Voisen
go out and buy the book, folks, because it's it's worth it, and go to their website. Go listen to that podcast I did with him when in rough summing up the interview now, yeah, look, we have a new president in we've got a lot of countries. This is a worldwide country economy. You look at China, you look at Taiwan, you look at all these other places that potentially affect our landscape. So with the trends in the global economy and the business landscape, how do you see that shaping? And this is a very broad press question, but it's a great way to sum up our podcast, because I'd like people to know your thinking as we move forward through the next let's say, four to six years. What would you tell business owners right now, and what opportunities do you see for them scaling up? Yeah,

Verne Harnish
well, first, I think it's important for business owners to know some of the stats of our world. So the global economy moves 33 trillion in the year. 2000 this year, it'll be 109 trillion, even if you adjust for inflation. I don't know about you, but if you can't find a million or a billion out of that, it is your fault. There is, there is plenty of opportunity to go around, if you'll keep your head in the game, and you will, you know, stay awake kind of thing set. So the macro economy is there, and it's because of all the billions of people moving into the middle class. So the business is to be had. So that's the mentality I think you have to my concern for companies in the United States, though, is that we were 60% of the global economy in the year. 2000 this year will be about 23% so if there's a weakness, we have been balled to sleep by our own economy that we're leaving three quarters of the opportunity on the table. And we are not the kind of global business people, market firms. We have some giants, the apples and all those good stuff that are but mid market companies. This is why I got global back in the year 2000 we operate on all six continents, and to me, that is our best edge, that when one side of the planet's up, the other side of the planet's down, and vice versa. And so pick your customer and chase them all over the globe.

Greg Voisen
That is such sound advice. On Sunday, I was sitting with Brian Tracy, because he wrote a new book on goals, and Brian is in his 80s now a few health challenges. And I said, Because Dale Carnegie was a client of mine, and I did all the Dale Carnegie. And when you look at it, they'll tell you, right now, that more of the revenue is derived from outside of the United States than it is from inside for their training programs. So when you look at, you know, Carnegie, telling you, hey, we're not really making it from our distributor network in the US. It's coming from China, it's coming from Japan. It's coming from Taiwan, it's coming from Russia. It's coming from wherever it is, truly, there's where they need the help, which is what you said, identify the issue where we were 60% now we're 23 we had all of the resources, the trainings, the knowledge, the expertise that the rest of the globe is really hungry for. And you there's another one scaling up, right? So that it just gives you, you know, obviously, that's one small example, folks, but it is an example for you to put your thinking hat on and say, what does the world need that they don't have that we've had, because we're so abundant with resources, right?

Verne Harnish
Greg nicely stated, yeah, yeah.

Greg Voisen
So thank you for being on the show, thank you for staying up this late from Barcelona and taking this time with us again for all my listeners, he already said, Go to scaling up.com there you can get these free courses. Just push on the links to learn more about scaling up and what he does his consulting firm. They have how many consultants now that work with scaling up? We're 293 293 Yeah, you can find them almost anywhere, and they'd be happy to have your business again. Pleasure speaking with you. Enjoy the rest of your evening, whatever's left of it. Not much, but thanks so much.

Verne Harnish
Thank you, Greg.