Brendan McGurgan 0:00
I found out that actually, less than 1% of small to medium sized enterprises ever achieve scale. The tone and content of your inner voice ultimately determines the quality of your life. We define 10 principles of scaling your psyche your mindset either empowers or disempowers your scaling trajectory. That's Brendan mcgurgan, chartered accountant, Director, coach and mentor to scaling CEOs over 17 years, 12 as CEO of the CDE group, he helped the company achieve 25x revenue growth and became an industry leader. I asked Brendan to join me today to tackle that question of why only 2% of SMEs achieve scale. You'll be surprised at what he shares. Lean in and see how you can use what you hear to scale your business with purpose.
Finola Howard 0:50
I'm Finola Howard Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart and your host of the your truth shared podcast, I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared.
We're looking at the idea of scaling. We're always looking at growth, but we're also looking at the idea of scaling. And those ideas are not necessarily the same thing. Today I want to introduce you to the wonderful Brendon mcgurgan, who has lots of feathers to his bow, but one of the predominant things that we are speaking to him about is that his background in his company, simple scaling, and also his book, simple scaling. Welcome Brandon. First of all, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Oh, and I'm delighted to have you. I want to start by putting the shoe on the other foot, and ask you the question that you ask all of your podcast guests, which is, what does scaling with purpose mean to you? Yes, I always open up the podcast with this question, and it can take people by by surprise. What it means to me. I feel strongly that if you've got a wonderful product or service, then you have an obligation to bring this to the world, to to optimize the impact that you can have on the world, to create as big a dent as you can positively on the world, to leave the world a better place than you found it. And business is a wonderful conduit for us to do that. So it's it's ultimately about purposefully, consciously thinking about the impact that you're having with your product or service, thinking about the culture that you're creating, thinking about how you can bring more value to not only your clients, but also to to your team, to the people who are co creating, who are collaborating with you to bring this value to the world. So ultimately, you know, in its essence, it's about maximizing your impact for the very, very short space of time that we have on this, this planet, and and bringing as much value as you can to the world through the business which you have the privilege of leading. I love this idea. It was one of my later questions for you, this idea of obligation, because, I mean, there's a conventional view about commerciality and how to approach businesses, and a lot of businesses don't approach it from this idea of purpose. And yes, everybody speaks about purpose. Now I speak about purpose with my own clients because I know the impact that it has on the trajectory of a business, but I love that you are saying that it's an obligation to actually use this gift that you bring to the world. How do your clients and the people that you work with react when you hear the word obligation, that you have an obligation to do this. Well, when people come into our community, many of them are interested in growing, but very, very few are committed to scaling. And once we get to
Brendan McGurgan 4:22
to have a conversation and start to reframe it about the value that and the impact that you're having on your existing customers, I always challenge them with with the question, well, why should I be denied the value of your wonderful product or service simply because of my post code, because you have decided not to bring it into a certain region, to expand it into the UK, let's say, or Europe, you have made that decision. Now we will sugar coat that with all sorts of reasons why we can't do it, but ultimately, you have made the decision that you're.
Not taking it beyond this existing border, within this county, beyond this country, you've made that decision. And I said, Well, there's so many people with
with whom you could positively impact if you made the decision to simply scale and scale with purpose. This prompted me the question for you that we hear of a lot, but I mean you predominantly work with people who want to scale beyond 1 million Sterling to 40 million Sterling.
Finola Howard 5:34
But when you are having that conversation with someone, the immediate thing that comes into my mind is, do they still at that level, have imposter syndrome, have a belief that they can't do it? Where is it coming from? The fact that you have to say that?
Brendan McGurgan 5:53
Well, where it comes from is a deeper question. But do I hear that? Absolutely so. I had one brilliant entrepreneur, come on to our program last year. He graduated in December 2023
and I had had a number of conversations, as they typically do before entrepreneurs, founders, leaders, come on to our program. And he was very, very bullish about coming onto the program and the initial conversation, and then went completely cold. I thought there's something up here. Something has happened here, and through the course of a number of conversations, post that, or a number of communications, post that, it turns out that this entrepreneur was dyslexic, and he was telling himself that he wasn't smart enough to be in that room with another 11 entrepreneurs. He literally said that to me then. And then we had kind of a number of follow ups. And it turns out that when he was at school, he was told that he wouldn't amount to anything, that he was nothing, only disruptive, that he would be better spent going and, you know, leaving school and kind of running, running errands for the local shopkeeper. And this is the deeper aspect of somebody who feels that at that stage, that they're not good enough. And this was a business at this stage turning over 567, million euro. And this was the language. This was the inner dialog from this entrepreneur. I've heard from other entrepreneurs, and this is more common than what you think, that they actually don't believe they're an entrepreneur. They don't believe that the success that they've had to date has been warranted, that they've been lucky, that kind of the market has blown a favorable wind. And you know some of that can be true, but when you dig deep, you realize, actually the again, this comes down to the inner dialog, and the quality, the tone and content of your your inner voice ultimately determines the quality of your life and sets the framework on the scaling ambition. So all you know this is why we start with psyche as this as the first principle of scaling. We define 10 principles of scaling, your psyche, your mindset, either empowers or disempowers, your scaling trajectory. It will either act as a multiplier for all of the other principles or an impediment. So I hear this all of the time now, the imposter syndrome can show up in different ways and and typically it's most common amongst type a high achievers, because we're constantly and I put myself in this bracket. We're constantly challenging ourselves to do more, so we're putting ourselves into uncomfortable places where we don't feel necessarily qualified. So you have this, this state that's that's almost permanent amongst type A types where, you know they're, they're feeling that imposter syndrome, but yes, you know it's the language is typically self limiting, disempowering, and, and, and we hear it. So my challenge to entrepreneurs is always, if you've exchanged a million pounds, a million euro in your product or service, then you have demonstrated that there is product market fit. You have moved beyond the startup phase. And my challenge then is, why not? Why not decide to take the 1 million to 10 million, it's a very different proposition than taking starting a business and getting a business from not to one but we we invite people who have already achieved that product market fit typically minimum threshold to come into our community is that kind of 1 million euro, 15 people. And at this stage, then we really start to work on the leaders psyche in terms of
Finola Howard 9:43
I found, I found that myself, of working with entrepreneurs of that size, with that 1 million, that 1 million seems to be a real cap to turn to double that at the start, because even when they get to five, it's easier to 5 million. It's easier than that 1 million. And breakthrough. But what's interesting also is that the smaller entrepreneurs, like the startups, that that idea, that that this idea of, unless you address psyche, and I was I'm glad that you brought it up, because we're going to bring it up later anyway, but unless you address psyche right from the very beginning, it's going to stay with you for the entire journey.
Brendan McGurgan 10:23
Completely agree, and it does, you know. And in the context of scaling, there's a cliche kind of every level has a new devil. You will be challenged again. So we might have a psyche. We might have been brought up in an entrepreneurial family where, you know our mothers and father collectively or independently, have have taken a business to 3 million euro, and we're very, very comfortable to bring our business to 3 million euro, but that becomes the ceiling, and we, we will justify it, that beyond that is, is too challenging. We say, Well, I can't get the people there, you know, but I the timing isn't right, right now the market isn't really open to us in some of those other new, new countries, or, you know, in the north or in the UK, we will, we'll, we'll justify to ourselves why we can't take the three to 10 or 10 to 15 or 15 to 30 or 30 to 300 you ultimately scaling isn't is about making a decision. It's about leaning into a commitment, understanding that you're going to be incredibly uncomfortable along this journey, but what I always appeal to, to SME leaders, is that being in business is challenging anyway. That's just a given if you're going to be in business, so the challenges might as well be of your making. Make the decision to scale, create and craft your own vision of of a future that you want, and be magnetized towards that. And ultimately, then the challenges, the devil in each level is a devil of your making, is a challenge of your making. So their challenge is worth overcoming, because you're going to have challenges anyway. Why not? Why not? Actually, you take agency over the challenges that you're willing to actually be challenged by. And
Finola Howard 12:26
that's the whole point of entrepreneur, entrepreneurship anyway, which is the whole agency that freedom to create something, to add something to the world. Another question for you, one of the things that I often hear as a reason why businesses don't scale, or entrepreneurs don't scale, or leaders don't scale, is this fear that if I get much bigger, the business will own me, not that I own the business. And that's a strong fear. Do you hear that also
Brendan McGurgan 12:55
absolutely and that comes back to you not being willing to let go. So what you're actually saying, if you take the interpretation of that, is, I'm, I'm only willing to take it to this certain size because that's what I can control. I've got my finger in every every function and every aspect of this business I I speak to, every single customer I know, every single supplier I know, the markets. That's that's me saying this is what I can control, and I'm not willing to delegate or let go or put processes and systems in place, so that ultimately I create a business that is independent of me. And this, again, this is the difference between growing and scaling. You know, growing is ultimately doing more with more. You know, I work 25 hours a week, so and I'm getting x pounds worth of revenue. If I work 35 hours of week, I'll be able to get, you know, x more pounds worth of revenue. But ultimately, you're not changing anything. You're not fundamentally changing anything. Scaling is about doing things differently. So it's about you back to the psyche again, about you examining why you have to be in control. And look, the reality is, entrepreneurs, by their very nature, and I put myself in this bracket, are control freaks. It's a real challenge to her psyche to delegate such that you're you're comfortable with knowing that somebody else is doing something that's going to be slightly different from the way you do it, and not necessarily the way you do it, but you've got to, you've got to comfort yourself that ultimately, the you good is fine. In this instance, you know, don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Just because you're not doing the thing doesn't mean to say that ultimately, you won't, I You won't meet the solution or the value that you're trying to bring to your customer. And this is why I always appeal to to entrepreneurial leaders and create a vision for. That you understand is an organizational vision that is going to outlast you, that ultimately you're going to leave a legacy. And that helps to reframe how they begin to think right now they're simply then in service of that vision, as opposed to, as opposed to being entwined. And this is where back to psyche again. Our ego and identity can get wrapped up in being the founder of this business, being the CEO or MD of this business, being the leader of this business. But actually, if you, if you go back to kind of an All Blacks mantra of leave the jersey better than you found it. If you create a vision that's an organizational vision, and understand that you're just wearing the Jersey as MD for a period of time, and you're continuing to service this vision which is going to outlast you, then your mindset is one where you want to cultivate and bring in, routine, brilliant people, you want to develop processes and systems which don't rely on you and don't rely on you being in control of every aspect of this business. So I hear that a lot Finola have
Finola Howard 16:17
a couple of questions there for you, this idea of legacy, at what point? Because at 1 million entrepreneurs and business owners, not all, not really thinking about legacy, not always, not yet. What's the point where you see them thinking about legacy? Because legacy will shift them immediately. But the other thing of And my second question for you, because they're maybe connected, is, what do you see as the trigger of when they go, okay, I can, I can, kind of I can, let go. Now that makes sense to me. What's the what triggers them to relax into letting go? What? So two questions, legging it, legacy, then the trigger to letting go.
Brendan McGurgan 17:00
Is that clear question? Sorry, yeah, it is, yeah, because but it comes down to what it what is it that you want? What do you want? Mr. Business Leader, you know what in and I always encourage them to answer this question, what is great look like in three years time and five years time and 10 years time? What does that look like if you could wave a magic wand in 10 years time, tell me about your business, tell me how you're living and are your behaviors now conducive to having that business that you have just articulated to me, that you want, and the life that you have said to me that you want to live, because ultimately, back to the definition of insanity if you continue to do the same thing and expect a different result, and ultimately you're in C and you know it's you, you have to then say, well, okay, is, is is my current roadmap or my current behaviors? Is my current psyche conducive to the aspirations that I want, both personally and professionally, and if you're, if this business is serving you in every which way, then fine that and it's and it's absolutely fine to have and decide you want a lifestyle business. But I challenge people, is that just you staying in your comfort zone, or is it truly what you want? And very few that I ever speak to through the course of the conversations that we have to say, actually, I've decided I don't want to scale the business. I'm absolutely fine with it being a lifestyle business.
Finola Howard 18:55
What triggers them? Like, where do they is it that? Is it? That piece, that psyche piece. So you have this wonderful 10 principles of scaling, right? And let's just say what they are. They're psyche, purpose and vision, people, plan, process, performance, Proposition, place, partnerships and positive growth culture. So do you see them move through this like Do you see them dip into all of this? Do you see them being good at each of these different levels, but haven't actually pulled all of these steps together in a cohesive way that it feels like a plan? Tell me more about what brought you to this point of developing these steps.
Speaker 1 19:45
Okay, so what brought us to developing the the 10 principles enshrined within what we call our scale x, 10 principle framework, my background, background and. Finance, I qualified as a chartered accountant. There's a back story to that, but essentially, my my I come from a family of five. I'm the middle child. Mom and Dad weren't educated. Mom left school when she was very young because of an illness. Dad left school at 16 because of his father had passed away, and he's the family and and he got a job in a in a small car company at that stage. And grad gradually became the accountant within that business without ever being qualified. Whenever he would bring the ledgers home, I would sit the end of the table and and I would, I would appeal to him to let me use the calculator. And through the course of this, he told me, someday, son, you're going to be a chartered accountant. I had no idea what a chartered accountant was, but there's the power of programming when you're younger. So I became a chartered accountant, but that became a conduit in the business. I went into a software company through the boom and bust of the.com boom and subsequent bust, and then from that, stepped into a small engineering company, finance director within that company, at the stage that I came into it, we had about 15 people doing about 3 million in revenue. Most of that business was coming from Ireland, a little bit in the UK. And I became the MD of that business a number of years later. Stayed there for almost 17 years. And during that that period, during that tenure, we scale the business from 15 people to almost 700 we established offices at six continents. We became number one in our industry. We exported to more than 100 countries across the world. Now, whenever I became CEO of the business wasn't a case of, we'll send you off to CEO scaling school for for six months, and you graduate, you'll have all of the tools and methodologies and and and mindset architecture to actually scale this business you were just figuring it out. And I, you know, I've always been a ferocious reader. I love learning and development and kind of growing myself, as well as growing teams and organizations. And so I kind of was figuring this whole CEO of of a scaling organization. Of course, back then, scaling wasn't even a thing, so scaling, the word scaling, has only come into the business lexicon, really, in the last 10 years, and socialized by the scale up Institute, which was founded back in 2015 by a lady called Sherry COVID. So scaling wasn't a thing. But we knew in Italy we wanted to grow this business we want. We knew what we did was was hugely valuable to a customer set in Ireland. And we thought, Well, why can't we take this to to to England, to Scotland, to Wales, and then into Europe and Middle East and, and, and that was a gradual process of trying to put the pieces together. Like, what's the importance of vision? Where does mission? I keep hearing this word mission, where does this come into it? And what, what are values got to do with actually growing a business? You know, we want to be profitable. What? Where do values play. Play a part here. What the hell is this word strategy? Anybody where people keep using this word strategy? What? What is it? Is this just for Harvard and Stanford professionals or, you know? What does that mean? And so there's a lot of noise. In fact, if you Google today how to scale a business, it will return something like 1.8 billion search terms in less than half a second. So there's a lot of noise out there about how you scale a business. Whenever I retired from the business, I was a show my shirt back in 2019 I was approached by quite a number of businesses at that stage to have a coffee and to share my insights of what we did actually within that business in terms of scaling it, and I realized that there's there's huge knowledge and experience just because of the the 20 years that I'd had in companies that were scaling 17 and CDE, and the people were really keen To understand this knowledge. And whenever I started researching, I determined that, found out that actually less than 1% of small and medium sized enterprises ever achieve scale. I thought, That's incredibly sad, and you dive into that further, we don't have stats for Adam, but we have stats for the UK. There are 5.6 million small and medium sized enterprises in the UK, and they're contributing 2.3 trillion pounds worth of revenue to the UK economy. That 5.6 million, but 1.3 trillion of that in 20, in 2023, 1.3 trillion. 58% of the 2.3 trillion is coming from 28,000 SMEs, which are scaling SMEs. It's half a percent. I thought, this is incredibly sad. So these scaling SMEs, which are the fabric of our society, which the backbone of of our communities, if you think you know, 99% of businesses by volume or small to medium sized enterprises, I they in most startups. In most countries, absolutely, and in most countries, it's 70% of people who are in the workplace are working for SMEs. So back to scaling with purpose. If you're working for a leader who's not purposeful, who's treating you in a transactional way, who is consciously or otherwise, creating an environment which feels not conducive to growth, that that isn't progressive, that isn't expansive, and you're in that environment for eight or nine hours every day, well, you're taking that energy back. You're bringing that energy to your partner, you're bringing that energy to your children. You're bringing that energy to your interactions with your friends. And when you think how integral SMEs are to our to to our communities, to our society, to our economy as a whole, this is like I get fired up when I speak about this. But what's stopping? What's stopping the other 99% of SMEs actually achieving scale, and when we dove into this, myself, my business partner Claire, we realized that actually lack of ambition of the leader is cited as the single greatest impediment as to why SMEs don't scale. They go lack of ambition that doesn't kind of seem to resonate with with entrepreneurs and what's going on there. And when you lift the lid on that you realize actually there are a number of strands to the number of components. One is fear of failure, fear of judgment, even fear of success, which is more sinister, you know, the other strand of that is the limiting the limitations we put in ourselves, the self limiting beliefs we have. And then there's ignorance we I simply don't know how I'd love to scale this business. But where the hell do I start? You know, I'm a I'm I manufacture. Who do I speak to? You know, I'm manufacture windows and counting me because my dad manufactured windows. But I've this innate desire to do more. Where the hell do I start? You know, the only mentor that I've ever had is is my dad, who's just an amazing joiner, but he's never been a CEO of a scaling business. And also
Finola Howard 27:08
that this idea of where are my peers, because there's because most of the peers are not scaling, so therefore, where are my peers
Speaker 1 27:16
Exactly? Go down to the local bar, into the community center, whatever, and start to talk this language, and the vast majority of people around you will tell you, you're mad. What? What? What are you? What are you getting annoyed about having you got a lovely life, you know? What would you be bothering yourself with all of that stuff for here, you know, have another drink, settle yourself, you know. So you have to be really deliberate about actually finding a community. I always say to people, Look, if you want to be a swimmer, you know, go and go into the swimming pool, join a swimming club. That's where good swimmers. Or if you want to be a good runner, go and find where the runners are. Join a running club. If you want to be a triathlete, go and join a triathlon club, if you want to be a scale or join a scaling club. And this is what inspired us, not only to define the 10 principles of scaling, to create a roadmap that I never had a guide, principles that are fundamental and consistent in every single scaling success. And this just isn't from our own the book. Simple scaling isn't, isn't just our own story, but I interviewed, spent two years actually interviewing prolific scalers across the world to define the principles that are consistent in those scaling entities. And
Finola Howard 28:36
it's a great book. Brandon, it's a great book. Thank you. I highly recommend.
Unknown Speaker 28:42
Thank you, Finola, that's very kind.
Finola Howard 28:43
There's another interesting thing that I've heard you speak about, because I was listening to you, obviously in prep on your podcast and stuff, and it's this idea, like there's an application form to do your process right. And one of my questions for you was about, how do you know someone is ready to scale. And then I heard you on your podcast talking about this idea of the ability to personally scale first. So you have to be able to grow yourself first before you grow a business. Can you say more about that?
Speaker 1 29:14
Yeah, so again, I think in acronyms. Think of mnemonics. And you know, the the 12 month scale accelerator program, where we coach leaders on the 10 principles, we take them through a journey I think of as a map. The The M is the methodology is the 10 principle, methodology, the A is our approach, which is lead self first, before you lead others, before you lead an organization. You're a coach Finola, you'll understand you cannot take your coachee, your clients, any deeper than you've gone yourself. So you've got to, you've got to be committed to actually developing yourselves, not a case of, I'm going to come on to this program. I'm going to delegate to these people to scale my business. I'm not changing. Team, but I want all my team members to change. You know, I'm not doing I don't need to change. I'm fine the way I am. I just need everybody else around me to change the you have to turn the mirror inward and go, Okay, what am I doing that's currently serving me, serving my team, serving the organization. But importantly, what am I not doing? Where am I holding my team, my organization, back? What are the limitations that I'm imposing on my team, on myself, and ultimately, it becomes it becomes selfish. I feel if you don't commit to expanding yourself, your team will only ever expand to the extent that you have expansive goals, that they can fit their goals into, almost like the little Russian dolls your the vision for your organization, if you want to attract great people has got to be bigger than the goals of the people you want to attract into your organization. I hear it all of the time again. So limiting. It's a kind of a limiting statement in terms I cannot get the people. There's never been as many people on the planet. There's a billion of them, okay, they're not all in the workforce, but, and there's never been as as little barrier to accessing global talent. If I want to recruit somebody in India tomorrow, I can do it. If I want to recruit somebody in South America tomorrow, I can do it and everywhere in between. There are no barriers now, given the kind of what COVID has done, which has created this remote working environment to actually accessing global talent. So when you say to yourself, I cannot get the people, I cannot get good people, examine yourself, because good people want to to be part of great leadership that has an expansive vision where they can see that their personal goals are going to be realized in the fulfillment of the goals and vision of this organization.
Finola Howard 31:57
So it's actually, it's not I cannot get them, it's I cannot attract them because I haven't done the work on myself
Unknown Speaker 32:04
absolutely.
Finola Howard 32:07
Yeah, interesting. But this is so I've, I've had a couple of conversations recently in recent podcasts, and another one coming, which is this issue around leadership now. So my arrow, the audience here that we're speaking to, is entrepreneurs, right? Because that's my day to day work is with helping entrepreneurs with growing their businesses from a marketing perspective, right? But the parallels with leaders in organizations and leaders and businesses in growing businesses are quite closely aligned, because what you're talking about is a level of self awareness, self awareness as the entrepreneur, as the leader in the entrepreneurial business, self awareness as a leader in an organization. And everything you're speaking about is this self awareness thing. But what I'm hearing, for people who are coaches in corporates, who are helping, you know, build teams, all of that kind of stuff, is they keep seeing the same problems all the time that, frankly, I find quite boring to hear still. And the boring is is disappointing that I'm still hearing this idea that leaders still behaving like dinosaurs. What's your perspective on that? Do you also see that because we are we're assuming a level of self awareness, a level of consciousness in order to to be able to consciously shape the world that we want to
Speaker 1 33:40
Yeah, yeah. I love this, because ultimately, the ears will only hear, the eyes will only see what you're looking for. So if you're constantly looking for problems, then that's ultimately what you'll find. Now I would appeal to the leaders listening to this, who are who are managing teams, who are leading organizations to answer the question, Do you truly believe that right now you have 100% of your team working to 100% of their potential, 100% of the time? The answer to that, of course, is going to be no. And say, well, if they're not working to the potential, and I, I, I tend to believe that the vast majority of people are intent in in doing a good job. They want to do. They want to fulfill their potential. And it's up to the leader to understand that person to help that person become aware. On awareness is a wonderful word. Awareness proceeds understanding. Understanding precedes change. So if you are looking at your organization today and you want to find you there are things that you want to change within your organization, I'm no doubt people listening will want to change. And. In certain aspects of their organization, then what is it that you need to understand? When you understand, what do you need to become aware of? And this is why my appeal is to look at yourself first, to put your own hand up and say, am I fulfilling my potential right now? Have I blind spots are the things that I'm aware of, and I've had the humility to actually sit with someone, a peer, a colleague, some of my team members, and actually ask them, Where am I supporting you right now? Where am I really holding you back? What is it that I do that's currently holding you back? What could I do differently that would help you just eke out another three, 4% in your working week, your working month. What is it that I can do? And when you actually start to bring that language into your teams, into your organizations, then other people become aware, as a result of your heightened level of awareness,
Finola Howard 36:00
because you're showing leading with example by owning your own deficiency. Sorry is the wrong word. But you know what I mean, owning owning your own shortfall, which gives them permission to do the same, absolutely,
Speaker 1 36:15
and I cannot express more highly, the importance of modeling. And my eldest daughter has high functioning autism, and I found this out the hard way, because those who are parents of of autistic children will understand that children naturally hold a mirror up to your flaws, to your vulnerabilities, to your frailties. Anyway, yes, they do. Those with autism do it in a much more amplified way. And I found reading a parenting book many years ago in an effort to kind of figure all this stuff out of three kids, there was this acronym that has stuck with me, and I share this with CEOs now, because it's as relevant as a parent as it is as a leader within a business. And the acronym is calm. C is communicate. So we must communicate, and that communication starts with what is, what does great look like? What are we trying to achieve here? What's the dream? What's the vision? Where are we going? Because for the vast majority of leaders that I ask and pose this question to just, let's take five minutes, Sell me the dream for the future of this business. Very, very few can tell me this, but they'll have preceded that with, I can't get the people. Well, I would say, Well, you can't get the people because you're not selling the people a dream. You're not selling them a vision for the future, because you haven't actually articulated and communicated a vision of the future. So communication first and foremost. What does great look like? So in one week, one month, you know, one year, if we had a magic wand, what would we like this business to look like? How would we like to be operating and interacting, collaborating as a team. What would the culture feel like? What would our clients be saying about us? How would we be? How would we be as a company to deal with from a supply chain perspective, what markets would be would be in? And you start to get excited about that, where you can go. Then people start to stand and go, Oh, wow, right? I never thought of that. But actually, that sounds great. And actually I've wanted to move to London, and I've been starting to look at jobs in London, but if, actually we're going to move, if we're going to take this product or service to London, I'd love to lead this. My Hands up for this. So communicate. First advise is next the is, you know, so again, in a parenting context, it's that not telling somebody what to do, but just giving them advice steeped in your own experience. Listen as the L and then model, and modeling being the most important. Back to your point. Finola, we must demonstrate as leaders that we're prepared to to change. We're prepared to ask questions such that we become more aware, such that we start to understand some of our own blind spots, such that we can enact change in ourselves. And people will just model what they see that will just become part and part of the of of the way things are done around this organization. Should
Finola Howard 39:28
we then be measuring how we model,
Speaker 1 39:34
ultimately what you measure improves, so it's determining, it's determining what, what, what, tangibly can we begin to change like an obvious example is if we have one where, you know one of our values is inclusiveness, or it's respect, and we've got a director's space right outside the front. The Office. Well, does it show, does that? Does that car space with Director stamped across it? Does that show that we're inclusive, that we're one team? You know, is often a value. One team win together? Yeah, well, I park like 150 meters away. You're parking at the front door. Does that kind of show we're one team. We're winning together, and it's just becoming aware of the behaviors that have become embedded and are now habitual, that you that that are deeply into your subconscious, that you're not even conscious about, and being open to and humble to, to ask of others. What could we? What could we start to do? And often that starts with asking your team. And a very simple thing in terms of measuring, this is actually just to run a net promoter score with your your team run that ask them one question, would you, would you recommend our company to a friend or colleague? Why? That's it. Two questions, would you recommend us and why? And let that be that, let that trigger the start of a process where you want to actually understand how you can better yourself as a leader.
Finola Howard 41:18
Are you hopeful for this idea of leadership, which we've been talking about for years and years. Are you hopeful that it's changing? Are you hopeful that coaches going into organizations will be out of work soon? I know you're not going to say yes to
Speaker 1 41:35
that, but no, absolutely, I feel there will always be the need for coaching, because nobody's going to transcend to such a level. They're so self aware that actually they don't need somebody else to just to hold a mirror up to a blind spot.
Finola Howard 41:54
You can't do that stuff alone. Yes.
Speaker 1 41:56
So you know, I, when you asked the question, I immediately went to the highest performing sports teams, and I can never imagine a team winning lots of trophies without having appropriate coaching in place. So,
Finola Howard 42:13
but are you hopeful that it's changing?
Speaker 1 42:15
I am. Yeah, I choose. I choose to be hopeful. You know, I choose. I choose to be hopeful, and I and I see it, but ultimately it's back to us deciding that we can make a difference, because if we think we can't, then we won't do anything other than kind of stand on the sidelines and berate those who are trying to make the change. So I choose to actually positively show up and attempt to make a change. I don't know how you know the extent of that change. We've got a vision to inspire, connect, enable millions of ambitious leaders of small to medium sized enterprises to scale with purpose. That's our vision that informs why we've written the book, why I host the podcast, why I'm in this podcast today. This was a podcast about a cuisine, and I wouldn't show up. I'm not going to get invited into a podcast about cuisine, but But ultimately, the the vision informs everything that we do. Will we? Will we ultimately change the psyche of millions of SMEs, I don't know, but we're gonna give it a damn good go. And I've got to believe that actually this is possible, and lean into that. Otherwise, I simply won't do anything. And it's easy to point fingers, but until you're kind of back to that Roosevelt Man in the Arena you know, don't sit in the sidelines and embarrass others who are out there trying to do something like the work that you're doing. So I am hopeful.
Finola Howard 43:55
Good. I have another question for you. You have two statements on your site. You have several statements in your site, but one really struck me, and it's this idea of, we don't discover powerful leaders. We help people in leadership positions discover the power of their own voice. Please say something about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 44:14
I mean, this is, this is a metaphor for them understanding that they're much more powerful and what they believe they they are, and finding your own voices both is both explicit in terms of we take them through a process to support them, and crafting a vision for the future, and actually communicating that vision, because there are leaders out there and leaders listening to this who will have something in their head but feel too embarrassed or fear the judgment to actually articulate or communicate this vision. We take them on a process to support them to the point where they're confident enough to communicate that with their own voice. Yes, so that's where it's explicit. But ultimately it's about them understanding that actually they are much more powerful than maybe what they perceive themselves to be. And we always encourage if it's not you, if it's not going to be you, who is going to do this. And why not you? Why can't it be you? Often we, we think, you know, and especially in this island, we think, well, entrepreneurs have a, have a London voice, or entrepreneurs have an American voice or, you know, but it's not really us or, you know, just from a wee village and Waterford, you know, it's not really, that's not really people like me, that that that that become successful entrepreneurs, that scale businesses. Why not?
Finola Howard 45:47
But as Irish people, we have a reputation for the minute we leave this country, we do amazing things. So why not do it everywhere we are,
Speaker 1 45:57
and you've hit on a point because you've changed the environment that you're in. Because ultimately, environment is the invisible hand which shapes human behavior. So we, our DNA, is perfectly suited to becoming wonderful scaling entrepreneurs. But when we're, you know, I grew up in in Catholic Ireland, you know, middle child of five. You the the paradigm, the conditioning, was such that I shared with you earlier, Mom and Dad weren't educated, so we grew up in Northern Ireland through the troubles. It was about getting a good education, getting to university, then getting a job and having that job for life. That was the condition. Was no talk about entrepreneur. You know, yeah, there was a couple of businesses in the locality. And the any chat about those business leaders, those business owners, was typically negative. It was typically unfavorable about, you know, how they've arrived at getting their money, or they're involved in some sort of illicit dealings, or they're adulterous, or whatever. It was never positive that, wow, wouldn't it be wonderful to be like, you know, Tom there, you know, what a wonderful entrepreneur. You know, we should be celebrating, you know, Tom as a wonderful business leader. And maybe you should think about entrepreneurialism as you as you go through life that was never articulated in our house. In fact, you you know, the sayings were, you know, money is the root of all evil. You know, money doesn't grow on trees. You know, it was that kind of scarcity mindset. No, my father a very, very positive man. He had a mantra, kind of, I can and I will, but that was kind of within the framework of education and getting the job for life. So, you know, in the environment that we're growing up in, and it was, you know, we're, we're, we're wonderful people at self deprecation, you know, I don't be getting too big for yourself. You'll, you'll, you'll create a fire that's so big that that you'll Roast Yourself. They've got the notions that's another, another great one. He's a way off dreaming again. You know, those things don't happen around here. It's, it's that paradigm that we get cut down very quickly if we have any notion of actually doing something that looks like it's not congruent with the the town, the village that you've grown up in. And that's why these like, there's 60 million Irish passports across the world, 6 million Irish residents. So you know, these passport holders have done incredibly well to not come back into this country, or want to come back into this country. Now, some of them have, but, but ultimately, when they've taken themselves into a new environment, and it's typically an environment where they've left Ireland to go and work, and we all know like my network is full of schoolmates who went away and they now run their own businesses, typically in the States or Australia. So environment is critically important.
Finola Howard 49:05
Absolutely. What would you like people to walk away with today? Brendan,
Speaker 1 49:10
it's a great question, but back to something you said, just to stop for a moment and actually start to consider their inner dialog, that little voice in their head, is it actually a friend, or is it holding them back? Is it empowering, or is it disempowering? If the language was different, would you do something different? If nobody could see what you what what you were doing, or you couldn't feel, what would you do if you couldn't feel? What would you do today? How would that change things? And then start to kind of reverse engineer from there to understand, well, why aren't you achieving what you really want to achieve? And. And the origins of that will actually be that little voice in your head.
Finola Howard 50:07
I love it. Thank you so much, Brendan.
Speaker 1 50:08
You're so so welcome. Lovely to be on Thank you, and that's it for
Finola Howard 50:13
this episode, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Make sure to grab a copy of Brendan's book, how to scale a business, the 10 principles, and check them out on LinkedIn [email protected] thank you for listening to your truth shared. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with your entrepreneurial friends and help them grow their business to even greater heights. And until next time, let's keep growing. You.
