Building to Scale - Eric Crews - Leadership in Action- Episode #018

01/04/22 • 52 min

To many, running a successful business is scaling their business, but these two ideas are not the same. Eric Crews, the president and founder of Crews Consulting Group, has a lifetime of experience with not only running successful companies but also scaling those companies. Eric shares the three keys to building a successful company and a checklist of five things to make your business scalable.

Takeaways:

To actually scale a business, there is much more than just having good operations. Running a successful, profitable business is different than making a business that can scale. While it’s good to make sure the business runs well, it’s not the key to scaling.
There are three keys to scaling a company: 1) Your customers must love what you offer and they must love doing business with you; 2) Your employees must absolutely love working with you; 3) You have to make money while doing it.
Customers love business regardless of how well they are run, they really just need to love the product. Eg: Apple makes good products but interacting with the company is dreadful for most customers.
There is a checklist of five things to make a company that can scale: 1) Get your business operationally strong; 2) Have an extremely strong senior team; 3) Figure out your place in the market; 4) Get sales, marketing, and operations functions all lined up with your uniques; 5) Adopt a red light customer service culture.
A “Red Light Customer Service Culture” means that if the customer has a problem and the company can control it then the company has a problem. Clients must feel as though nothing else matters more to the company than them.
If you really want to scale, you need to hire people who are smarter than you. You need people in your business who are going to take it to the next level.
Even more so than commodity-type businesses, unique strategy businesses must have a firm grasp on both their target market and their TAM (total addressable market).

Links:

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-crews-ccg/
Website: https://crewsconsultinggroup.com/

Quote of the Show

“If you're going to truly scale a business, you're going to need to have much more than good operations to be able to make that happen.” - Eric Crews

Shout Outs:

Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great

Ways to Tune In:

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-in-action/id1585042233
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2t4Ksk4TwmZ6MSfAHXGkJI
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/leadership-in-action
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGVhZGVyc2hpcGluYWN0aW9uLmxpdmUvZmVlZC54bWw
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/4263fd02-8c9b-495e-bd31-2e5aef21ff6b/leadership-in-action
YouTube - https://youtu.be/DWgYjCZz6Kk

Takeaways:

To actually scale a business, there is much more than just having good operations. Running a successful, profitable business is different than making a business that can scale. While it’s good to make sure the business runs well, it’s not the key to scaling.
There are three keys to scaling a company: 1) Your customers must love what you offer and they must love doing business with you; 2) Your employees must absolutely love working with you; 3) You have to make money while doing it.
Customers love business regardless of how well they are run, they really just need to love the product. Eg: Apple makes good products but interacting with the company is dreadful for most customers.
There is a checklist of five things to make a company that can scale: 1) Get your business operationally strong; 2) Have an extremely strong senior team; 3) Figure out your place in the market; 4) Get sales, marketing, and operations functions all lined up with your uniques; 5) Adopt a red light customer service culture.
A “Red Light Customer Service Culture” means that if the customer has a problem and the company can control it then the company has a problem. Clients must feel as though nothing else matters more to the company than them.
If you really want to scale, you need to hire people who are smarter than you. You need people in your business who are going to take it to the next level.
Even more so than commodity-type businesses, unique strategy businesses must have a firm grasp on both their target market and their TAM (total addressable market).

Links:

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-crews-ccg/
Website: https://crewsconsultinggroup.com/

Quote of the Show

“If you're going to truly scale a business, you're going to need to have much more than good operations to be able to make that happen.” - Eric Crews

Shout Outs:

Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great

Ways to Tune In:

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-in-action/id1585042233
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2t4Ksk4TwmZ6MSfAHXGkJI
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/leadership-in-action
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGVhZGVyc2hpcGluYWN0aW9uLmxpdmUvZmVlZC54bWw
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/4263fd02-8c9b-495e-bd31-2e5aef21ff6b/leadership-in-action
YouTube - https://youtu.be/DWgYjCZz6Kk

Previous Episode

Leaders Creating Leaders - Lisa Vitale - Leadership in Action- Episode #017

Everyone points to the most famous or most controversial people when discussing ‘great leaders’ but most entrepreneurs can’t and/or shouldn’t apply what those ‘leaders’ do. The President-Elect of EO Boston, Lisa Vitale, is here to set the record straight on leadership. You’ll learn about developing leaders in your team, what the true essence of leadership is and how to involve your team when planning for the future. Start revitalizing how you think about leadership and create more leaders.

Takeaways:

At its core, leadership should not focus on the leader. The focus of leadership should be on empowering others and being courageous. Don’t get caught up in the celebrity that some leaders achieve.
Much is said of the visionaries who are very hard and very negative to their employees, which for some, can lead to results. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t have this luxury.
Have a defined process for debriefing with your team that outlines what went well, what didn’t and one to three possible ways to fix those things that didn’t go too well.
As a leader, you should do everything within your power to promote and develop those around you and help form them into leaders so that if you were not there, they could still run things. Think of it as ‘firing’ yourself from the day to day tasks.
When there is a problem don’t overreact and make sure not to be overly harsh with the perpetrator. Empathize with them and try to relate their mistake to one you yourself have made. Stay disciplined and create connections with others, don’t sever them.
Be sure to really take ownership of your mistakes, this builds accountability and promotes a better work environment. Make sure not to expect different treatment than anyone else.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help! You can’t know everything, you should be able to rely on your team when you may not have the most accurate answer. This will help your team develop a sense of ownership and leadership.

Links:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisa-vitale-a820b53
Twitter: @SimplyDIRECT_Co
Company website: https://simplydirect.com/

Quote of the Show

“Being a good leader is not about the leader, it's really about having courage” -Lisa Vitale

Book Recommendations:

The Big Leap by Gay Henderson
Vivid Vision by Cameron Harold

Shout Outs:

Bill Flynn - Coach

Ways to Tune In:

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-in-action/id1585042233
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2t4Ksk4TwmZ6MSfAHXGkJI
Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/leadership-in-action
Google Play - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGVhZGVyc2hpcGluYWN0aW9uLmxpdmUvZmVlZC54bWw
Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/4263fd02-8c9b-495e-bd31-2e5aef21ff6b/leadership-in-action
YouTube - https://youtu.be/VubMucDD1Ag

Next Episode

No More Silver Bullets - Dale Bertrand - Leadership in Action - Episode #019

Businesses new and old are all looking to digital marketing to provide the one cure-all solution to all of the company’s challenges. Here to shatter this wistful illusion is Dale Bertrand, the founder and president of Fire&Spark, who has a lifetime of experience with digital marketing. Learn how to assess and approach digital marketing for businesses of all sizes, why you always need to be talking with your customers, and how to experiment with and implement digital marketing tactics

Takeaways:

It may not be what you want to hear, but there is not a single silver bullet digital marketing tactic that will fix all of your business woes. If digital marketing is even right for you the approach you take is entirely dependent on your company’s unique situation.
For young companies, it’s more important and valuable to focus on finding where the first customer is going to come from than where the millionth customer comes from. Try to think about just one customer and what you can do now to really wow them.
It’s a myth that if you use a digital channel, you won’t have to talk to any customers and you can still be successful. Talking with customers informs you on the effectiveness of your messaging, what interested them in the product and why they bought it.
For companies that are just starting out, call your customers and understand why they bought, and listen carefully to what they say and what words they use. This can help you understand the ‘why’ behind the story of the data you’re seeing.
Established companies have more mature marketing, however, they should constantly be improving their messaging, targeting, and product or service so it’s remarkable within that space.
In established companies, try out $500 experiments that run for two weeks each. Try different channels, regardless of how they performed in years prior as your messaging, targeting, and product offerings have improved since then.
Don’t attribute the failure of a $500 experiment to the channel, the failure is likely more because the combination of messaging, targeting, etc. was not optimized. Find what worked in the campaign and what didn’t and apply those lessons in the future.

Links:

Quote of the Show: