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Turning Good Intentions into Reality in Your Career, Business and Life

scaling

How to Scale a Creative Organization

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William Warren found himself using his sketching and storytelling talents while working at Chick-fil-A. After positive feedback from his teammates, he wondered if he had a successful business idea right in front of him.

Listen to William share more about his story on the Launch Youniversity podcast.

Today, William has a successful and fast-growing business — The Sketch Effect. He says even though they are quickly expanding, it hasn’t been without trials. [Read more…] about How to Scale a Creative Organization

081: Predictable Success with Les McKeown

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PREDICTABLE SUCCESS with Les McKeown on The Launch Youniversity Podcast
The Launch Youniversity Podcast
081: Predictable Success with Les McKeown
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Summary:

Les McKeown is joining us on the Launch Youniversity Podcast, and we couldn’t be more honored to have a conversation with him. Les is the brilliant mind behind books like Predictable Success and The Synergist. Today, Kevin and Jeff are sitting down with Les to talk about Predictable Success: the underlying, repeating patterns in the context of any organization. Les is sharing his knowledge on how to get there, how to stay there, and how to diagnose where your business is in the life cycle.

Welcome to Episode 081 of The Launch Youniversity Podcast.

Links + Resources:

Predictable Success by Les McKeown

The Synergist by Les McKeown

Three Takeaways:

1. There are three stages of growth.

The growth stages are where 80% of all new businesses fail. These stages are fun and exciting, but challenging, as you begin to make mistakes and land in white-water.

Early struggle means you haven’t broken through to profitability. If this is where your business is, you need to focus on one thing: finding a profitable and sustainable market.

Les’ advice: Having one large client doesn’t mean you’ve found a market. You can quickly lose that one client and find that you actually have no market.

2. The peak stage is Predictable Success.

The peak stage is the stage of Predictable Success. What’s the difference between this stage and the fun stage? Scalability. When you’re in this stage, you can grow your business to however big your industry will allow. It’s a stage of fun and excitement while having the right processes and procedures in place to keep things on track. If you do the right things, your business can stay here forever.

3. There are three stages of decline.

The treadmill stage is the opposite of white-water. In white-water, you have no process. In the treadmill, you have too much process. There’s a checklist for everything, and the team is motivated by seeing that each box has a checkmark. The business becomes numb to the fact that it’s beginning to decline.

When the business finds itself in the death rattle, there still may be signs of life. You might still have clients or team members…but they’re false signs of life. You don’t have a market for your business anymore, you aren’t growing or doing anything new, and your talent decides to move on.

071: Customer Experience, Culture and Scaling with Chicken Salad Chick’s Scott Deviney

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Chicken Salad Chick on the Launch Youniversity Podcast
The Launch Youniversity Podcast
071: Customer Experience, Culture and Scaling with Chicken Salad Chick's Scott Deviney
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Summary:

Welcome to Episode 71 of The Launch Youniversity Podcast. On this episode, Kevin talks with Chicken Salad Chick CEO Scott Deviney. Chicken Salad Chick has grown remarkably under Scott’s leadership, and today he’s sharing his wisdom on culture, customer experience, scaling franchise locations and more. We hope you find Scott’s advice as fascinating and inspiring as we did.

Links + Resources:

Chicken Salad Chick

The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni

Elevator Pitch | Minimum words, Maximum results

Free Personal Brand Assessment

DISC Personality Assessment

Three Takeaways:

1. It’s not just about the product, it’s about the people and experience. 

Your product is important, but your product alone won’t keep you in business if your customers have a bad experience. Chicken Salad Chick isn’t successful just because they make great chicken salad (though, they do!). It’s also because they provide fresh food in a clean space with friendly and helpful team members.

2. Business mentors will show up at the right time. 

One of most-asked questions we get at Launch Youniversity is: How do I find a mentor? Mentors are incredibly important on the entrepreneur’s (lonely) journey. Scott’s advice is to stop stressing about when and how. Instead, focus on building genuine relationships with other business owners, entrepreneurs and members of your community. One day you’ll look up and realize you have several mentors in your corner.

3. Sales and growth don’t solve all your problems. 

Scott realized that in order for CSC to reach its full potential, they needed to focus on culture and hiring. To focus on culture and hiring, they needed to slow down on selling franchise locations for a season of time. If there are cracks in the foundation of your business, more sales might lead to more problems. You don’t need to slam on the breaks, but you can tap on them.

053: The Best of Launch Youniversity 2017

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SUMMARY:

It’s been a great year of interviews and conversations here at Launch Youniversity! As you begin to wrap up your year, here are a few of our favorites about community, branding, and scaling.

Welcome to Episode 53 of the Launch Youniversity Podcast

LINKS + RESOURCES:

Clay Scroggins’ Full Episode

Eryn Eddy’s Full Episode

Shane and David’s Full Episode

Jan Smith’s Full Episode

Justin Miller’s Full Episode

TAKEAWAYS:

Clay Scroggins on Thinking Critically

Critical thinking is a skill you practice in tandem with choosing positivity. It’s looking at any given situation and asking yourself “How could I or we add value here?”

Eryn Eddy on Building a Community

Don’t use social media as a megaphone. Use it as a way to engage with your audience. Talk with them, not at them.

Shane and David on Personal Branding

Your brand stamp is what you say about yourself, but your brand shadow is what others say about your brand.

Jan Smith on Delegating

If you are willing to replicate and delegate, your business can grow beyond you. Jan could only sell a limited hours of her time so she made an effort to teach and replicate her skills with others she felt had the musical knowledge. This allowed Jan and her team to replicate and delegate efficiently to new staff without losing the quality of working with Jan personally.

Justin Miller on Self-Care

Even passion needs to take a back seat to personal care. For Justin, this means setting boundaries with his schedule. It means time blocking parts of his day to pour into his team. It means acknowledging that even though he is saving lives in Africa, his wife and child always come first. Passion is an incredible thing, but we need to steward it correctly to be successful with it.

040: Starting and Scaling a Creative Business with William Warren

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Starting and Scaling a Creative Business with William Warren
The Launch Youniversity Podcast
040: Starting and Scaling a Creative Business with William Warren
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Summary:

What can happen when you combine your passion with your talent? That’s where William Warren of The Sketch Effect found himself when he decided to open his own creative business. The only problem with creative businesses is, as the creator, it can be tough to scale. Today William is here to tell us about his journey to launching his own business and the lessons he’s learned so far from starting and scaling a creative business.

Welcome to episode 40 of the Launch Youniversity Podcast.

Links + Resources:

TheSketchEffect.com

The Sketch Effect on Instagram

Jeff Shinabarger of Plywood People on Episode 13 + Episode 14

Three Takeaways:

1. Control what you can control, standardize what you can standardize, teach what you can teach.
When you own a business based on creativity and artistry, it can feel like an impossible task to scale. William’s solution is wise: control, standardize, and teach where and when you can. This means that no matter who the artist is, they are using the same materials as every other sketch effect artist from canvas to markers. There’s a methodology in place to choose the colors. There’s system in place for how each artist draws different objects or writes out typography. All of these processes help grow the business with new artists, while maintaining a consistent look for all products from The Sketch Effect.

2. Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Culture is everything when you’re growing your business. On a business side, when you have your mission, vision and values documented it tells you how to hire, fire and coach people on your team. On a personal side, don’t you want to build a business that you’d want to work at?

3. Don’t go at it alone.
William says that one of the best things he ever did was start an advisory board for The Sketch Effect. He needed more people looking out for the business, speaking into dreams, goals and plans. In addition to an advisory board, he’s involved in a peer group for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship can be isolating, but you don’t need to go at it alone 

008: Chef Ford Fry on Launching with Purpose and Authenticity

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Chef Ford Fry on Launching with Purpose and Authenticity
The Launch Youniversity Podcast
008: Chef Ford Fry on Launching with Purpose and Authenticity
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Summary:

On last week’s episode, Chef Ford Fry told us that his passion for people and experiences fuels him to continue launching restaurants. Through this, he has become one of the most successful and recognized chefs and restaurateurs in Atlanta. Missed last week’s episode? Listen now. 

In today’s episode, Ford walks us through his process of taking an idea for a restaurant, designing a full concept, and ultimately opening its doors to the public. His approach is unique—instead of building everything around his idea, he starts with a location and builds his ideas around the needs of the neighborhood. This servant-leadership way of thinking has resulted in restaurants that feel authentic and serves a greater purpose in the city.

Welcome to episode 8 of the Launch Youniversity Podcast.

Links + Resources:

Three Takeaways:

1.  Use your product, service or idea to serve a need. Ford doesn’t start with a restaurant idea. He starts with a location and creates a restaurant that fits the neighborhood and serves the city. You might not be launching a restaurant, but it’s a mindset that can be applied to any launch: Am I serving a real need with my product, service or idea?

2. Empower people to do what they do best. Ford builds out the restaurant concept and decides what the feel and tone should be, and then he hands his ideas over to graphic and interior designers who are gifted in bringing ideas to life. You don’t need to be everything to everyone. Know what you’re good at and then bring in the right people to help you fill in the gaps.

3. Advertising isn’t the only way to have a successful business. Ford’s mentality is to be the best in class and the right kind of stories and press will follow.