Latest / The ROI Online Podcast / Doubledare CEO Scott Anderson on How to Overcome the 4 Year Plateau: The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 84

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Doubledare CEO Scott Anderson on How to Overcome the 4 Year Plateau: The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 84 · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:04
  Scott Anderson: You know? And this is really hard, it was hard for me to buy at first. But the only thing worse than no customers is a bad customer.
• 0:10
  Scott Anderson: Because a bad customer will eat you alive, regardless of the industry, and no matter how many dollars that are pumping through your business, if it's taking a troll on your team, you know, if you have a bully client, for example, and you're losing dollars on every deal, this is a complete loser. And in fact, I teach a program on how to resign clients like this, because it's so counterintuitive for us. And yet, if we continue this way, we're going to go out of business. There's this myth that a lot of entrepreneurs have that we can't fire any clients.
• 0:49
  Steve Brown: Hi, everybody.
• 0:49
  Steve Brown: Welcome to the ROI Online Podcast where we believe you, the courageous entrepreneurs of our day, are the invisible heroes of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown. And this is a place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together.
• 1:21
  Steve Brown: Scott Anderson, welcome to the ROI Online Podcast.
• 1:26
  Scott Anderson: Thank you. Thank you, Steve, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
• 1:30
  Steve Brown: So Scott, first of all, we got to grab everybody in and sell them on the reason why they want to listen to the rest of this episode. I'm sold on you. And I'm excited about this.
• 1:42
  Steve Brown: You're the founder and CEO of Doubledare. You're the author of Playing Big, a practical guide for forgetting your limitations and remembering the powerful person you are. And you're also, you've got another book called Narrow Thinking, using niche marketing to broaden your sales and profits. And it's excellent for plateaued companies. So, Scott, where should we set the hook?
• 2:12
  Scott Anderson: Well, I one way, and this is a topic that comes up for a lot of my coaching clients is that they particularly like the third or fourth, fifth year marking their businesses is that they've dodged a lot of bullets, and they've survived to live another day. And they're in the year three, four, or five, and they noticed that, um, what was once, maybe a torrid rate of growth is now plateau. And it's just a really painful feeling. I went through it several times in several different businesses until we finally kind of stumbled into an answer firsthand, ourselves. And, and so what happens with plateaued sales, of course, is you begin to worry a little bit about how at risk you are for losing a client or losing a customer or a group of customers. And when you find that you're not really replacing them as quickly as you'd like to, if you're not replacing them at all, then by law of attrition, there's a hole in the bottom of the bucket. And they just keep leaking out. And it's all you can do to maintain a plateau much less to grow beyond it. So a lot of my clients have reported to me that that's kind of like their, mostly their number one issue.
• 3:29
  Scott Anderson: So we created a book called Narrow Thinking, which is basically a guide to niche marketing. And what we discovered in my own advertising agency, which I sold after 25 years, and about the 15th year, we really found that we weren't getting through this plateau issue. And decided to kind of take a crack at it that was different than what we would have done in the past. We had always figured that being all things to all people, we won't rule ourselves out of any potential engagement. And this is especially true in the services industry. The thinking is if I focus too narrowly, that'll actually eliminate a lot of potential business for me.
• 4:18
  Scott Anderson: And a lot of entrepreneurs believe that. But after an extended period plateaued, we were willing to do anything. And finally, you know, we've been prescribing this to our clients, you know, you have to mean something to somebody that's different, and differentiated, and distinct, and if you don't, then you will be commoditized, you'll have no pricing power, and you'll be at a real disadvantage competitively. So we finally decided that we were going to eat around the cookie and started to try this one on.
• 4:53
  Scott Anderson: And what we discovered was, we actually evaluated our aggregate work over 15 years and looked at the areas where we enjoyed the work the most, and especially where we moved the needle the farthest for our clients. And we found a concentration in a couple of industries, in our case, in the food ingredients, industry being in the Midwest, that's big business, including companies like Landa Lakes, and ADM, and KRAFT and huge conglomerate, food corporations.
• 5:27
  Scott Anderson: That was one niche, and the other was in mid market healthcare. That was health systems that were number two or three in their markets, the not number one player in the market.
• 5:39
  Scott Anderson: And in both cases, they have very unique pain points, and very unique issues that a commoditized agency, that was all things to all people might not know about. So what we decided to do was to really focus on understanding those pain points and creating solutions that specifically hit the nail on the head in both industries, and found that that was our way out of the plateau.
• 6:09
  Scott Anderson: It's not what we expected. And it's only because we failed at being all things to all people that were finally willing to consider an alternative. But when you can, and you're on your landing page of your website, for example, your homepage, if you can say, if you can articulate as well or better than your prospective client the pain they're going through, they will assume that you have the answer to it. And that's what our experience was, we focused not on websites, or, you know, digital campaigns or what have you, we focused on the pain points, which is really what people want , in our industry, they don't want websites, they don't want digital campaigns, what they want is for the pain to stop, or to seize opportunities. So for example, in the food ingredients industry, there's a whole range of very specific industry issues and problems. But the game is measured in terms of market share, a point of market share can dramatically change your world. And it's sort of a zero sum game, the food ingredients industry is is stable. And so the only way to really gain is at the expense of a competitor.
• 7:24
  Scott Anderson: So how you do that? And that was the focus of our marketing, was the the science and the experience that we had around capturing market share away from competitors. And when you can be an expert in the industry, not just an expert in how you help people horizontally, but vertically, experts in the industry that transcends, let's say advertising, the business that we were in advertising and marketing, all of a sudden, you have pricing power, again, because you're competitive again. We eliminated all the agencies that didn't know anything about the food ingredients industry, and then that got down to maybe 234 competitors that really specialized in it. And that meant that we made it to the final four in consideration.
• 8:17
  Scott Anderson: Whereas before, as a generalist, we wouldn't have been considered for anything, because we didn't stand for anything, there was no reason for them to buy from us.
• 8:24
  Scott Anderson: So this is, it's kind of contrary to an intuitive thought that a lot of entrepreneurs have. And yet, it's really the difference between being commoditized and having your prices commoditized. And not being able to have any pricing power, and having a business where you can really set your price. In addition, in our business, we were selling as much our advice in our experience as we were websites and public relations campaigns, and that were the necessary ingredients. You know, people were very happy to pay us retainers just to have us available to guide them through strategic issues, which meant that all of a sudden, we were working at a level higher than we had before. We weren't reporting as much to the marketing director, let's say, but maybe the Vice President of Marketing, the Vice President of Sales, possibly even, depending on the size of the business, the C suite. And it was, you know, it was being differentiated versus being commoditized, especially in the advertising world where it's so much project by project work today meant that we had a seat at the big table, if you will, and we didn't have to defend our existence moment by moment as we did before. We were peers. We knew at least as much about their industry as they did, specifically in the marketing area of their business, but we know a lot about the business generally the same way with this mid market healthcare play. And that just became, that just felt a lot better rather than kind of begging for business and cutting your prices so you could build a website, let's say, you know?
• 10:14
  Scott Anderson: And the other part of it was that we found, and a lot of my clients say this, or entrepreneurs running small-ish businesses is that they often have to give away all of their industry knowledge or their general business expertise for free, just so they get to sell their product. In my world, in the marketing communications world, we would give away all kinds of marketing intel, just so we can build them a lousy website. And actually, the what we were giving away was much more valuable than the pieces we were we were getting paid to do.
• 10:52
  Scott Anderson: Our experience and our advice, our insight into their industry was way more important. So we're giving away the crown jewels, just so that we could have chicken feet. So it had a lot to do with sort of flipping that whole value equation on its head. But this is the way to be much more profitable, much more competitive. It's just a much better lifestyle, frankly, to know that you are competitive, and to know that you are important to a certain audience, and then you can answer the specific pain points that they're going through.
• 11:27
  Steve Brown: I think that a lot of companies first get caught up in, Hey, we got to pay your bills, so we'll take any business
• 11:33
  Scott Anderson: Exactly.
• 11:34
  Steve Brown: And then they start to notice that those in the industry are going a certain way. So they're growing their agency bigger, and bigger. And so that's the model that is presented or glorified. And that's when you start to follow.
• 11:51
  Steve Brown: But at some point, you start to notice that the wheels are coming off, that things are breaking down, that you are having more attrition than you wanted, it's harder to find employees to replace your attrition that you're having with employees. So it's like one day, you need to back up and go, Wait a minute, is this is this the real model we should be following or not?
• 12:14
  Scott Anderson: Right, absolutely. Yeah, the other part of it is, of course, is that if you don't have competitive advantage, because you don't really mean anything important to anybody, if you're a generalist, it means that you have to bid your work, to market rates to commoditized rates, you can't charge 20% more than anybody else, you won't get the business. And then you go through exactly the conversation you mentioned, a lot of my clients do well, we have to keep the lights on. So we have to have cash flow. And you know, the problem with this is that if you're losing money on every sale, there's no way that this can be a sustainable, profitable business. I had a conversation with a with a client yesterday, in the same industry, who ran the numbers and realize that they were building a lot of dollars, but they were losing money on every dollar. And that there was no path to prosperity by doing this. The illusion was what we have all this cash flow coming in, and that's keeping the lights on. But when you look at that profit it tells a much different story. And this is why you know, and this is really hard, it was hard for me to buy at first. But the only thing worse than no customers is a bad customer. Because a bad customer will eat you alive, whether regardless of the industry, and no matter how many dollars that are pumping through your business. If it's taking a toll on your team, you know, if you have a bully client, for example, and you're losing dollars on it on every deal, this is a complete loser. And in fact, I teach a program on how to resign clients like this because it's so counterintuitive for us. And yet, if we continue this way, we're going to go out of business. There's this myth that a lot of entrepreneurs have that we can't fire any clients and but I had the same experience in my business, I always driving my best people away, which would completely drive me out of business by making them do business with a bully or otherwise unreasonable customers.
• 14:23
  Steve Brown: You say become an expert at something.
• 14:28
  Scott Anderson: Exactly.
• 14:29
  Steve Brown: But that takes a certain amount of determination or courage. What would you say to someone that's like in that generalist area and is starting to wake up and realize they're in this, being washed downstream with everyone else? How do you plant a flag in somewhere and become an expert in something when maybe you lack the confidence of declaring that?
• 14:56
  Scott Anderson: Sure. Yeah. And and there's also, that's a great Question Steve, and there's always the concern that, you know, I don't want to be a bullshitter. I mean, I want to truly be an expert here. Number one, most entrepreneurs discount what they know. And this is one of the reasons why we give away the crown jewels to get the lousy website or, you know, whatever the equivalent is in your business is that we, for one thing, we take for granted everything that we know. And we kind of write it down to zero, as if everybody must know that.
• 15:32
  Scott Anderson: But everybody doesn't know that.
• 15:32
  Scott Anderson: And that's why we take our clients to a whiteboard exercise, to really identify all the things that they do know, because usually, entrepreneurs know much, much more than they're giving themselves credit for. And this is why we go through kind of a client business history or client history. And we look at all the work that they've done their expertise, both horizontally, in terms of the products or services that they sell, but vertically in terms of the industries that they serve, and the scenarios that they are, they really it turns out, are expert in. So that's number one, that probably accounts for 80% of it. It's just to help our clients see with their own eyes, how much their experience, how much experience they have, and how valuable it could be. So it's usually not a question of having to, you know, read all the trade journals about nuclear submarines and become a nuclear submarine expert, it's not so much that as it is to look at the experience you already have, and begin to understand that it has value. So that's number one.
• 16:39
  Scott Anderson: Number two is just a really, and it's not necessarily a difficult thing to do. But to find out, what are people in that industry really complaining about right now? What's keeping them up at night? There's a great book called Ask by, oh let me see, the name will come to me. It's great book anyway. And the main premise of it is that people are much more willing to talk about, and can much more easily come up with things that they don't like, than they can about the things they want. And when you ask people what's keeping you up at night, they can tell you, if you ask them what they want, it's going to be harder. But if you ask them what they don't want, they can usually tell you, and it's Ryan Levesque is the author, great book. But anyway, so that's the second step is let's, let's find out what they like and don't like what's really keeping them up at night.
• 17:38
  Scott Anderson: And you can, one of the best ways to do that is with LinkedIn. And a great first message to a new customer or prospective customer in the niche that you've identified is to this ask that question.
• 17:49
  Scott Anderson: What's your biggest challenge right now? People can usually answer that one right off the top of their head. And once you begin to understand what the problems are, then you can go to work on first look at your experience and see if you solved it before, or otherwise go to work on trying to solve that problem. But that's really worth doing. So there's a number of ways to do that. The third thing I'd say in terms of building confidence for the entrepreneur, is we didn't abandon are all things to all people strategy.
• 18:25
  Scott Anderson: When we created these niches, we we operated both at the same time. But we just found over time, that the areas where we were getting or where we were growing and breaking through the plateau wasn't in our all things to all people solution, but in our niche solution. And so obviously, we put more resources and more time and more talent against the solution that was producing great results for our clients and great results for us. So it was a it was a natural thing. I never asked my clients to abandon the mothership, and put all their chips on red.
• 19:04
  Scott Anderson: First of all, I don't think anybody would. And second, it's not necessary. But it is possible to kind of put your toe in the water and work your way forward. We actually tested a total of four niches. One was in the natural foods industry. And I can't remember what the other one was related to that. And those niches didn't work for us.
• 19:24
  Scott Anderson: But we just put our toe toe in the water. We did some LinkedIn communication was the main thing. In those days, we could go to trade shows. Today, you can go to discussion groups, and you can really see what the market looks like.
• 19:40
  Steve Brown: Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you about a book that you need to get today. It's the funniest book on marketing. It's called the Golden Toilet, Stop flushing your marketing budget into your website and build a system that grows your business. And guess who wrote it? That's right. I wrote it. I wrote it just for you, because I want to help you get past the last hurdles of setting up your business and getting it squared away. I wrote it so that you can avoid time, wasting time, wasting money, wasting frustration. Get the book on Audible, you can get it on Kindle, you can get it on Amazon, but get the book, take advantage of the insights in there, and let me know what you think. And now back to this excellent episode.
• 20:33
  Steve Brown: So what do you mean by the audacity of focused caution?
• 20:39
  Scott Anderson: That's exactly what I'm talking about, thanks.
• 20:42
  Scott Anderson: I guess you must have taken that from Narrow Thinking? Yeah, well that's really what it is. I mean, it seems like it takes all kinds of guts to make this kind of a decision. And yet, when you think about it, you know, at the end of the day, if you look at any area of your own life, when you look at your number one challenge that you're having, if it's really challenging, and really painful, most people will throw money at it, to make it go away. You know, think of your worst on business problem, for example, I was having a conversation with a client today about lead generation. And we always want our clients to create their own lead generation systems and practices, because better to have control, than to not have control. But in this particular instance, given a sort of a tight timeframe, you know, there are companies that can solve that problem. I mean that, you know, there are probably too many lead generation companies right now.
• 21:39
  Scott Anderson: And not all of them are good.
• 21:43
  Scott Anderson: But you know, if you could find someone you really trusted, and your problem was meeting more leads, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs are going to be tempted to throw money at that, like you can produce leads and I don't have to worry about it?
• 21:56
  Scott Anderson: Oh, my God! You know, that's one of the reasons why it's sort of the biz op dejure, lead generation. But if you look at any area where you're having a problem, and if you know, and if somebody says I got the solution to the problem, you know, people will throw money. I just read today that in aggregate, all of the vaccine manufacturers, all the pharmaceutical companies, their market value has grown 650% since March. And of course, it is because they're solving a very specific problem that people have a tremendous need for, if they had been, you know, trying to create a vaccine for some other disease, that was number 10. On the list, they wouldn't have much luck. But they put most of their eggs in that basket. And their market share increased by almost seven times for their market value. So similarly for us as entrepreneurs, find a problem to solve, find a group that you're familiar with, find out what's really bothering them and figure out how to solve the problem, at least in part, if not completely.
• 23:04
  Steve Brown: Let's talk about your book, Playing Big. What triggered your conviction to write that?
• 23:14
  Scott Anderson: Oh, thanks.
• 23:14
  Scott Anderson: Yeah, you know, I wrote that as I was selling my advertising agency, and kind of going through a burnout experience myself, and starting to launch my coaching practice. First within the advertising agency that I co owned at the time, and ultimately sold. And there's a line from a great book by Marianne Williamson called The Return to Love, and she uses the expression about playing big. In fact, it's the quote in the beginning of the book. And I was honored to have Marianne, give me permission to use that quote, as the opening quote for the book and as the title of the book. But basically, and I'll kind of abbreviate the quote, unless you have it handy.
• 24:07
  Steve Brown: I have it handy, I wrote it down. It says, You're a child of God, your playing small, doesn't serve the world.
• 24:15
  Steve Brown: Marianne Williamson.
• 24:18
  Scott Anderson: Yeah. And, you know, that's what kind of occurred to me was that, you know, I was working with great people, and people with much more talent and skill than I had, business was going really well, largely due to them. And I was just really burnt out as a person. And I felt like there was something else that I could do, something else I could contribute. And so playing small might have been to somehow stay on in this role and let the years tick by. And so this was kind of the, I was trying to inspire myself really, and that quote from Marianne Williamson really put its finger on it, I really do believe that we're all blessed with talents, and it's our job to use them. And I felt at the moment was that I was writing the book that I wasn't using mine. So I was writing that book as much for me really, as anybody else was to inspire me and to keep me going, and to kind of only be like one step ahead of my own actions. Um, you know, and actually, the whole idea of writing a book was so daunting, I felt like such a jerk writing a book of this kind that was, you know, making some pretty bold claims and was talking about something that for people in this kind of stuck place is really, really painful.
• 25:52
  Scott Anderson: And so it was a challenge every day to get up and try to do it.
• 25:58
  Scott Anderson: And without my co writer, Mark Lana, who is a fantastic ghost writer, he started started his ghost writing career and writing this book with me, I would never have gotten it done. But yeah, that's really it is that, you know, if you believe that, that you've been given talents to use, and it's a sin not to use them, so to speak, then the question is to find ways to deploy yourself. And that's what I really, you know, what I hope to do in my work with my clients is to help them maximize their impact and maximize the meaning in what they're doing. A lot of entrepreneurs for example, as I say, I work with a lot of them that are at the five year mark or so, sales have plateaued, they've created a lot of systems, maybe not all they need, but a lot of systems, so the business runs more smoothly than it did, it probably needs to take a step farther, not only in breaking through the sales plateau, but also in changing or sculpting I guess, the founders role. Most founders at that point find they're still in the weeds in lots of different areas. And in a lot of ways, they're acting just as they did when they started the company, they're wearing way too many hats. And not only are they not good at all of those hats, but there are lots of ways to do the work better, faster and cheaper.
• 27:26
  Scott Anderson: I say to my clients, if they have a internal, hourly or an effective hourly rate of $100 an hour or $200 an hour, then it's ridiculous for them to do $20 an hour work. And we need to peel off as much of that as we possibly can. If the business is going to break through the plateau, to leverage the owner founder into and more important to the idea of playing big so that they're using their talents that they're operating in their genius zone most of the time on not only does that help them live happier, meaningful lives but and play big, but it also is the the main engine of breaking through these plateaus. Anyway, that's what Playing Big was for me. One interesting piece about, I'll just tell you about the creation of this book. I was working with a coach at the time wonderful guy named Jeremy Stover wonderful guy is in San Francisco. Great coach, great man. And I just I knew what I wanted to do with this book. But I just had this overwhelming sense of what kind of a jerk would write a book like this, you know, Who do you think you are kind of a message in my head. And he said, this is a technique I like to use to kind of reframe or change the come from or the perspective. And so he asked me, How do you think Tony Robbins writes books? Do you think he struggles at his desk the way you are? And I said, No. He said, Well, how do you think Anthony Robbins writes his books? And I said, I don't think he writes them. I think he's got a team. And I think mainly what they do is transcribe things he said, and polish it and create books out of it. But I don't think he spends any time on a keyboard.
• 29:19
  Scott Anderson: He said, You're right, so how could you do that? And this led to me calling my old critic, director and friend, Mark Lana.
• 29:27
  Scott Anderson: And I said, how would it be? I have an outline for this book.
• 29:31
  Scott Anderson: But I just, you know, and I trusted and I really love him, such a wonderful guy. I said, Would you help me? And what we'll do is every Saturday we'll get together. I'll give you the outline and some bullet points, you create some questions. And every Saturday morning we got on a toll free line, recorded so we could record the call and then transcribe it. And that's how we wrote the book. So we do one chapter After a Saturday, and it took about, you know, three months, I guess, to get through the book, it's kind of a short book. And he, you know, we just followed the outline that I created. And he added some really powerful questions that made me think, we just had a conversation for like an hour, hour and a half every Saturday morning. And after three months, we had a book, we had a draft of a book, because he just sent the recording to rev.com, rev.com send him the transcript, he polished the transcript made it all kind of makes sense, I guess, it was really good to have a third, also a third set, or second set of eyes. And, and that's what Playing Big was. But it's interesting, it really came out of a coaching session where my coach challenged me to look at writing book in a completely different way. And I think it's much, much better book as a result of Mark's involvement than it ever would have been if I tried to do it my way. And my way probably would never have resulted in a book I probably still be working on it.
• 31:06
  Steve Brown: So approaching it in a different way helped you bust through a plateau that would have stymied you?
• 31:13
  Scott Anderson: Exactly, and to look at it with a different set of eyes. You know, essentially the question was, what would Tony Robbins do? And, you know, I use that with my clients, so I have them look at it, you know, I ask them to name somebody that they admire, and it doesn't matter, you know, who that person is. So whether they say LeBron James or Kamala Harris or you know, whoever they pick, what would Kamala Harris, what would her perspective be on the problem you're going through right now? It's just a great way to get people to crack open the issue and change the conversation.
• 31:51
  Steve Brown: So in one of the chapters, Leading Big, if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more your leader. So you're having to walk the walk in the satellite, this plateau busting?
• 32:07
  Scott Anderson: Exactly. Yeah, there's also a part in the book that I call channeling. And, in the same way that mystics or I don't know, palm readers would channel a spirit from some other dimension of life. Similarly I recommend this technique of channeling and the idea is, again, imagine that you're LeBron James, Tony Robbins, Kamala Harris, Beyonce, you know, your mother, your father, whatever. And, you know, channel them for a moment get in their heads, and what would they do with this problem? Or this opportunity? And I found that that's, that's been tremendously helpful. In fact, it was Jeremy who first gave me the idea, and it's just incredibly powerful, really, really helpful.
• 33:01
  Steve Brown: So that could potentially help you narrow down and figure out your niche?
• 33:08
  Scott Anderson: Could be, absolutely. You know, it helps to have a lot of hands involved.
• 33:11
  Scott Anderson: I've done this whiteboard exercise for a number of my clients. And what I find is, it's usually the owner, founder or entrepreneur who is the most bound up about, you know, are we really the expert in anything?
• 33:27
  Scott Anderson: But when I get their team involved, you know, whether it's a remote team or a spouse, for example, involved, and we start going through the history, they're much more open to it.
• 33:37
  Scott Anderson: For some reason, they don't have the reservations that the founder entrepreneur does, and they're able to look at it a lot more objectively. And to kind of reassure the the founder, that, you know, we know a lot more than we think we do. And we've done a lot more work than we realize. And it's valuable, we've learned not just how to build another website, or whatever it is. We've learned how to think about this industry. And we've got a lot of great learnings from it.
• 34:07
  Steve Brown: So deep down into our greatness, not our smallness, that we fear, that's the thing where we're struggling to get past?
• 34:16
  Scott Anderson: Yeah, I think so. There's just, and it probably goes back to caveman DNA, you know, I mean, well, I know that it does, you know, the cavemen that found a nice place to live lived longer than those that said, Well, why don't we climb over this mountain and see what's on the other side of it?
• 34:37
  Scott Anderson: Now, there's something inherent in human beings to find something that's pretty good and hunker down. And you know, there's a big part in our bones and in our genes that says, find something good and don't rock the boat. And yet, there are crazy entrepreneurs, Steve like you and like me who, for some reason thing, let's go over the mountains and I don't care how many dinosaurs there are, or saber toothed tigers, let's check it out. So there's, you know, it's it's the varying degrees, everybody has that desire for spaces and for equilibrium. But so, and it's a hard thing to defeat. But there are lots of great ways to do that. And that is playing big. I mean, it's definitely a courageous act, I don't think there's a bigger one than that.
• 35:30
  Scott Anderson: To do what other people aren't doing. The idea of not having a job, right, is in itself for a lot of people, literally insanity. But if the last 20 years of American commerce and economy hasn't taught us anything else, it's probably taught us that the idea that their safety and having a job is not so true.
• 35:56
  Steve Brown: So tell us about Doubledareyou.us
• 36:04
  Scott Anderson: Thank you. Yeah, doubledare is an executive coaching, consulting and training company. And we work for entrepreneurs, who are core stock, and want to go higher.
• 36:20
  Scott Anderson: And again, these are typically companies that you're five, and they've got, you know, at least a couple of million dollars worth of sales, and things are not bad, but they're not good.
• 36:32
  Scott Anderson: And there's the sinking feeling because an entrepreneur knows in his or her gut, that this is not sustainable, that there is a hole at the bottom of the bucket, we're going to lose customers, or clients, however you look at it. And our business is going to shrink unless we do something. And they also wonder, is our company sustainable? Is our model sustainable? Does it have a competitive difference?
• 36:54
  Scott Anderson: So that's what Doubledare does is work with entrepreneurs and their leadership teams, sometimes. For both individual and team coaching. We have a online leadership development platform. That is for first and second time leaders. The idea here is to help entrepreneurs build their benches by giving well proven leadership principles, to their up and coming rock stars, our slogan for Doubledare Academy is turning rockstar doers into rockstar leaders, we tend to turn the best salesman or woman into the head of sales. And that can often be a terrible mistake, especially if that person either doesn't have leadership, desire or ability, or has had no leadership training. So we provide training to help develop young leaders and give them principles to use and also the predictable problems of first time leadership. We tell them what those are, and we kind of coach against those and teach ways out of those. For example, micromanagement is probably the number one leadership mistake that new leaders make and some old leaders. But for the current workforce, especially micromanagement is deadly. It's the fastest way to drive people out of your business. So what do we do though, as leaders to be to be confident that work is getting done and it's high quality and so forth. So with micromanagement we teach people to see what it is to see the symptoms to know what they're doing it themselves, number one and then number two, we teach them very simple repeatable coaching techniques, so that they can achieve what they need to achieve, but do so in a way that provides autonomy to their teams. And we go through you know, there's actually boiled it down to six most frequent leadership mistakes. It comes out of research by a company called Hogan, who developed 21 reasons we boiled it down to six, we basically teach against those six and provide repeatable alternative behaviors.
• 39:16
  Steve Brown: Awesome. So if someone wants to kind of reach out and connect with you about if maybe they're a good fit for your Academy? What's the best way for them to do that?
• 39:28
  Scott Anderson: You know, the best way, thanks for asking Steve. The best way is probably to email me. My email address is scott@doubledareyou.us And if you do that, you know, you can request a copy of Playing Big I can send you either a Kindle version or a PDF. Or if you'd like a copy of Narrow Thinking, I also be happy to send you that free, or you can go to our website which is doubvledareyou.us And you can request a free sample coaching session to get a sense of what coaching really is ask questions, but also be actually coached in the session and get a sense of whether this is something you want to explore.
• 40:18
  Steve Brown: Awesome, Scott, I appreciate you being an excellent guest on the ROI Online Podcast.
• 40:24
  Scott Anderson: Thank you so much, Steve. It's been great to talk to you and really appreciate the opportunity.
• 40:30
  Steve Brown: My pleasure, and that's a wrap.
• 40:32
  Steve Brown: Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast. For more, be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better. Be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden Toilet at surprise, thegoldentoilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast.