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Overview

Mike shares his wisdom around when to scale, how to scale, and how to empower and develop the team around you. We believe this has been the secret sauce behind Simple Modern’s success.

Learn

How to scale well: develop yourself and develop others
Stages of CEO/leader
Attracting A players
Funding’s role in scaling
Keeping vision in front of your people

“We never grow to the point where we won’t benefit from the insights and other people speaking into our life. That’s going to cost time, it’s going to cost money, but it’s a worthwhile investment.”

— Mike Beckham, Co-Founder and CEO, Simple Modern

Episode Transcript

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Episode Highlights

Tone setting (0:45)
How to prepare yourself to thrive when challenged with growth (5:15)
Finding a sustainable pace when growing (5:55)
Our need for feedback loops (6:50)
Example of the progression you will go through as a leader growing (10:50)
Role of funding in the scaling process (17:45)
Why it’s hard to move to the next step of growth (22:30)
Creating an environment where people can grown and scale 25:00)
How to attract A Players to your company/organization (28:00)
Mike Drop Moment: Great leaders multiply themselves. (31:25)

Powerful Quotes

“Growth can be scary. Growth is taxing. Growth is challenging.” -Mike

“Growth that is too rapid or mismanaged growth is one of the biggest reasons why organizations and businesses fail.” -Mike

“We can probably all think of examples in our life, when we've had a period where there was so much growth, that it was a really hard thing, or even maybe a negative thing.” -Mike

“If you're managing a team, or an organization or a family that's growing rapidly, you're going to have to grow just as rapidly if you want to try and lead.” -Mike

“The reality is when we have other people that reflect back to us what they see, we get more self awareness, we develop more humility, and we also see the ways that we can grow.” -Mile

“We never grow to the point where we won't benefit from the insights and other people speaking into our life. That's going to cost time, it's going to cost money, but it's a worthwhile investment.” -Mike

“There are going to be seasons of our life where we're managing growth in one area of our life, we're going to have to narrow our focus, and we're going to have to say no, or reduce our responsibilities in other areas. And that's nothing to be ashamed of, that's just wisdom to be able to make those trade off choices.” -Mike

“Growing anything requires developing and empowering more leaders. You cannot do it all on your own.” -Mike

“If you're growing the base of leaders, then you're growing the number of people that are going to be capable of helping to manage the growth and shoulder the burden of growing organization.” -Mike

“As you become more and more of a leader in any organization, you get abstracted from the on the field day to day, and it becomes a little bit more difficult to draw straight line between your contribution and winning.” -Mike

“Secure leaders are calm constantly saying how do I recruit people that are even better than I am or that can be better than I am.” -Mike

“Great leaders multiply themselves. They create an environment of generosity where people are entrusted with responsibility, where people are developed. And as a result, there’s this culture of constantly growing more leaders and it leads to effective organizations and teams.”

— Mike Beckham, Co-Founder and CEO of Simple Modern

Questions you can ask yourself today:

What's an area of your life that's experiencing growth? Or could experience some pretty significant growth in the next year or two?
What are some ways that you can be developing yourself to be the kind of leader needed?
How are you investing in your personal development?
What are the sources of feedback that you have? What are the information sources that you're using to learn from the experience wisdom of other people?
Which of the roles do you fill right now in the key teams in your life? Are you a player, a player coach, coach or general manager?
Which of those roles are you filling in each of your major teams?
What's the most difficult thing about transitioning to the next step?