My guest today is Chris Yeh, entrepreneur, investor, writer, and mentor with two Bachelor’s degrees with distinction from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. Chris co-authored the New York Times best-seller The Alliance as well as the book Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn). Chris wrote Blitzscaling with Reid to explain how some of the largest companies in the world like Amazon, AirBNB, and Uber use a very specific set of offensive, competitive strategies that prioritize speed to achieve massive scale at incredible speed.
In this episode, Chris is going to demystify what some of the world's most valuable companies did in order to reach their highest highs and then break down his concept of blitzscaling. He’ll even go over the principles and methodologies in his book and how they apply to any idea or business. We’ll break down the different principles and methodologies in the book and how they can apply to any idea or business.
Chris Yeh is a writer, investor, and entrepreneur who has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scaleups since 1995. He has authored such books as The Alliance and Blitzscaling (co-authored with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn), the book that explains how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb in record time. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations.
13:20 - “It really is the case that these feedback loops are getting stronger and stronger. [...] The feedback loop of talent and capital. We’ve seen this happen. Companies that breakout to an early lead find it much easier to attract great talent and the follow-on capital and that’s because people love a winner.” - Chris Yeh
13:53 - “Think of the number of millionaires that have been minted by the Facebooks and the Googles and the AirBnBs of the world.” - Chris Yeh
14:40 - “There’s a little bit of a controversy there because the term Blitzscaling is explicitly modeled on the term Blitzkrieg, which you may remember from your history lessons of WWII. It’s the concept of a lightning war, where your forces go out ahead of their supply line, and is moving faster than anyone is possibly anticipating. It’s a high risk, high reward strategy.” - Chris Yeh
16:00 - “The associations with blitz are very different but they all share the same thing. When you hear the word blitz–whether you’re thinking about it from a historical perspective or a modern sports perspective– you’re thinking about taking a risk and really going for it.” - Chris Yeh
30:15 - “I think a big part of [successfully breaking out of that traditional mold] is having comfort with uncertainty and risk.” - Chris Yeh
32:56 - “The piratical approach has been long worshipped at Silicon Valley. Now we are very careful to distinguish between the lovable rogue and the sociopathic killer.” - Chris Yeh
36:56 - “You have to adapt and adjust. What happens is, as you grow your company, you’ve got these marines that have taken this beach for you, you’ve got to find them another beach. Cause taking a bunch of marines and telling them, ‘Now you’re going to be cops.’ Bad idea.” - Chris Yeh
42:38 - “When you grow quickly, all the normal processes break down.” - Chris Yeh
43:20 - “The reason that culture is important is because when a company grows that quickly, the founder can’t be everywhere. There’s not just enough you to go around. In order for people to make the right decisions when you’re not there, you have to be able to build a culture.” - Chris Yeh
“Blitzscaling 08: Eric Schmidt on Structuring Teams and Scaling Google” Youtube Video
Mastering Your Cash Flow Digital Course
Reach out to me if you have questions about the boot camp!
You can also reach out to me via email at [email protected], or on my LinkedIn.
My guest today is Bill Casey. Bill is the Vice Chair of the Transaction Advisory Services department of EY (Ernst & Young Global Limited.) He has been an employee of EY for 35 years and has seen many market changes come and go. Bill has an MBA and a background in audit, a solid career choice he believes for anybody wanting to get into the financial sector. During today’s show, we discuss the 2018 M&A Firepower Report. Bill shares some of the trends emerging in this year’s report. We speculate what that could mean for the economy and how American tax reforms are affecting the trends. Bill also gives some foolproof advice for business owners thinking about selling in 2018. We cover the traits that are making companies attractive to buyers and how a seller can make their company more enticing in this current climate. You will learn about: Bill’s financial industry background. The M&A Report basic overview. How markets are blending their services to better serve the consumer. The benefits of embracing technology in business. How to create good synergy to attract a buyer. The role data analytics is playing in business planning. How to prepare for a seller’s exit. The reasons sellers are selling to private equity firms. The 3 factors to consider during a sell, other than the price. Know what you want to accomplish with your sale. Why cash deals are becoming more common. How to build a great team to run your company. The main thing a seller should focus on when selling. How to align your team regarding the future of the company. Strategies a seller and a buyer can use to achieve ...
An avid builder is probably the best way to describe Will Pemble. Will is a serial entrepreneur who loves building and selling businesses. His most famous venture was building Web.com, a domain hosting and services firm that he sold in 2008. If you haven’t seen Will in business headlines, you may have seen Will on Youtube or Netflix talking about and showing his backyard roller coaster amusement park with five fully functional roller coasters. In today’s show Will talks about vision. In his early career he attended college to become a pilot purely out of interest. In college he learned how important it is to have a crystal clear vision and direction on where you want to go or else, you crash. Taking his pilot philosophy to business, he talks about how the slightest adjustments in the day to day operations of your company can affect the long term value of your brand in the market and valuation when you decide to exit. Understanding what you want from your business before you take off (start) will make those trainwrecks that we all know too well way more manageable from a leadership perspective and strategic planning perspective. If you want to learn about why vision clarity is so important and have a couple laughs in the process, this episode is for you. Disclaimer: more-than-usual swearing What You Will Learn How Will knew his job at IBM was not the right fit and took the entrepreneur path Why Will believes flying an airplane relates to starting and growing a business Why Will believes if wrote an acquisition plan for the sale of web.com, it would have sold for way more. How if you are clear where you ...
In today’s episode, we’re talking with Pete Seligman. Pete is here to talk about his experience diving into the world of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) after leaving corporate America. He is going to share what his journey has been like now that he has bought five companies, been the CEO of three of them and successfully worked himself out of the job, sold two of the companies and sold a partial stake in the other three. Pete has the track record to prove that entrepreneurship through acquisition is not only possible but extremely accessible if you put your mind to it, create a plan and execute like hell. He proves that it is possible to buy a company, swoop in as a CEO who gets to know the people and industry, build a plan to grow enterprise value - ON PURPOSE- and successfully work yourself out of the business so that you can have options to keep growing other companies, choose to sit on the board and take distributions or sell the business. What You Will Learn Why it’s important to calculate risk before investing Why Pete chose businesses he understood and how important it was when he was getting started Why you should grow and sell businesses that you know and are passionate about - plus how to delegate tasks to get growth you desire the importance of reinvesting back into a small business for future growth and value Pete’s favorite way to invest and how to manage his vision while recruiting people to do the things he can’t The three questions you should ask before placing a bid on a business Why you need to be able to work with the people in a small ...
