Picture it – the year is 1990 and Curt Anderson is full of hopes and dreams. However, those dreams are deferred when he accepts his father’s request to take over their family-owned floral business. At the time the business was bankrupt and in desperate need of financial resuscitation.

Curt spends the next several years grinding and doing everything he can to save the business from ruin. Just when it seems all hope is lost, he discovers a lifeline that will change the trajectory of both his business and his career.

That lifeline is the internet.

By 1995, he changes the business model from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce. Along the way, he’s thrown more lifelines until one day he realizes he needs someone else to come in and help manage the daily operations. After 20 years of hard work, smart partnerships, and investments in business infrastructure he successfully sells his business.

How did he do it?

That’s what you’ll discover in this scale tale. Join us as Curt takes us on a journey that includes experimenting with new technologies, forming partnerships with key people, and outsourcing a critical part of his back-office operations.

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

👉View this Episode’s Full Show Notes at ScaleTalesPodcast.com.

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

Cheryl Taylor is no stranger to managing projects on a large scale. When she landed a contract to replace a 17-year-old jail technology, she jumped at the chance! Not only did she complete that project 10 months ahead of schedule, but the project even won an innovation award.

That kind of success results from a career that spans telecommunications, energy, healthcare, education, and more. She’s worked in large publicly-traded companies, government institutions, and small businesses, including her own – TPM Services.

In this scale tale, Cheryl takes us back to the time when she upgraded that jail technology for a county government organization with over 800 employees with an $800M annual budget. Discover how she developed a project plan, kept reluctant staff engaged, and ensured no inmates were lost in the system.

Unfamiliar with the U.S. jail system? No worries! We share lessons learned at the end of this episode that you can apply to any business.

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

👉View this Episode’s Full Show Notes at ScaleTalesPodcast.com.

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

"Never take advice from someone who has nothing to lose by giving it." - Darrell Evans

That comes from Darrell Evans, an investor, business coach, and digital marketing expert. He graduated over 20 years ago with a finance degree and entered financial sales before moving into the mortgage industry. He later founded a successful mortgage company and a digital marketing agency, using early digital marketing strategies that proved effective during economic uncertainty.

By 2012, he and his business partner met the owner of an auto body shop who, though already successful, wanted to scale to the next level.

In our latest scale tale, Darrell takes us back to that moment when they applied their 6-step framework that incorporated internet marketing in the age of Web 2.0 during a time when things like YouTube and LinkedIn were barely a part of the collective conscious.

Take notes as he shares insights about tailoring products and services based on customer psychology and establishing a business infrastructure to support it.

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

👉View this Episode’s Full Show Notes at ScaleTalesPodcast.com.

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

Marianne Rutz, Europe’s leading customer support expert, started her career in 1999 at Hertz's contact center. She was well-suited for the role as she has a background in travel and tourism. After gaining more experience in operations, she faced a difficult and unexpected battle with cancer.

Undeterred, Marianne project managed her way through the rounds of treatment and upon winning this battle, she decided to start a business. Her consulting firm began with a desire to make customer service a better place by turning frontline customer service divisions from cost centres to profit centres.

When one of her retail clients began to struggle with providing quality customer service during the COVID-19 pandemic, they sought Marianne’s expertise. With her guidance, the client saw remarkable improvements and unexpected revenue growth. In this latest scale tale, Marianne shares how this transformation took place.

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

👉View this Episode’s Full Show Notes at ScaleTalesPodcast.com.

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

Jeremy Streten is on a mission to provide access to legal advice for all small to medium-sized businesses around the world. These aren’t just empty words. He really means it as evidenced by the strategic moves he’s made to, as he describes it, “…scale myself out of my law firm to remove dependency on me.”

How’s that possible when business laws are country-dependent?

Well, turns out that’s not entirely true. In this scale tale, Jeremy describes how his keen observations during a law conference coupled with sage advice from a business coach, led him down a path to scale business legal advice via a business legal lifecycle. It’s an easy-to-understand chart designed to empower business owners in proactively securing legal protections using a combination of standard and local or customized practices.

Now, he’s transitioned out of being a traditional lawyer working on a per-client basis and into the role of CEO of a lawtech company with remote global operations across Australia, the U.S., and the U.K.

Listen as he recounts the bumps and bruises along his journey that led to him building a business infrastructure that includes the optimal combination of people, processes, and technologies necessary to scale a service-based business.

Jeremy’s cracked the code and now you can learn from him and apply the lessons learned from his scale tale to your organization!

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

Did you know that joy has financial value? Specifically, happy employees have 31% higher productivity, their sales are 37% higher and they’re three times more creative. Marguerite Orane leverages these stats as part of making her case for joy in the workplace.

As an executive leadership coach, facilitator, and public speaker, she empowers executives and their teams to imbue joy in their work so that they can scale their organizations without sacrificing themselves and their families in the process.

Healthy family relationships are particularly important to Marguerite. Her first leadership role at the tender age of 23 found her as her father’s boss in their family-owned manufacturing business. The experience of leading a 70-employee all-male group, navigating unions and erratic business cycles during a time of unrest in Jamaica, and ultimately selling the business to ensure her parents retired financially secure, left her feeling depleted, traumatized, and…free!

In this scale tale, Marguerite describes her journey from running a family-owned business to working in other businesses, and ultimately starting her own coaching business – a business that allows her the freedom and flexibility to lead with ease, grace, and joy. She also shares why her experience as an MBA student at Harvard Business School was the therapy she needed to release the pain and make room for profit.

Discover the business infrastructure she’s put in place to ensure she has a team aligned to her company’s joy-based mission with proven processes that generate the results required to take already successful organizations to even higher heights.

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

While his friends pursued careers in fields like law, medicine, and technology, Richard Blank went in a completely different direction – language. In fact, his love of language and communications led him to study abroad for one semester in Spain. That experience changed the trajectory of his life.

A few years after graduating from university, he accepted an offer to conduct training at a call center in Costa Rica. At 27 years old he decided to call Costa Rica home. That was over 20 years ago.

And he never looked back.

In this first episode of Scale Tales, Richard takes us on his journey when he leveraged his advanced Spanish-speaking skills, business prowess, and emotional intelligence to build and scale Costa Rica’s Call Center from a one-seat to a 300-seat operation!

Discover how he used a cash-only approach to invest in the business infrastructure required to lay a foundation for sustainable growth, his tips for reducing attrition, and why he urges entrepreneurs to “act their wage.”

𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰. ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

© Copyright 2024. Scale Tales is an Equilibria, Inc. podcast. We're dedicated to providing resources to support fellow fast-growing small businesses in scaling back-office operations without pain and chaos. Visit our website to learn more.

Welcome to our newest show brought to you by Equilibria, Inc. - Scale Tales.

Scale Tales is a weekly business storytelling podcast. Join us as entrepreneurs, experts, and executives share entertaining accounts of their extraordinary moments at work while revealing how they did it. These true stories will take you on a journey from the conception of an idea to its growth and transformation into something seemingly impossible. Our interviews go beyond the typical Q&A format, providing both inspiration and practical tips to help you achieve similar success in your business or career.

With a focus on operations, each episode ends with a summary of key lessons and resources to help you replicate these results. Whether you're an ambitious founder or a leader in a fast-growing organization, this show is for you if you're looking for actionable strategies to scale the operations of your business, service, product line, or team despite your busy schedule.

Subscribe now so you don't miss any of these stories!