Episodes

  • 487: How publishing a book fast-tracked me to partnership (Strategy Skills classics)

    487: How publishing a book fast-tracked me to partnership (Strategy Skills classics)
    Sep 30 2024

    For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from a 10 episode program to help our clients and customers measurably, radically transform their careers through The Author Program.

    How would your career, reputation, and earnings change as a published author?

    Imagine your client interactions when potential and current clients saw your thinking in a published book before they met you? Imagine the time you would save not having to explain your ideas and the value you could add to them? Imagine the fee premium you could earn? Imagine avoiding awkward meetings trying to establish your credibility? Imagine how many potential clients would find you and reach out to you?

    Learn more and see the application guidelines: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/experts-published-author-program/

    Apply: email team@firmsconsulting.com

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    26 mins
  • 486: Promoting women into senior roles (Strategy Skills classics)

    486: Promoting women into senior roles (Strategy Skills classics)
    Sep 25 2024

    For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from week 4 of the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

    Promoting women into leadership roles is a hot topic and, sadly, a debate. Why is it a debate? What are the elements that require further analysis? To paraphrase Marvin Bower, one does not ask a client if a woman should take over the relationship, one simply tells a client a woman is taking over. It is not the client’s job to decide what is right.

    In this podcast, we explain why we have more female than male partners at FC and how we constantly develop them to serve in more and more senior roles.

    Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    17 mins
  • 485: HBS Professors and 'Think Big, Buy Small' Hosts Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff on Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition

    485: HBS Professors and 'Think Big, Buy Small' Hosts Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff on Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
    Sep 23 2024
    Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 485, featuring an interview with Richard Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, HBS professors and the hosts of 'Think Big, Buy Small' podcast. In this episode, we discuss current market trends related to entrepreneurship through acquisition. We also touch on the demographic trend of baby boomers retiring and needing to sell their businesses, and its impact on buying and selling businesses. Most importantly, Richard and Royce share their advice on how to find the right business to buy, the key considerations and how to evaluate businesses, common buyer errors, and the challenges of buying from baby boomers. Think Big, Buy Small is a new podcast from Harvard Business School that explores this innovative approach to entrepreneurship: acquisition entrepreneurship. The show is an extension of their courses on small firms, including “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition,” which has been taken by thousands of MBA students, and their highly-regarded book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company, which has sold more than 65,000 copies. Richard S. Ruback is a Baker Foundation Professor and the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. Over the last 15 years, he and Royce Yudkoff have been developing and teaching a second year course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”. Ruback and Yudkoff’s book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017. The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm. Ruback earned his Ph.D. in business administration at the University of Rochester in 1980 and taught at MIT's Sloan School before joining the HBS faculty as a visiting professor in 1987. He was appointed associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1989. Ruback has served as an editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and is the author of numerous articles on corporate finance and valuation. Royce Yudkoff is the MBA Class of 1975 Professor of Management Practice of Entrepreneurial Management at the Harvard Business School and a General Partner and co-founder of ABRY Partners, LLC in Boston, MA. Alongside Professor Richard Ruback, Royce currently co-teaches a second year case course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship through Acquisition”. These courses focus on how to acquire, finance, and operate your own smaller firm. As was mentioned above, Ruback and Yudkoff’s book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2017. The book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm. In 1989, Royce co-founded ABRY Partners, a private equity firm focused on the media, communications and business and information services markets. Since 1989 the firm has completed over $27 billion of leveraged transactions and other private equity investments involving approximately 450 properties. Over this period Royce has also served on numerous private and public corporate boards. Royce graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1980 as a Baker Scholar and is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College. Get a copy of HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company: https://rb.gy/2omnrh Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    58 mins
  • 484: How too much debt impacts cost of capital (Strategy Skills classics)

    484: How too much debt impacts cost of capital (Strategy Skills classics)
    Sep 18 2024

    For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how your cost of capital changes as you take on more debt and how this change is different between organizations. It's a crucial concept for this utility. We explain how the cost of capital change usually takes place and then we review the drivers at play that are different for this power utility vs. an average company.

    Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

    Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube: When too much debt is a good thing

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    21 mins
  • 483: What is the role of government (Strategy Skills classics)

    483: What is the role of government (Strategy Skills classics)
    Sep 16 2024

    For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we use economics to explain what is the role of government, when governments should intervene, how they should intervene, and when they should hand over certain activities to the private sector. If you want to further your understanding of strategy at the highest possible level you should listen to this.

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    19 mins
  • 482: From a $3,000 investment into nearly $1 billion in lifetime sales

    482: From a $3,000 investment into nearly $1 billion in lifetime sales
    Sep 11 2024

    Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 482, an interview with the author of Beyond the Hammer: A Fresh Approach to Leadership, Culture, and Building High Performance Teams, Brian Gottlieb. In his book, Brian shares his straightforward business ideology of having a clear strategy, inspiring teams, providing best-in-class training, using metrics for empowerment, and executing with consistency. Beyond the Hammer provides five foundational pillars of leadership and an actionable path to weaving these pillars into any business, giving leaders and managers the power to build teams that perform at a high level, consistently.

    Brian Gottlieb is an inspirational business leader who founded a home services business in 2009 on a plastic folding table with $3,000. Twelve years later when he sold the family of businesses he created, they had diversified products, expanded across multiple states, grown to 600 employees, and neared $1 billion in lifetime sales. INC 5000 recognized the organization as one of the fastest-growing companies in America.

    Get Brian’s new book here: https://rb.gy/f4gq2v

    Beyond the Hammer: A Fresh Approach to Leadership, Culture, and Building High Performance Teams

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    40 mins
  • 481: Former CEO of AT&T Business, Anne Chow, on How to Lead Bigger

    481: Former CEO of AT&T Business, Anne Chow, on How to Lead Bigger
    Sep 9 2024

    Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 481, an interview with the author of Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion, Anne Chow. In her book, Anne shows us how we can all learn to leverage inclusion far beyond DEI to elevate our work, workforce, and workplace. Lead Bigger offers a no-nonsense approach to leading outside of traditional parameters that challenges us all to “lead bigger” by seeking a broader impact, embracing the whole of your team beyond the workplace, and engaging in self-reflection.

    As the former CEO of AT&T Business, Anne Chow was the first woman and first woman of color to hold the position of CEO at AT&T in 2019, overseeing more than 35,000 employees who collectively served 3 million business customers worldwide during her time there. She is currently the Lead Director on the board of Franklin Covey, serves on the board of 3M and CSX, and teaches at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. You can listen to Anne on Harvard Business Review’s Race at Work, WFAA and MSNBC.

    Get Anne’s new book here: https://rb.gy/965ygk

    Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    52 mins
  • 480: Why approve investments with negative returns? (Strategy Skills classics)

    480: Why approve investments with negative returns? (Strategy Skills classics)
    Sep 4 2024

    For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic from the Corporate Strategy & Transformation study.

    In this podcast, we look at the problem of superficial financial analysis. One way to save the client money, before they run out of cash in about 16 months, is to stop all investments which lose money. This, however, is a terrible idea that will cause enormous damage to the client’s core business, consumers, and the economy. We discuss how we handle this recommendation and what we proposed in the study to fix the problem.

    Click here to see the full study and here to see the merger study and market entry study.

    Here are some free gifts for you:

    Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

    McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

    Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo
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    9 mins