My Guest John Ratliff started Appletree Answers, a telephone answering service, from his apartment in 1995. After growing the company to 24 US-based locations and more than 600 employees, he sold the company to a strategic buyer in 2012. Since selling his company, John has served as CEO of Scaling Up Coaches (2018-25), worked asContinue reading “A Playbook for Growing People-Intensive Service Companies”
Tag Archives: culture
Five Ideas That Every CEO Should Know
Listen to this Blog Post What follows are five unrelated thoughts on how to lead and grow a healthy and vibrant company. None of them are long enough to justify a stand-alone blog post, but all of them are important enough to highlight for current and aspiring CEOs. (1) Crafting an Effective Company-Wide Bonus PlanContinue reading “Five Ideas That Every CEO Should Know”
Can Ambition and Inner Peace Coexist? With Rob Dube
My Guest In 1991, Rob co-founded imageOne, a managed print services business based in Oak Park, Michigan. Since then, imageOne has been recognized as a Top 25 Small Businesses in America on the list of Forbes Small Giants, an Inc. Magazine Best Places to Work, a National Best and Brightest Company to Work For, oneContinue reading “Can Ambition and Inner Peace Coexist? With Rob Dube”
Building a $5.5B Mid-Market Private Equity Firm: Brent Belzberg, Founder of Torquest Partners
My Guest My guest today is Brent Belzberg, Founder and Senior Managing Partner of TorQuest, a middle market private equity firm that he founded in 2002 that has since grown to ~$5.5B in assets under management. Outside of TorQuest, Brent serves as a Director of The Sinai Health System, having previously acted as Chair. HeContinue reading “Building a $5.5B Mid-Market Private Equity Firm: Brent Belzberg, Founder of Torquest Partners”
A Deep Dive on Compensation
Listen in Your Browser Questions Asked Verne Harnish: Crafting Company-Wide Compensation Plans (3:06) Verne Harnish is the founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (“EO” for short), a global network of entrepreneurs and CEOs that boasts over 16,000 members worldwide. He is the author of multiple global bestselling books including Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and Scaling Up,Continue reading “A Deep Dive on Compensation”
A Deep Dive on Hiring
Listen in Your Browser Questions Asked Randy Street (3:30) Many of you will know Randy Street as co-author of the book Who: The A Method for Hiring, which introduced the now widely used Topgrading hiring method to the world. The book went on to become a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today,Continue reading “A Deep Dive on Hiring”
The Smallest Changes That Had the Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies
My Guests This is a very special episode of In The Trenches: In today’s episode, I will be interviewing 4 different CEOs of 4 different SMBs, and asking them just a single question: “What are some of the seemingly small changes you’ve made that have had the largest impacts?” When taking over a new business,Continue reading “The Smallest Changes That Had the Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies”
Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO
My Guests My guest today is Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index. The Predictive Index serves more than 9,000 clients across 142 countries, helping businesses optimize their hiring and team composition decisions through a combination of behavioral science, software, and professional consulting from the world’s top workplace behavior specialists. Mike has been CEO ofContinue reading “Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO”
A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator
My Guest My guest today is A.J. Wasserstein, the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. His research, writing, and teaching concentrates on search funds, entrepreneurship, programmatic acquisitions, and small businesses. In addition to his role as an educator, A.J. is also a private investor inContinue reading “A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator”
Knowing Who, When, and How to Fire
I will never forget the first time that I had to fire somebody. In the days, hours and minutes leading up to the meeting that morning, sleep was elusive, my heart was racing, my mind was completely incapable of focusing on anything else, and the sense of existential dread growing in the pit of myContinue reading “Knowing Who, When, and How to Fire”