2238 - How to Transition from Founder-Led Sales to a Scalable Sales Process with SCALIFY OS's James Graham

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1:05With us right now is James Graham. James, you are the founder and CEO of ScalifyOS. You're found on the web at scalifyos.com. James, it's great to have you. Thanks for having me, Josh. Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, before we talk about Scalify and the work that you do, in your personal life, what have you been geeking out on lately? Hobbies, movies, music, TV shows, games, anything like that? Yeah. first of all I have four kids so they keep me really busy but I outside of that I love to get outside so I do a lot of mountain biking I like to when I can get to the coast I like to surf and in the wintertime snowboard so I like all things outdoors yeah how is mountain biking you're you're in the Toronto area where do you go for good mountain biking yeah in Toronto not people not many people know this but there's a big valley in the middle of Toronto called the Don Valley and there's lots of trails that people have carved in the Don Valley.

2:04I happen to live right on the edge of the valley, so I can go up my garage and pop in the trails at any time. It's great. Yeah, I'm just looking up some pictures of it right now. Very, very cool. Good. Well, listen, Scalify OS is a relatively new organization, but you've worked with some pretty decent-sized groups. Do you mind maybe sharing a little bit about what Scalify is? Sure. Yeah. So Scalify is, yeah, it is relatively new. And what it is, is I help business owners to scale up. So small, medium sized businesses scale up. My clients typically are a minimum of a million dollars and up. Largest client I've got right now would be about 20 million ish.

2:51But it's all clients that are have built their business up to a certain point, kind of based on their passion alone for the entrepreneurial venture that they took on, but kind of hit a ceiling and they need some support in terms of making the thing grow. I like to base the foundation of the work that I do with them on building value in their business. So building the business up in a way where they can exit at some point, should they choose to do that. Just because by doing that, you're building up operational capabilities that are just good for business in general and make the business easier to run.

3:25Yeah. Okay. Well, what's wrong with what people, I guess, why is this a problem? What's going on? Because obviously, if they've built to a certain level of success, that's worked out really well. What are the missing components of, again, kind of an operating system or a structure for growth that's going to take them through that second stage? Yeah. So what I find is that a lot of entrepreneurs, when they first start a venture, whatever it is they're starting, it's usually something that they're really passionate about, something that they really love. And they figure, I can make a business out of this because I know this thing really well.

4:00And so they dive into it headfirst. They build it through kind of passion and sweat just alone, just their own drive. And that gets them to a certain point. For some, it gets them pretty far, some not so far, but it gets them to a point where their passion kind of, it hits the ceiling. And at that point, they kind of, they run out of time for themselves, the capacity for them to actually manage the business kind of runs out. And they need support in terms of developing systems, teams, leadership capabilities, them becoming a CEO themselves. themselves all the things that a typical business would have, most entrepreneurs don't have that at the beginning.

4:44So they need to develop those capabilities and that's what I helped them do. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's give some examples of what this might look like. Yeah. So let's see. So I have a technology company that I worked with and they built up a business that supported the financial sector. And it was just one person plus two developers. And this person was running into challenges in terms of leading those two developers, in terms of contributing to the business in a way that would help to grow the business and running into capacity issues themselves because they were still working in the business quite a lot.

5:28This person also had a family at home, so a wife and kids at home. And one of the first things they said to me when they came on was, I just don't have time for my family. And I would love to have that in addition to just growing this business. And so the first thing that we did was we just created systems for this person to run the business. Yeah. And James, just so I'm clear, just like what are those systems? I didn't mean to cut you off at the pass here, but that's what I'm most interested in is that these kind of those structural implementations. Like what are we actually putting in the company?

6:03Yeah. So yeah, a great example of a structural system that I often implement is so there's a standard meeting that a CEO or a leader of a company would need to have with their leadership team. So the key members on their team, weekly meeting and very simple. So you, the structure of the meeting is to set a goal at the beginning, help them work problem solve to that goal, and then follow up on that the next week. And you're doing that every week. That's a cadence that you go through every single week with your team. That's one example of a system that works huge in terms of scaling up your business and scaling up your team's capability.

6:46Yeah. And tell me what you would do during this standard meeting. It's super simple. So if you and I were sitting after this meeting, so it would be an hour long, If you're somebody that reported to me, the first thing I would do is ask you about your goals that we set last week. I'd say, well, Josh, what was the goal last week? You'd say, oh, I wanted to get this new client, for example. And we'd follow up on that. I'd talk you through, okay, so what happened there? Did you hit it? Did you miss it? What did you learn from that? And then we'd quickly move into the next goal for this upcoming period.

7:17So we'd set a new goal. And then we'd problem solve how you're going to hit that goal. And then that's the meeting. That's the whole meeting. And there's some development opportunities that I could work through with you to help develop you as an employee. And then we do that again the next week. So you're constantly setting and resetting and evaluating goals every single week. That builds momentum if you do that with every member on your team so that you can hit your goals for the business. Yeah, and the consequences, so some might argue and say, ah, meetings, man. give us give us the case for meetings yeah so yeah there's a lot of wasted wasted time out there so there's a lot of meetings that people just set up for the sake of having a meeting i think i should meet with my team this month but the problem is that there's often no structure around that meeting no agenda for that meeting if there's no purpose no outcomes no agenda for the meeting you may as well not have it you're wasting time maybe you get lucky and land on something in that discussion most of the time you're wasting time.

8:20So have meetings that have structure and cadence. And it does sound like, oh, I'm adding more meetings. I mean, you meet with everybody on my team once a week, you're saving time in the long run and you're gonna hit your goals. Yeah, great. So standing meetings, I agree, would be incredibly helpful. I mean, just get everybody on the same page and they don't have to be marathon sessions. And any additional tips that you would recommend for running great meetings to, you know, maybe just, you know, setting an agenda, action items, like what are the key elements of a great meeting? Yeah. So it's a three things, purpose, outcomes, agenda.

8:59So what's the purpose of this meeting? Why am I coming to this in the first place? That's an overall general statement, that purpose. Outcomes, only one or two. Realistically, you can only get to one or two in a meeting, in a productive meeting. So what are the most important things that you want to leave that meeting with, make sure you're really clear on that and that your people are really, really clear on that. And then have a clear agenda. Here's what we're doing in this meeting so that you can stay on track every minute of the meeting so that you hit on those outcomes by the end of the meeting.

9:28In addition to that, a bonus for that would be add in some prep. So add in, what you don't want to do is be reviewing stuff in the meeting. You want people to review that ahead of time and then just talk about it in the meeting so you can hit your outcomes. Yeah. What would be one more thing that you would recommend that every company kind of once they start hitting that ceiling, they're not progressing forward, that would be really, really helpful for kind of building for that next phase? Yeah. So there's a lot of programs out there that have kind of like standardized procedures in terms of systems to in terms of operating your business.

10:10And the way I approach it is a little bit more customized. So what I mean by that is, if I were working with you, you're a founder, then one of the things that I would want to do is pull out all the information out of your head. You know how to run this business. And sales is a good example. So a lot of founders that I work with have yet to hire anybody else to do sales, they're doing all the business development themselves. And what we need to do first is pull out the sales system out of your head and document that in a step-by-step system so that when you hire somebody to finally take over sales, you can train them on the system that you've proven to work.

10:51And they'll likely be able to do it if you give them the proper training and you have a system that's dialed in. Getting out of founder-led sales can be tricky because likely the founder is selling on founder magic and that's hard to bottle up and replicate. and I agree your best thing you could do is just document every, I mean, it's, you know, the founders just got a level of belief and, you know, magic. Any other tips for like, for someone's getting out of founder led sales? Yeah. So I think you rang on with that. So one of the first things that I say to founders who are looking to offload the sales part of it is first of all, that should be one of the last things you offload.

11:29And secondly, the expectation should be that nobody's going to sell as best as best as you. Sometimes you get lucky and you get a rock star that comes in and they actually do and they're able to do it better. But most of the time, nine times out of 10, they're going to be worse than you. So you have to set that expectation for yourself right away. I'm going to, the close rate's going to go down. The number of sales that are going to come in is going to be down. So if you have that expectation first, you're not going to be disappointed, but it's still the right thing to do because you can't do all the sales yourself.

12:02You can for a while. You can for a while, but that's the primary reason why founders get stressed out is because even if they have all the operational capabilities in place, they're constantly doing BD and the BD gets worse because the business is growing and your capacity is ballooning. So it's important to get out of that. It's important to document that sales process and it's important to hire other people to do the sales. You might go through two or three salespeople before you hit the right one and before you learn how to properly train them and coach them. But eventually it starts to click.

12:39Well, James, this is great. Talk about Scalify OS and how you work with your clients, like what that looks like. Yeah, so it's pretty straightforward. So typically what I do is I do a business assessment with people, business owners that are interested. So this is something I do before they even consider becoming a client. So I give them a report on their business, which tells them the opportunities within their business, where they're strong, where they're weak, and also the value of their business, how much it's worth today and how much it could be worth if you make some adjustments. That's a full report I give to people before they even become a client.

13:17I do that because I think it's, first of all, I can't help but help people. I want them to have something that's useful that they could use going forward, regardless of whether they decide to work with me or not. And it gives them a sense of what it's like to work with me and what that would look like. Then they're better able to make the decision of, yes, I want to work with Scalify OS or not. Once we're through that, and if they want to become a client, we sit down and do a full strategy. So we do a few hours of work where we build up the strategy for the long term for the business all the way down to this year and the quarters and monthly goals.

13:56What are the key milestones to get from point A to point B? That's the roadmap that I then use to hold them accountable to and coach them through. And we do that twice a month. So I meet with my clients after that twice a month and help them work through challenges that they're faced with and help them stay on track to that roadmap that we created. Yeah. And then just so someone might know that they would be ready for you, what would be some of the biggest indicators that they're just they're perfectly positioned for you both? Like they've they've done all the work that you typically like to have ahead of time, but yet they've identified gaps or pain points that are clearly an indicator that they're ready for this type of work.

14:39Yeah, so I would say that, first of all, in terms of size in the business, usually my clients are minimum a million. I have worked with clients that are a little bit smaller, but I find that the million dollar mark is usually the point where that's the one indicator that they're ready. another one would be that they just don't have time for anything else that's a really glaring one if you're finding that you're working into the nights and on weekends still at this point then perfect client for me um if you're finding that profitability is low and you think it could be higher you think you could make more money then that's a good good client as well um if you're finding that you're having leadership challenges with your team or you just don't have the right people, these are indicators as well that would be a good fit.

15:28Yeah. Well, James, your website is scalifyos.com. I also mentioned that, or I also see that you've got Jamie, an AI business coach. How do you integrate that? Yeah. So Jamie's something that I developed. It's really, it's really basic. So I, my thought process is behind that. I really think that with AI that you got to get on on board or you're going to be left behind you're going to be left in the dust it's it's like the internet but a thousand times faster and so I felt like when I started Scalify OS I've got to have some sort of component of AI available and so I built Jamie as an AI coach and so you can go online and you can you can ask Jamie questions and Jamie will respond it's got information about Scalify about the systems that I use you can ask questions about Scalify.

16:21And you can ask me questions about how do I create a goal for my business, for example, and it'll help you work through that. It's very basic. There's lots of room for development with it, but I wanted to have something at the start just to get it going. And it'll evolve over time. Nice. Nice. All right. Again, it is Scalify OS. When somebody goes there, what do they click on? What do they click on? Yeah. When they go visit you at Scalify OS, next steps? Next steps, I would say just read through it. There's some good information about how I would work with my clients and some of the background that I've got and some of the work that I've done.

16:59There's case studies on there. So I like my potential clients to be informed about that stuff. And then if you want to get in touch, you want a free business assessment, there's a forum on the first page that would get you signed up for that. I love it. James Graham, founder and CEO of Scalify OS, found on the web at scalifyos.com. Thanks, James. Thanks, Josh.

17:48Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies.

18:31Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.