John Corcoran 14:04
And what do you credit that to gumption? Is it just hard work blood, sweat and tears? Well, you know, it’s one thing to write down those five names, another that you executed on it?
Verne Harnish 14:14
Well, first, you really have to have a bold vision. They don’t want to mess around with something that’s small. And you’ve got to give before you receive and if nothing else, I gave my attention. There’s different ways to do it today with Google Alerts and the like as I continue to work, the influencer lists that I build for my projects, but I’ll take our for Lipper very specifically. So in one of our our marketing meetings, we said all right, how do we get to Arthur Lipper are there happened to be keynote and an event in Dallas, Texas. And so I hopped in my 81 Pontiac drove the six hour south nature I dressed up nice set in the front row, not at a lot and then went right up to him after the speech and said, you know, Mr. leper Bernhard ish, here to build the world’s largest student entrepreneurship organization, something our country in the world badly needs, and I need your help. That got his attention. And we set up a meeting. And the key thing I learned is to say what it is then asked this question. I said, Arthur, if you were made, and you were my age, what would you do to scale this globally fast, and then I just shut up. And I let him do the favorite thing everyone likes to do is talk, he began rattling off, I would do this and I get these folks involved, I make this decision. And I still have that yellow notepad someplace. What I did immediately, way before we had fax or anything else, I wrote him a letter and said, Look, here’s the list you gave, I’ve already done two of them. Then I gave it another month I wrote them another letter said, Hey, I’m still working down through the list, I got four more done, here’s two I found that aren’t going to work. And I think I gave him most what any great teacher wants as a student who’s willing to listen and act on what it is all through. Yeah. And that’s always been critical to get these things up. Now, I got to President Reagan through relationships that I built already, which a top fact that I ultimately ended up in the Reagan administration for a year through my connections with Charlie Koch. So that’s how all that stuff happens.
John Corcoran 16:21
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, because I worked in a White House as well in the Clinton years. And I know how many people are trying to get a piece of the president at all times. And so just reaching out cold to the White House often doesn’t work. So you recall what the connections were. There’s someone that had some connections to the White House.
Verne Harnish 16:41
You know, I don’t remember I think it was through Willa Garvey. And Willard had a, he was one of the Forbes 400 families and became a great supporter of me and the things that we were doing. And he reached out to one of the organizations that he had in Washington, DC, into the Reagan administration. And obviously, we had a great message at the right time, you know, with the entrepreneur coming on the scene that was Yeah, driving the economy. And his whole thing was, you know, about the economy. So our message resonated,
John Corcoran 17:11
you said something? And it’s that answer that really stuck out to me. It was kind of an aside, but you said that you still have influencer list now and the projects that you’re working on. And I think the reason that that’s so striking is that oftentimes people might look at someone like us built an organization with 13,000 members worldwide. And they think, you know, he’s got it made. Now he doesn’t need to do that sort of thing anymore. That’s something you do when you get started. But you said you still put together influencer list. So talk a little bit about that, and how your approach has evolved over the years compared to when you were that young, hungry college student. Yeah, but I think
Verne Harnish 17:50
you always have to do it. You know, when the question was asked Bill Gates, later on, he said, You don’t mix the top thousand bills, like oh, my gosh, I should have had the european union officials on my lyst had some more time with them. I know, I’ve heard the backstory that when Steve Jobs decided he needed to launch iTunes, something like iTunes, what he learned from his mechanics, you take these paper out in your list, who are all the major players in the music industry. And as you know, they got massive egos, even somebody was Steve Jobs, visibility during that time, he was just a guy making technology. And they would return his call anymore than they would anyone else’s. We got to some of the first people on that list through his friend Don Henley, who was a drummer for the Eagles. So we have a plan to 10 x our company now over the next five to 10 years. And we have our list. Number one on that list. And I’m working it. That’s Reid Hoffman, you know, reach just sold LinkedIn. And he’s got this great blitzscaling course at Stanford. And he’s got a new book coming out in October. And
John Corcoran 18:54
I honestly, number one, what’s that? Why is he your number one,
Verne Harnish 18:57
because to me, I think he’s one of the top things incurs right now in the world and the whole space of scaling. And that’s obviously the space that we’re playing in. And I would absolutely love to partner with read in that process. So we’ve got his co author, Chris, keynote, in our scale up summit coming up here in the fall. And I’ve got a couple other people who know him well, and I’m just working hard to get network to them. I haven’t had
John Corcoran 19:21
someone who was an early employee of LinkedIn. So I’ll have to reach out to him and see if I can help with that.
Verne Harnish 19:26
Well, john, it’s much appreciated. But I’ve got my list. And I’ve knocked several of them off. But he’s he’s right now. Number one on my on my radar.
John Corcoran 19:35
Yeah. Have you tried requesting the interview them? That works? Well? match.
Verne Harnish 19:42
JOHN, any any help you can give me as helpful, or any of the listeners out there is is helpful as well. But yeah, so never, if you’re going to try to get things done anywhere, I don’t care. If you’re just trying to get some change management done within your own organization. I’m a big fan of RFID spike and his Zingerman’s deli. He’s got an unbelievable change management process internally. And it’s basically any employees got any idea owns it. And one of the first things they have to do after creating a great vision for the change is very much like that powerful kind of mission, you’re going to bring to that influencer, you got to sit down and make a list of all the people inside the company that are going to be touched by this change. And you got to go around and sell them on it. And if you do, then the change is easy. If you don’t, it’s going to be hard, though it works internally, as well as doing big stuff globally.
John Corcoran 20:32
Those are great lessons. We’re running short on time. But I do want to ask you about something else you touched on, which was similar my own experience. You said as a kid, your your dad had a really successful business, but then he lost it all. I want to ask how that influenced who you are today, because I had a similar experience. My father actually lost a job three separate times when I was growing up, and I know it really influenced who I am. Yeah, for sure.
Verne Harnish 20:55
Well, it definitely impacted kind of my view on money, which wasn’t helpful. I’ve really had to learn how to combat that and deal with it. And number two, it really is what is given me the heart behind what it is that I do. That business ultimately destroyed him. He became an alcoholic and ultimately destroyed his life and estranged him at some level from our family. I passed away two years ago, just almost two years ago. And it’s like, you know what, I’ve swore that every entrepreneur I can help not go through that is a victory. And so it’s really been what’s given me the passion behind what is this thing that we do for entrepreneurs around the planet?
John Corcoran 21:37
That’s so great burn gazelles calm is the website for the gazelles coaching organization scaling up is the book, which you can get at your local bookseller on Amazon. com any other resources you want to share with our listeners?
Verne Harnish 21:50
Yeah, you know what, we’ve actually organized everything just around scaling up calm. So that’s all you have to do is remember the book, go to that URL and everything that was on gazelles, they’re all scaling up now,
John Corcoran 22:01
one of the most influential books in my career as an entrepreneur. So I thank you for putting it together. And thank you for all the work that you do. And you have another book that you’re working on. that hopefully will be out soon. And I look forward to picking that up as well.
Verne Harnish 22:15
JOHN, thank you so much for the interview. And for lemons, share some stories with your listeners. Thank you for listening to the smart business revolution podcast with john Corcoran. Find out more at smart business revolution.com and while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the Revolution Revolution Revolution Revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the smart business revolution podcast.