Scaling up: Lessons from the world's best CEOs and Founders TDM Growth Partners

Bill Beament grew up in a working class family out of Esperance in Western Australia. He dreamed of being a general manager of a mine one day.

Instilled at a young age with a deep work ethic and an acute commercial sense, he achieved much, much more than this as CEO and Executive Chair of Northern Star. Bill reshaped the underground gold mining industry and built from scratch a $16b, ASX 50 behemoth.

Not resting on his laurels though, Bill has more recently turned his attention to wrapping up all his learnings about mining, about people and about leadership to his own venture Develop Global (ASX:DVP), which is on the precipice of replicating Northern Star's success in critical minerals with its unique business model of both mining services and mine ownership.

This is one of Australia's great stories, largely unknown and untold outside the resource community so heavily centred in Perth, but the scaling lessons, as you'll hear, are applicable to all sectors and leaders of businesses, of all shapes and sizes.

This episode takes you underground into a world unfamiliar to most, but applicable to all. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scaling Up with Bill Beament, CEO and founder of Develop Global. 

Show Notes:

CHAPTERS:  

(00:55): Bill’s upbringing in country WA

(04:09):  Starting in the underground industry  

(06:19): Lessons from Barminco 

(09:11): Building Northern Star   

(14:03): What makes a world-class underground mine operator

(18:48): Operational excellence at Northern Star and starting Develop Global   

(24:23): Unearthing critical minerals  

(29:14): DVP's business model

(32:34): Buying Woodlawn mine

(35:59): Best in class hiring and retaining talent

(41:47): Remuneration philosophy

Hiroki Takeuchi, the co-founder and CEO of GoCardless started in 2011. GoCardless is a star of the blossoming UK FinTech scene- last valued at $2.1b, the business is on a mission to take the pain out of payments for businesses of all shapes and sizes – from your local gym collecting monthly membership right through to the Uk’s biggest utility companies.

Payment collection is a problem as old as time, and in creating a bank payment network to rival the card networks like Visa and Mastercard , it is also an incredibly complex ecosystem to navigate and operate in. But Go Cardless has seen tremendous success – it currently processes over $35b in payments annually from close to 100,000 customers.

Aside from regulatory complexity that is only heightened when you throw cross border payments into the mix, the challenge of scaling a business that form day one  has had such a variety of customer shapes and sizes gives rise to some wonderful lessons for operators.

Hiroki’s personal story is incredibly inspiring. The founder’s journey always involves a level of grit and determination to overcome adversity, but Hiroki takes it to a new level; five years into the Go Cardless journey, a bike accident resulted in a spinal cord injury. If anything, it gave him a him a perspective on life and leadership that has enabled Go Cardless to flourish like it has.

Show Notes:

(02:12): Founding Story

(06:45): Why direct debit?

(10:03): Unraveling the complexity around
cloud-based payments

(12:31): Navigating the rules and regulations on
collecting payments

(14:02): GoCardless’ competitive advantage

(19:00): Scaling challenges when expanding internationally

(21:52): G2M success via partnerships

(24:21): GoCardless’ culture journey

(26:55): Embedding and living company values

(28:26): Leading the business post bicycle accident

(31:10): Evolution of leadership when scaling a business

What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them.

By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive into to pull some common threads together.

This second episode of the Culture Scaling Playbook is wholly dedicated to the integral culture scaling topic of hiring and retaining great talent. The crux of every scaling success is great people, and this episode aims to give operators meaningful and tangible best practise ideas for them to execute upon when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent - be it from onboarding, feedback or remuneration (and everything in between).


Culture Scaling Workbook:

Includes show notes, links to sources and other interesting thought starters - ⁠DOWNLOAD



Chapters:

(02:00) The importance of belonging in high performing teams

(06:56) What makes for great hiring and why is it the centre of successfully scaling culture?

(13:56) The role of the Chief People Officer and the right time to hire one

(16:29) The importance of onboarding when it comes to building a cohesive culture

(20:12) Let's talk remuneration

(23:43) Building trust through feedback

(30:34) Diversity of thought and why it produces better outcomes

(33:23) The wrap up







For more content and insights:

⁠www.tdmgrowthpartners.com⁠

⁠https://twitter.com/TDM_Growth

What is a high-performing culture? It's a question some think as straightforward as it is philosophical. In these special episodes, we explore high performing cultures;  what they are, how to create them, and most importantly how to not just maintain them, but scale them.

By drawing upon the wisdom of the previous CEOs, founders, leaders who I have had the pleasure of interviewing over the last six years between them have created some $150b in market capitalisation. After 42 episodes of Scaling Up and 300,000 words of transcripts we now have a database of knowledge to dive into to pull some common threads together.

This first episode of the Culture Scaling Playbook is wholly dedicated to the role values play in successfully scaling people and culture; why they are important, how they have to be at the centre of every decision made and every behaviour exhibited in a business and importantly how best to do this.


Chapters:

(02:00) High performance in teams

(04:18) What is culture - the triangle framework

(07:18) Link between effective cultures and exceptional business results

(13:02) Values and when they get formalised

(21:35) Living the valuies and codifying them

(26:13) Values and hiring - from interviews to onboarding

(34:25) Can you refresh or change your values?

(37:07) The wrap up



Culture Scaling Handbook:

Includes show notes, links to sources and other interesting thought starters: Download

For more content and insights:

www.tdmgrowthpartners.com

https://twitter.com/TDM_Growth

Adam Schwab is our guest on Scaling Up, the CEO and co-founder of Luxury Escapes – a travel marketplace with almost $1b in bookings annually.

Adam’s story is that of a quintessential and accomplished entrepreneur – one of trial and error, learning from mistakes and applying it to the next chapter as is always required. Luxury escapes and its coming to being is exactly this – the twist and turns of a variety of businesses, over almost a decade, that eventually spun out something that was scalable and incredibly capital efficient.

While the scaling story is largely unknown but none the less incredible – it is a story born out of customer obsession, and providing consistent value to both sides of the market place
What comes next for Luxury Escapes is been exciting enough to get Adam back from 18 month sabbatical, and we not only discuss the many iterations of the business and its future, but also how Adam has thought about his own journey as a leader.

Buckle up, this is a fast paced and frenetic end to another great season of Scaling Up. We will be back in 2023 with another series, a new format and hopefully many more lessons for business builders, executives and investors alike.



Chapters:

(02:39): The Founding Story of Luxury Escapes

(09:30): Business model: Part 1, The Flash model

(16:20): Business model: Part 2, Building trust in the brand

(23:09): Business model: Part 3, Scaling Product and TAM.

(29:58): Business model: Part 4, Horizon 3 and the billion dollar question.

(35:51): People and Culture: Journey and Philosophy

(40:02): Retaining Talent and views on remuneration

(42:05): The Roles of Coaching, Mentoring, and Managing



Show notes:Adam with a longer version of the start up years and founding story

Adam on work from home -

Adam's podcast "From Zero"



Adam's podcast "The Contrarians"

Reggie Aggarwal is the co-founder of Cvent, a $600m revenue Software company, that is listed on the Nasdaq (ticker CVT). Cvent is allows organizations to  more efficiently run, manage and host all formats of events from virtual to in-person and hybrid. If you have been to a large conference recently, chances are it hasa been powered by Cvent.

Reggie is in a very unique position, having founded the company in 1999, he has seen 3 recessions, an IPO, A SPAC, a merger, competitors come and go and everything in between, and so it was a privilege to try and piece all the important moments in history together, and distill into lessons for current operators.

To have been at the helm of a business that has scaled from 12 people to almost 5000 people has also required Reggie to be on his on scaling journey and to dig into the how he has thought about this, from someone who is consistently voted one of the best CEOS in the US, makes for a fascinating conversation.

This is probably a great conversation to pair with a previous TDM blog, what makes a great CEO, as no doubt going through the conversation, you will be able to identify many of those traits shining through.
As previously mentioned, all our podcasts now have transcripts available, and you can find them at our website tdmgrowthpartners.com.
This is a great podcast to pair with our previous TDM blog  - What makes a great CEOShow notes:Cvent Founding Story (3:13)

Cvent’s product evolution from a point solution to an integrated and highly scalable platform (8:40)

How pivoting out of necessity created Cvent’s Triple Threat; in-person, virtual and hybrid virtual events (14:35)

Cvent’s balanced and ‘frugally profitable’ approach enabling sustainable growth and longevity (18:10)

Maintaining confidence and market share against rapidly scaling competitors (22:55)

The differences and unique challenges of IPO and SPAC processes (25:50)

Lessons and growth opportunities from being taken private by Vista (31:54)

Managing an executive team with a long-term tenure (36:15)

Continuous involvement and hiring tips to effectively scale across countries and cultures (40:03)

Strategic and tactical advantage of the New Delhi office (43:13)

What makes a great CEO and fostering an intrapreneurial culture (45:09)

The three Proverbs Reggie lives by that enabled his and Cvent’s longevity (47:25)

This podcast is created and published for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice. Transcripts may contain occasional errors in fact.