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Becker Business
Building Great Businesses with Scott Becker & Becky Robinson of Weaving Influence 3-2-26
00:52:02
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business in the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Today's discussion is really a discussion from a webinar we did where Becky Robinson was the interviewer and I was the interviewee around this, the concept of building great businesses. And this is based in part on the book that we've got coming out called Building Great Businesses, Great Momentum, Create, Overcome Setbacks and Scale with Confidence. We hope you enjoy this recording of the webinar. We hope you find it helpful. If, of course, at any time you want to buy a book, pre order book, please text me at 773-766-5322 and I'll do my best to get you a gift card so that we can make that book free for you to pre order on Amazon. Thank you for listening to the following webinar.
- [00:51]
B
Hello everyone and welcome. We are so excited for today's event with so Scott Becker on the topic of his new book, Building Great Businesses. Welcome, Scott. How are you today?
- [01:04]
A
Becky, just a pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much for having me and so excited to visit with you and your audience. Thank you so much.
- [01:10]
B
Oh, it's absolutely my pleasure, Scott. But before we get any further, I want to tell you a bit about Scott, the author of the new book Building Great Businesses. Scott is a distinguished entrepreneur and investor, a legal professional, an author and a podcast host who has built a remarkable career at the inner intersection of healthcare, media and law. Scott is the founder and publisher of Becker's Healthcare, which is a law, a leading healthcare media company. And he's also a longtime partner at McGuire Woods, a top Amlam firm. And Scott has established himself as an authority in his fields. He's also a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Illinois. So let's go ahead and dive in, Scott, and I am so interested to hear the inspiration behind this book. So why did you write Building Great Businesses and what are you hoping it will accomplish for those who read it and those around the world who are able to access the learning?
- [02:09]
A
Sure. No, no. Thank you so much. So in terms of the book, the book is the third iteration of book that we'd written some time ago that that was intended originally to put a lot of my business and investing lessons in one place, in part for myself because I point back to the same lessons and concepts all the time and in part for my children and people that I work with who so they could I could have an easy place to reference and provide them with. Here's how we think about business. Here's what we think about investing and so forth and so on. When I wrote the first version of this, it came out so poorly that I went back to the drawing board entirely and completely rewrote it about a summer ago. Then this book was written last summer, largely three full months, three, four hours a day of really just grinding through this. But I had gotten professional feedback on the book, which was intended to sort of the concept I got from the professional feedback. And one of my close friends, well, I see David Fine, I saw joined onto the. The webinar who, who knows, his friend said, look, Scott, the book is well done, but what you're missing is weaving in the story part of it and weaving in the story to. To go with the ideas on business so that people could really feel it and understand it. And so we went back, rewrote the book, did it solely around building businesses, not around investing. Took on a lot of the different pieces around building careers. And it's more focused on building businesses, but also helpful for people that are building careers too. So a lot of the lessons same whether you're trying to be great in building a business, but great in building a career. The, the concept that we try people, that we hope people come away with this, is that they'll be entertain some, that they'll learn something. I. I'm a big believer that we're all evolving learners. And so when we talk about learning, it's not so much that I'll teach you something, it's that you'll come away a little bit more motivated, a little bit more inspired, a little bit ready to go, you know, next week or whatever you do, your next venture or your career or just daily, daily effort at building a great life. But. But it's really more around that than anything else. So teach, entertain, motivate. I'm a big fan. It's like you go to the therapist. Therapist doesn't answer your questions. They help motivate you to think through how you're doing things. And we hope, similar with this, that you'll. You'll come away having some more motivation, a little bit more excited and be able to think about your own issues in your own businesses just one bit more clearly and hopefully you'll enjoy it. It's an easy read and hopefully you'll enjoy it. And that's really the gist of it.
- [04:32]
B
Thanks for sharing that, Scott. I think what stands out to me from what you said is that you had these lessons that you wanted to distill and share with others and the feedback you got from a friend is that your story was missing so you had to go back and fold your story into it. So I'm curious to hear that a bit about that now because you've built successful businesses across media, healthcare, law, investing. And I'm curious what you discovered early on, Scott, that helped you to pull these principles of building great businesses together, especially across industries. Like what happened for you, what were those key moments? Sure.
- [05:11]
A
So I'm an incrementalist. I'm not one of these people that sees things, you know, a mile ahead and could figure it out. I'm an incrementalist and learn as I go. So I really built two businesses and then I've been involved in the boards and as an investor of many other businesses, probably a couple in other businesses. Some of the businesses that I've been involved in have done great, some have done poorly. What I learned early on is that for me everything's about niches, teams and customer centricity. So we think about three being niche centric, team centric and customer centric. And so when I first started to build, the first business I really built was a really successful healthcare legal practice at the intersection of healthcare and business, representing health systems, investors in healthcare, all kinds of people. But the real concept was we were in a niche, specifically in healthcare. And I built a great team of lawyers to take care of those people. And I understand taking care of clients and customers really well. So at the end of the day, when we think about all this complexity in business, it often comes back to are you taking care of your team really well? Are you taking your customers really well? And is there a niche, is there a product market fit? Is there somebody that needs something? The second business I built, and that was the much bigger business, ended up being a really successful media company in health care called Becker's Healthcare. And the same concept is, and ended up we've got lots of employees, we've got big conferences. Our next big conference coming up is In April of 6,7000 people there we'll have Mark Cuban speaking, President Bush speaking. I've had a chance to interview lots of celebrities and politicians over the years and all very interesting, but, but the real thing that came out of it again was being niche centric, being really focused on specific niches, healthcare generally than specific niches in healthcare, building great teams because you can't do anything without great teams. This concept of the solopreneur is just at the end of the day to me is a false concept. I don't know anybody that's really built Anything great without teams and colleagues. And that's the same thing as in the law business. We have to take great care of our customers. We have to be a magnet for the audience. They want to be there. We've got to be so great with our customers that they get value in being there. Got to constantly take care of them. And you have to. Like when we go back to something we talked about earlier, finding clarity amongst competing priorities, constant demands, the poll question, I love that question because so much of the people that I know that are the best in business, they really know their own business really well. There's all these macro things going on, but the best business people who really know who are their best customers, where do their profits and revenues come from, who are their best people? And we try and simplify a lot around those things. Are you taking care of your best people and giving them great opportunities to grow and thrive with you? Are you taking great care of your customers and you actually have product, market fit or a niche where you're actually doing something useful? Is there something useful that you're doing that people are willing to pay for? You know, I mean, you're a magnificent example of this. You work with authors in helping them build their network, build their books and so forth. You've got a very specific niche. Your team treats its customers incredibly well and you do a really good job of it. But those are examples of things we look at. And then it's sort of knowing your business, knowing what you do well, and trying to constantly find that clarity. But, but there were a lot of great lessons I learned early on. I come back always to niches, teams and customers. But there were more lessons too. One of the great lessons I learned early was I had sat down with a mentor and that mentor was, was, you know, is building a law practice and building a business. And he was able to say to me, he was at a competing law firm, was able to say to me, look, if you want to build anything serious, you better build great teams. And that was a really helpful conversation because he'd been crazy successful at what he did. And you thought of him as a star, but you realized he was very clear. No, no, no, it's building a team. And that became fundamental to everything that we do. The other thing that I had a really good lesson on early in my career and I, I started practicing law 30 plus years ago. And when I started to practice law, I was at a big firm and when something wasn't done right, people would yell at each other. That's how Big law was done back in the day. It was a high stress, high pressure environment. And at one time I was a young lawyer, either a young partner, senior associate, and another lawyer pulled me aside and said, look, we understand that whoever you yelled at might have done something wrong, but when you yell at them, you screw up the culture for all of us. You sort of make it very tense around here and no good. So you might be right that the person didn't get that to the client in the right way and was as responsive and it wasn't as intelligent as it should be. But you've got to find a better way to handle it because, because at the end of the day when you yell at somebody, you end up creating a horrendous culture. And it's short term, works, long term, not so good. So we came up way with the end of the day. The one thing I give myself credit for, I was able to change on a dime and improve how I dealt with people. The second thing I would say is we built this concept of a constant, you know, culture of gratitude, of being thankful. And it ties into many rules. We talk about. We've got this rule in business saying that says love your 90 percenters. And this comes out of lessons of if you've got somebody who's doing some 90% plus right, you better love them for that. I see managers periodically really nitpicking that 7 to 10% they don't do right. And at the end of the day that's just bad management because they're probably never going to fix that 7 to 10% or if they do, they'll fix it. But you're better off being so thankful for that 90%, they're doing great and, and so forth. So those are a couple of things that we gratitude cultures, we talk about thrive, thrive cultures a lot, which we'll talk about some other point at this discussion, hopefully. And love your 90 percenters. But, but so many lessons you learn over the years in building businesses. You know, things you did right, things you did wrong. And it's, it's an evolving process.
- [11:11]
B
Amazing. So those are really important takeaways and I, I love the three that you shared. Being able to find a niche, to build a great team and from there to treat your customers very well and that will fuel a thriving business. So, you know, Scott, a lot of leaders will talk about the importance of focus, but when we're looking to grow a business, it creates more complexity. So I'm curious if you could talk to me a little bit about what You've seen about first signs that an organization is losing focus and what leaders should do if they see those signs. What are the actions we can take to correct and restore focus?
- [11:51]
A
Sure. No, no. I mean, we see it often, of course, in, in different businesses, different situations. One example of losing focus is at whatever business you're in. Most of us live in an 8020 world where 20, 30% of your customers end up comprising 89% of your revenues for most businesses. And every business model is a little bit different, but on average, a lot of companies have great clients or top 20% of clients. And those are very important, keeping the lights on and making things work. And so what we'll often see is situations where you'll have people that spend a disproportionate amount of their time on clients that are in the bottom 5% of the business. And it's not that every client doesn't deserve great attention and focus, but you really have to focus on what's driving the revenues, what's driving the efforts, what really counts, what doesn't. The same thing. If you've got, you've got great people. People used to complain, oh my God, all the opportunities went to her or her or her or that person or that person. And the opportunities go to those people because they're really good at growing and cultivating customers and growing those opportunities. And so what happens is it's unfortunately, business is not a democracy. It comes back a lot that we discussed earlier. Knowing your best customers, knowing your best service lines and knowing your best people. And business should be ultimately very simple. You've got a team that works with you at your business. We're fortunate to be working with one of your people who's fantastic. And it's constantly trying to make sure you're building great teams and great people and putting those together. I mean, we always thought of the practice of law is a relatively simple business. Great clients on this side, great people on this side, and connecting the two. And it's the same thing in almost any business. It's trying to figure out great customers and great execution for those customers in whatever you're trying to do for them. And constantly coming back in a lot of it comes back to this concept we talked about earlier, which is really knowing your own business and knowing your own people, knowing your customers, knowing your niche and more. We see it's very easy to get distracted. We have the CEO that works with me at Becker's Healthcare, has been with me for 20 plus years, is a magnificent leader. She won the EY Transferation Transformational Leader of the Year award several years back. She's really a magnificent leader and her and I are very much on the same page. Everybody loves this idea of, well, everybody has an idea, everybody should be sharing their ideas and we don't disagree with that. But there are periods of time in the year we want no new ideas. You know, it's right now we're focusing on executing on our annual conference, which is our super bowl for the year in business. And we can't have everybody coming to us with a billion different ideas. We need to execute on what we're doing. The end of the year is renewal cycle, renewal time for the business. We can't have everybody looking at a billion different things. We need them focusing on what counts during that period of the year in every business year. And there's execution seasons and you've got to be really focused on executing for your customers. One of the worst things you can do in business is get your sales ahead of your production, your sales out of your execution. There's nothing worse than signing up a great client and not being able to take care of them well. But just a couple thoughts and constantly coming back to sort of what you're most focused on, what works, not getting distracted and staying as focused as possible on the why of what you're doing, who you're trying to take care of and why you're doing.
- [15:15]
B
So yeah, I love that idea of there being different rhythms to the year where the team knows what they're supposed to stay focused on during that season. That's a really powerful concept. Okay, so let's get to this question about those leaders who are feeling overwhelmed by competing priorities. That is from the poll. Can you share a little bit, Scott, when you talk about clarity, what does that look like in practice?
- [15:41]
A
Sure. No, I mean, I mentioned a couple of examples of it already, but like when we have our annual meeting coming UP which has 5, 6, 7,000 people at it, we've got several co located meetings, it's making sure that our entire team is focused on making sure that that goes absolutely great. I mean, it's one meeting within a company, but it's a very important meeting. Our biggest customers are there, our biggest audience members are there, and making sure that that meeting goes off incredibly well, incredibly effectively. Similarly, as we get towards the end of the year, it's renewal season being very, very focused on that. Another example is obviously right now and we'll have a call to action around the book at some point. As you know, I'm very focused this six months on trying to get the book into lots of people's hands. And so being very clear, for this six months, I've got a million different things going on, million businesses going on. But for this six months leading up to June 23rd, we're going to say yes to almost every speaking appearance that typically I'm very guarded about my calendar because this is the main priority these six months. And it's very similar in business. We've had like, we have great clients, we constantly track who are great clients. Every week we have status calls on our best clients to make sure they're being taken care of really well. We're constantly huddling and meeting with our top people to make sure they're getting what they need and they're focused on taking care of the best clients, whatever it is in business. But constantly coming back to what are your priorities? When I talk to people, small business, large business, they can define clearly this is our ideal customer. Then at least they start with a litmus test of here's who we're trying to sell into, here's what we're trying to do. When people can't define who their ideal customer is, we know they're sort of in trouble because they're selling more broadly than a specific type of person. Similarly, if I'm in a business and a team doesn't have several great leaders, several great people, they're probably not going to grow into a great business. But any CEO, any leader, any founder has to know who those great performers are and has to set up a culture where they could thrive side by side with him or her. Not in always a top down way, but it constantly comes back to setting clear priorities, knowing who your best people are, knowing who your best customers are, and constantly coming back to those concepts. And it takes a lot of discipline
- [18:02]
B
to do that for sure. And we are going to get to those calls to action related to the book. But I want to get a little bit personal now. I know in the books, Scott, you're very open about your wins and losses in your career and you even said earlier on the call that some of the businesses you've been involved with have done great and others have not. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share with us how your biggest setback most profoundly shaped the leader and business builder you became.
- [18:32]
A
Sure, sure. I mean, all of us have so many different setbacks. I'll just go through three or four very quickly. So my first three years out of law school, I worked at a Mega law firm. And it was just a disaster in terms of personally feeling completely burnt out. Had to take some time back, figure out what I wanted to do. Came back to the practice of law after about a year out doing something different. But that was a real setback. I had come out of Harvard Law School, I had performed well enough at the big law firm, but it was crazily stressful. It was just like they used to work 80 hours a week and they would say, well, you could do whatever you want, entrepreneurial in your free time. But I had no free time. And it was just a burnt out, you know, burnt out person. And I viewed that as somewhat of a personal failure. You know, fast forward a couple generations, a couple of decades, excuse me. I had been in a spot where I, you know, had built businesses, had successfully made money. I didn't grow up wealthy. Was finally in a spot to invest in sort of private equity funds, venture capital funds, through these side business investments, and thought, oh my God, now I am a player because now I could play at a different game that he never grew up, understand or being a part of. And what you learn is success in one thing does not lead to success in another thing. So you find very quickly, you know, you, you, you know, when you invest in a business, even side by side with the greatest venture capital funds in the world, which, and they all sound great when you're investing in them. And then a few years later you get a call saying that investment, you know, you hear for a couple years it's going great. Then at some point they tell you, well, that investment has gone south. You know, so you put in this amount of money, you're going to get zero from it. And those kinds of things, that sort of burnout early on in the career. The person who told me you got to stop yelling at people. The concept that, like, you have to, you know, you feel like the dog who caught the car. You're finally able to invest in the stuff you were able to invest in. And you find it's not so great. The grass isn't always so much greener. And they educate you early on. You know, I grew up, you know, in, professionally, started to start to have any money at all in the late 90s. Was an investor in a bunch of tech companies like everybody else. Of course, the tech bubble entirely crashed. So, so very quickly you feel like, you know, you're really making it. You're living the American dream, you've got a great career, you're putting money away. And the money you put away you know, falls precipitously. And those are great lessons to learn. And they end up leading to a lot of my thinking about, you know, it's, it's, it may be that easy to get rich, but you get rich, it's very hard to stay rich. It just as an aside, if you get wealthy, it's very hard to stay wealthy. Not that that's good or bad, but if you get successful in something, what we see in business founders, serial entrepreneurs. Serial entrepreneurs may be the most overused term in the world. Most entrepreneurs aren't serial entrepreneurs. I mean, at the end of the day, we've essentially built two businesses at best, invest in a lot of other businesses and been part of a lot of businesses. Most people think they've been great in something, they're going to be great in the next thing. And in my experience, even though you might have better knowledge when you're doing the next thing, it takes that same compulsion, that same obsession, that same, just everything in it to become great at that next thing. And most people don't have the energy to do it time and time and time again or don't realize even though they've got the knowledge, they still have to start over. And being great in the next thing that they're doing, that's not, it's not, there's no, there's no sort of like, you know, access a great basketball player. It doesn't mean he's gonna be great in his next career. The same thing with an entrepreneur. You might have been great and hit it really right in a couple categories. You're not gonna hit right in the next category without really putting in the work again. And I think it's a constant lesson and a constant learning experience for a lot of us.
- [22:20]
B
Yeah, that makes so much sense that if you want to switch from one business to another, there's no guarantee that the success that you've had in one will carry over to the next. So let's talk about teams. We have, you know, you've mentioned the importance and the centrality of teams for building a successful business. And they've been central to all the businesses that you've built the two businesses. So can you talk about what distinguishes or, or a resilient, high performing team from a team that might struggle when the pressure is on?
- [22:53]
A
Sure. So we look at this, I give a couple examples and then I'll try and focus specifically on the question. But we've served on two different boards of directors that were in a similar industry. One company had built a team of several A plus leaders, lots of A plus leaders. The other company had a founder and a CEO who was, you think, the most talented person in the world. What you think of as a supernova and what happens is the company that built a team with lots of great leaders ended up thriving for decades and decades. The company that had a supernova leader did really well for a period of time, but had not built a sustainable, serious team and so wasn't able to sustain itself past a certain point, past certain growth point. Sort of got there and sort of tapped out for all practical purposes. So one is you need some depth. I remember one of the, one of the great lessons I learned in business was when I was a young lawyer, I had one person full time working for me. That person was great. That person then left and went to another firm. And you realize in business you have to build a big enough team and a big enough business to be able to support a team and not be so fragile to any one person. So you're not an expert. It's much like being. You can't be so reliant on any one customer. I mean, there's, there's decades of writings of companies that got too reliant on Walmart's customer and then end up in trouble when Walmart stopped being a customer. So you can't be too reliant on any one person. You can't be reliant on any one customer. At the same time, the critical word and thought is and not. Or so you want to have great people and yet additional great people. You want to have great customers, you don't want to become less customer lines and that customer getting rid of the customer. You want to treat that customer fantastically well and add great and add additional customers. You know, and so it's this concept of how do you sort of build depth in your customer book, in your, in your people book and your team book. And then you also end up in a situation where in any business you're in, you end up. The common phrase today is ride or die people. You end up with people that are so important to what you're doing that you never want to lose them, that you sort of, you want to build depth around them, but you realize if we lost that person, it would be a disaster. And you're going to have some of those people and you have to love and embrace those people and constantly think in terms of and not or keep those people and grow more great people. And it's constant challenge. I remember being on a board where somebody Said at some point we've got to be less reliant on that person. And all I can think of is that's the, you know, you could do that. When I retire, I want that person here forever. And we need to add more people around them. But, but think the bit is and not or that, you know, and it's, it's. And you never want that person who's so important to feel like you're somehow another. Don't appreciate their importance. You want to appreciate them greatly and grow a team around them. And it means, unfortunately, it means in a lot of situations, you have to be a growing business to provide enough opportunities for great people. So it's like there's a reason why the Googles, the alphabets of the world, are so successful. They can afford lots of great people and keep on growing. But you don't have to be that. But you have to have a good enough, strong enough business to be able to support great people because you can't take care of great customers. You get everything great without great people.
- [26:18]
B
That makes so much sense. You know, looking at that superstar and making sure that there are others who can do the same things the superstar can do, but still cultivating the contribution of that person. That makes so much sense.
- [26:35]
A
100%.
- [26:37]
B
Yeah. That's something that I have faced a number of times. Like when there's one person in the organization who knows how to do something, you're putting the whole organization at risk if there's an emergency with that person.
- [26:49]
A
100%. 100%. It was hard as an employee, when I was early on an employee, as soon as I got really good at something, the person in charge was like, we need to teach another person that. And so it's complicated. And the way that it was done didn't leave me feeling very good. It's true you can't be so reliant on one person, but you also have to be so deeply appreciative of your people that they don't feel like you're trying to move them out. We want you thriving for the long run and we want you thriving as well, or more than I thrive. We want to working for all of us.
- [27:17]
B
Yes. Yeah, that's such a good point. You know, we want to make sure that those people don't, don't feel pushed out. So one more question for you, Scott, and we're going to open up in a little bit for others on the call who might have some questions for you related to building great businesses. So what's one mindset Shift you hope readers take away from the book, from building great businesses that could immediately change the way they lead.
- [27:41]
A
Yes. Yeah. No, I, I don't, I don't know that I have a perfect answer to this. But, but we hope that you come away a little bit inspired, little bit motivated. You know, what happens is engaged people turn on. People are so effective at seeing the markets, seeing the opportunities, seeing things. And if I had one thing to take away from this, we hope that you'll.
- [28:02]
B
Yeah.
- [28:03]
A
You'll get some tips and some thoughts that fit into how you view the world and how that resonate from business perspective. But more importantly, that we provide some inspiration and a little excitement for you to go out and keep on growing what you're doing. I mean, I would say that if there's a, there's a top thing that we're looking for, it's that, that, that you away from this just a little bit more inspired. And then it's constantly, as we went back to earlier, business is complex. Great leaders, great executors can constantly simplify what they're really trying to do and who they're trying to do it for. So I look at those kinds of things, knowing your business, clarifying what you're trying to achieve, and then coming away a little bit more inspired, a little bit more positive about what you're doing,
- [28:45]
B
a little more hopefully that's, that's a great takeaway that folks could have from the book. And I know I already pre ordered my copy, so I can't wait for it to land. We do have the book cover behind me for those of you who haven't seen it. So I wanted to take a moment and Scott has an amazing offer for all of you who are with us live today. He's inviting you to pre order building great businesses on Amazon. And if you pre order that hardcover book today and you text a receipt to Scott, that's Scott's cell phone right there on the scre 773-766-5322. Scott will hook you up with a 25Amazon gift card as a thank you for your pre order of the book. So we would love to see you take action on that even while we're still on this call to go ahead and pre order the book. And the reason that we want so much to get these pre orders in is that the early momentum for a book makes a significant impact on the book's ability to continue to be a resource in the world. And Scott has filled with so many amazing lessons and so much great wisdom and guidance that we'd like this book to get out to as many people as possible. And this early period of pre orders is critical to that. So we invite you to pre order your copy of Building Great Businesses on Amazon today and text your receipt for the hardcover purchase over to Scott on his cell phone and he'll get you that gift card. Do you have something to say about that, Scott?
- [30:15]
A
Yeah, no, absolutely. Text me at 773-766-5322 if you're scared you won't get reimbursed. I understand it. Send me the text first. We'll send you the $25 gift card. Then do me the favor of pre ordering the book. We want to make sure people get the book and get a chance to read it. It'll come out in June, but if you text me today or tomorrow, 773-766-5322, we'll send you a $25Amazon gift card to buy the book. So you're out. Nothing. You'll get it in June. You'll see if you like it or hate it. But we hope you love it. But, but please do you know, text me 773-766-5322. We'd love you to buy the book. We'd love you to send a gift card to do it. Thank you so much.
- [30:58]
B
Amazing. This is such a powerful offer and I love the idea of aspiring entrepreneurs getting this book. So if you're going to pre order today, maybe there's an entrepreneur in your life who could really benefit from Scott's hard won wisdom across successes and failures and his, his career. And I, I just love the 773 area code. My phone number starts with 7732.
- [31:24]
A
Oh, there you go. There you go. Yeah, it's somebody with some Chicago roots, you know, and if you send me, if you want to buy two, I'll send you 50. So, so just. But let's get a couple books out to people, please. Thank you.
- [31:35]
B
That is amazing. You know, I just have a thousand questions. So Scott, you mentioned that you didn't grow up with much money and I'm curious, you know, what gave you the self confidence and self belief to start your entrepr entrepreneurial journey?
- [31:51]
A
Yeah, I think, you know, it's, it's. I'm always an incrementalist. So what happens is when I started to build a serious practice as the law firm, I didn't know that that's what I wanted to do at first. But, but I first practiced my first three years, we talked about this. The first three years when I was at this mega law firm that was a hard nosed, great law firm, if you didn't have your own clients and customers, you were treated like a dog. And I didn't want to treat anybody like a dog, but I didn't want to be vulnerable. I didn't want to be sort of dependent upon others for my career and my ability to support my family and take care of myself. So at some point the lesson I took in was, oh my goodness, if I'm going to do this, I better build a practice. And a practice in law meant that you had clients that you originated that you were responsible for. So that you had sort of control of your future. And it wasn't about, it was very clear if you didn't have it, you were treated horribly. If you did have it, you had some control of your life. So my first goal was to control my life. I sort of ended up in a family where, you know, dad lost his job when I was in high school, went to University of Illinois, was a fantastic experience, the best ever. But it's basically free to go to college. And it was like out of a movie, it looks like you're going to University of Illinois because dad lost his job. And it was a fantastic thing. But, but those kinds of things are very inspirational. When I started the media company, I wasn't intended to start the media company. I was building a newsletter and some other stuff to try and build the law practice. And as I was getting into this, as it got going, as I had this very rudimentary newsletters, very rudimentary conference, we didn't have keynote speakers, didn't have anything. It was, we started to, it started to become profitable. And I was like, oh my God, I've got to double down on this and build this and sort of recognizing the patterns and trends and, and connecting the dots. So it was really about that. I wasn't, you know, I'd always been interested in business but, but I didn't know that it ended up really building a law practice or building a business until I sort of got going. And the lesson I take from this is one of the things we talk about, so many would be entrepreneurs are constantly whiteboarding ideas. They're sort of like thinking of ideas like, oh, what an idea for this, idea for that. And what I have found it's very hard to come up with really good ideas unless you're actually in doing things and involved in things. And then you could see the opportunity, I assume there's an origin story between behind weaving influence as to how you saw this as a market opportunity and how you got there. And many of us, I assume that you didn't whiteboard. I'm going to represent authors in helping to market their books. That, that wasn't, that was more. It came to you from being involved in things and saying, oh, this is a great idea. People need this and they do.
- [34:30]
B
Yes. And I mean, I will share, since you're so kind to use me as an example. I was doing some freelance work, Scott, and I did my first book launch, launch with a client and then I had other people saying, hey, I saw what you did over there, would you do it for me? So it was the like the market was saying, this is an idea worth pursuing. I never wrote a business plan or had any, had any, any idea of what an entrepreneurial life would be. So I do agree with you, Scott, that quite often it's a discovery driven process. And I hear what happened with you with the media side of your businesses. You were working on these media assets, you saw them getting trapped traction and momentum. And so you fueled that part in order to get more growth and success 100%.
- [35:14]
A
And we just started to double down on it. It was sort of an epiphany for me at some point I was reading a magazine one day and this guy who's a famous entrepreneur who started the computer electronics show, the CES show, sold that meeting for like a billion dollars. And I was like, oh my God, maybe I should look at this media thing as a business, not just as like whatever. And it was really sort of an aha moment. I was like, oh, this could be a business, you know, not just like, not just a thought leadership effort, but a real business. And then I started hiring a lot of people into that business. That was very scary. Talk about stress. I had about 10 people on the payroll when it wasn't a business that could support that and then trying to grow it and sort it out and so forth. And fortunately ended up with some fantastic people and grew a great business.
- [35:55]
B
Amazing. So there's a question in the chat from your friend David. David says, what is one of the best lessons that you can provide to someone starting a solo law practice later in their career?
- [36:06]
A
Yeah, no, I love that question. And so, so what I think of is that like, you know, we find so many people are like, people do a lot around social media and I think what they should think about is social media's ear support. Really building a practice requires one to one Contact one to one efforts. So you, you could do a thousand things around social media. Far more valuable is the constant network and constant one to one the constant letting people know this is what I do. If you're doing mediation around certain types of efforts, it's, it's, there's no substitute for, yes, the, the social media and that kind of stuff is branding stuff. But there's no substitute for reaching out to 100 people a week and saying, and then the same people a few weeks later and saying this is what I do. I just want to let you know, know here's an article on what I do here, here's what I do. You know, I always say writing an article, giving a speech is useless. Distributing that speech, distribute that article is useful. And so in really building a practice, it's, it's a different business because you're built around sort of business you're built around, built a little bit around everybody. But you have to be in front of a lot of people a lot of the time, not selling them, but so they know what you do. So they, they know what you do. We always viewed it as our marketing, our reaching out to people was not direct selling. It was often we're open for business. You know, I look at this, at this book effort that we're on now to sell books and the greatest lesson I learned is almost nothing is sold over social media. Everything is sold at the end of the day through direct contact. That's why so like aggressive about the, we've got a call to action. Buy a book, we'll send you a $25 gift card. Because I can do all the speaking I want but if I don't make it really easy for people to buy, they don't buy. Or really easy to be in front of them and know me, they don't buy. And it's, you know, David, you probably received one of those LinkedIn messages at some point asking to pre order the book. And we appreciate it greatly for everybody that's done so. But it's what you have to be. It's. I see people mistake this concept of social media ear support for actually selling and building a business. One of the worst things I see in business, people spend a ton of money on marketing but they're not doing sales too. And sales means direct contact, one on one, you know. And so I view it as, you know, I was referred to Becky. Becky did a great job of following up with me and she didn't push me at all. She just let me know when you're ready, we're ready to talk to you, stuff like that. And just really. But the people that referred me had had wonderful experiences, Becky and I see why. But it's, but it's, but it was a great example of sales and marketing. Somebody referred me, Becky followed up, probably had a handful of pre calls, free calls till I finally signed up as a customer. But I think so much of life in businesses, it is people mistake all this Internet stuff for selling and growing a business. And real growing a business is still one on one combat.
- [39:01]
B
Yeah, that is such a powerful reminder. Scott and I always phrase it as you have to be memorable to people so that personal contact is what helps you become memorable. So let's talk a little bit about this idea of finding the right niche. You found the niche of healthcare when you started your law firm. And I'm curious if there are some signals that help entrepreneurs discover that they've found the right niche or not found the right niche. You know, even with us, you mentioned that our niche is authors, but it's actually even drilled down to authors to, to business focused authors or leadership or nonfiction authors. So how would a founder or leader who's trying to discover the right niche know when they've landed on the right one?
- [39:52]
A
So how do you find the right niche? So at the end of the day, so this is another great business lesson. So when I started my first healthcare serious media effort, it was in a specific segment, it was in a niche called ambulatory surgery centers. And people would say to me and that area ended up exploding. And people would say to me, oh my God, you were so smart to pick that area. You're such a genius, stuff like that. And I would have to say to them, no genius here. I was testing three or four different areas. That's the one that we got lots of feedback in and lots of positive response in and started to build clients in. So I doubled down on that area. I think it is very hard. Very few people I know are such genius that they could just see a market and say this is where we're going and really capture and do great with it. Most of us are somewhat growing and incrementalist and figuring it out. For me it was, we tried three different niches. That was the one that outperformed the others. And the smart thing is that I was smart enough to see it and double down on it, to recognize the pattern and double down on it. Once we built the media company a certain size, we couldn't support the type of people we wanted, the type of growth. We wanted just in that niche. So then we ended up expanding into two more niches. We thought the niche that was closest to surgery centers would be our extra base hit, would be the real growth engine of the company. Of course, it ended up being the other niche that we started in that ended up being 90% of the company. You know, so. So it's no genius. We tested it, but when we started to see it and we started to see results, we doubled down on it. It's. It's sort of. A lot of it's pattern recognition. People beat themselves up because they haven't picked the right niche. They haven't done this, they haven't done that. At the end of the day, a lot of it's testing and growing. There's a great concept in one of the great business books of all time by Jim Collins, good to great that you fire bullets, not cannons. And his concept is you take some risk in going into an area, but you don't put yourself at total risk. So you test some areas and then you double down on those. We're also a believer in this concept that you build adjacent to what you're doing. So, you know, if, if, if you're representing authors, probably the next closest step would not be to go represent rock stars. It might be to represent authors in a different niche, because now you've got this great talent in representing authors. But it sort of. There's a concept, another great book, profit from the Core, which talks about building things in adjacent markets. The other thing I'll talk about niches is we always look at niches and say, can you win in the niche? And is it worth winning? And so the concept is you could have what we call false positives, is that you end up in a niche where you get some early results and you feel like, oh, my God, this is going to be great. And every time somebody buys something, it's a dopamine hit. You feel like, okay, this is. This is good. It's moving the right direction. But you can find sometimes in almost any market, you could dig into and get some hits. But that doesn't mean you're going to have depth in that market and really be able to succeed deeply in that market. And they're two different things. So we think about that as well. Just trying to separate false positives from real opportunities, you know, and part of it is just constantly studying what's working, what's not working, and starting to understand these things. We think of this concept constantly, and I just mentioned it. Can you Win in the niche. So I don't want to be competing against Amazon in the niche. I just don't want to do it. And second is, if I win in the niche, is it big enough to be worth winning in? Where I could support a team, build a company, build a business, take care of customers.
- [43:11]
B
Well, that makes a lot of sense. Can I win in the niche and is it worth winning? I hope I can remember that. I should have a pen and be taking notes there.
- [43:21]
A
It'll be in the book. It's in the book. So you'll have it in the book, right? You'll have it in the book. Exactly.
- [43:24]
B
Awesome. So I was thinking of a question for you, Scott. It's off the script, but I have noticed about you in, in our interactions that your team does a lot of this, like direct selling, like reaching out. And it's, in a way, it's a numbers game. So if you're pitching, then a certain percentage will say yes. And I'm curious about the balance for someone who's founding something new. And to David's question about, you know, someone start starting a firm later in their career, you know, how much are you a proponent of, like, cold selling and cold pitching compared to, like, letting a business grow naturally by the referrals or leads that come to it?
- [44:00]
A
Yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's a great, great question. I think it's, I, I've always been a believer. We use this concept, you have to dig 10 ditches before they start digging themselves. And, and, and it depends the situation you're in. And what I mean by that is you've got to get an affordable momentum going in whatever you're doing till referrals start to come without you doing something to prime that pump, to try and move people forward. So between marketing, between reaching out, between staying in touch with people, obviously, you know, if, if, like anything, if I'm trying to have somebody buy the book, the people that know me or know of me or have been involved me somehow or another are much quicker to say, yeah, I'm thrilled to buy a book, happy to do so, versus those that hardly know me. So a lot of it has to do with, like, how well do you know people, how long you've been related to them and so forth. And so if we've got 50,000 followers on LinkedIn, you know, like anything, there's 10,000 of those that somehow or another, I sort of really know, there's 10,000 I don't know at all. And there's 30,000. Somewhere in between that they've been at a Becker's health conference, they've been on a Becker private equity podcast. They've seen something that we do where at least there's a warmer engine for them to be interested in, in reaching you. You know, and it depends, you know, if you're running a, a real business. You know, at the end of the day businesses run on cash flow and you've got to get to clients, you've got to get to customers. And so, so we say in any business there's five stages of a business. There's, there's idea, everybody has one. Almost useless. There's actually a product or service. Then you've got a product or service. The third thing is do you have revenues? The fourth is you have profits. And the fifth is can you scale and four and five could be, could be depending on the business could be reversed. But at the end of the day, idea, fine, top of the funnel, product or service, you're actually doing something. Third is you actually got customers. Fourth is you've got profits. Fifth is your scaling. But to get to that third stage of actual revenues, like I was on somebody yesterday on the phone yesterday with somebody who's got a startup up. They're sort of a little discouraged. They've got a $300,000 in revenues. It's a small supplement type company I guess is the best way to describe it. But what I have to explain to them is your 300,000, that's a huge differentiator versus 97% of the business in America that you've got to there. Now we're trying to figure out how do you pull levers to grow that further, assuming the market wants what you have. And so it's constantly, I think, think, you know, it's like it's easier to wait for referrals if you got a separate income source coming in. If it's, if you don't need the money, if you need the money, you're trying to build a business, you got to support your people. You know, somehow or another there's got to be a lot of direct reaching out, a lot of work at it. You know, I was building a healthcare practice. It was different. I could do a lot of marketing. I didn't, I did have to be. Every Tuesday was the morning where I would call people, contacts, referral sources, just say hello. I wasn't selling to that them, but I was letting them know every Tuesday. Hey, just want to let you know we just did this piece, we got this conference Coming up, we got this coming up. We'd love you to come, whatever it is to stay in front of that. And, and then depending what business you're in, you start to really tier your customers by what's a, you know, what's an A client, what's a B client, what's a C client? Meaning what are the clients that can actually pay the bills and help the business move forward and support the team you're trying to build. You know, I mean it's like in any business if you're in a consulting business and somebody wants to spend $3 a month with you, they might have a need, but you can't pay the type of talent you have with that kind of, with that kind of price that just doesn't work. So it's constantly trying to this right balance of. But, but I do think there's a lot of outward action that has to happen before you start to get, before it starts to come in without outward action. And it can be different. You could end up in a new business where it's like there's so few people that are, that are servicing that business that you're getting referrals usually that doesn't, doesn't that, that, that doesn't happen for that log. And even most businesses that start with. So the book is not really around specific industries. It's much more, it tells the story of building businesses and then tries to bring in a lot of different thoughts that apply to most businesses. So I've served as an investor and advisor to a lot of software as a service company, similar to this discussion here. So many software companies end up early on spending so much time on product and not commercializing that they end up being, you know, there's got to be a fit, there's got to be ultimately a product and something that somebody wants. So the book's not industry specific. It talks about me building a career as a lawyer and then building a healthcare media business and then some other companies we've invested in some wins and some losses. But a lot of the lessons should apply like small or mid sized or even large businesses too. So. But that's the concept. But thank you for that question. Anas.
- [48:58]
B
Yes. You answering that one?
- [49:01]
A
Yeah. If you, if you buy the book, if you send me that, that text and us we'll send you the gift card. Buy the book and you'll see if you like it or not. But we thank you so much for the question.
- [49:11]
B
It's a great question. So I want to put back up on the screen for everyone before we wrap up this hour together, Scott's cell phone number 773-766-5322 and we would invite you to pre order building great businesses today pre order on Amazon, text that hardcover receipt over to Scott to get the 25Amazon gift card as a thank you for your pre order. So Scott, I want to kick it back to you as we wrap up the hour together. You know, what are some parting thoughts that you'd like those who have been with us today to hear from you as we wrap up this conversation?
- [49:51]
A
Yeah, no, 100%. You know, we want people essentially to come away, you know, it, it's in everything you do. It's going to be hard to get started for most people. You know, most people are starting with small and mid sized clients. You have to get started and go after something. We're not a fan of this concept of people talk about well burn the boats, get rid of your day job, go all in. We're not generally a fan of that. I mean it depends what you're doing, what you're trying to do. We generally don't live that way. We're sort of a risk hedger, risk adjust type person. But I think you have to be deep enough into something to figure out if it's really an opportunity for you or not. You have to get started and you got to be willing to put something into it. And it's not often, it's not just money, it's often enough effort, enough forward action with people. You could ask a million people, friends if they like your business idea. You could talk to 15 of them. That is useless compared to one person who wants to buy what you're selling because, because a lot of your friends will say it's a great idea, it's a bad idea. I had people when I started a healthcare media companies, that's the stupidest idea ever. Other people say it's great, don't really matter. What really happens is will customers want to pay for what we're doing? Are they willing to do so? So you know, so that's how we really view it as you have to test things, you have to get into them, you have to be deeply enough into them and committed them to see if there's a win, you know, and then you figure out if there's a real opportunity for you to build a business, export yourself, support your family, whatever your goals are, are for it. It could be a side business, you know, or, or whatever it is, but it's I, I think you have to put enough effort into it for it to start to really pay dividends.
- [51:28]
B
Thank you so much for that wisdom, Scott, for your energy, for your inspiration. Today. Building Great Businesses will be out shipping from all the retailers on June 23rd. And in the meantime, you know, share this offer for the free book with your friends, family, colleagues. We want to get as many copies of this book into the world as we can. So thank you so much, Scott. And thank you for all of you who have joined with us today.
- [51:54]
A
Thank you so much. What a great pleasure to be with you, Becky. What a great team you have. Thank you so much.
- [51:58]
B
It was amazing to be with you. Take good care.