Rick Crossland is the CEO of A Player Advantage, a firm specializing in high-performance coaching and recruitment, and the author of The A Player. He is an internationally recognized expert and thought leader in talent development, best known for his work developing and recruiting teams of A Players across a wide variety of industries. As a certified Scaling Up Coach, Rick helps midmarket companies boost their business strategies, enhance execution, and increase cash flow. He has been published in leading business publications, including Inc., Entrepreneur, and Fortune. In addition to his writing and consulting work, Rick is a dynamic speaker who loves to captivate audiences with his unique A Player approach.
What separates a mediocre business from a high-performing one? How can companies transform their teams and strategies to achieve exceptional growth and profitability? The key lies in cultivating elite talent and implementing a robust business framework. What practical steps can leaders take to ensure their teams and strategies are top-notch?
According to Rick Crossland, a renowned expert in business coaching and talent optimization, the secret to success is building a team of A Players and employing the Scaling Up methodology. He highlights that having over 90% A Players — those in the top 10% of their industry — can transform business performance and culture. This approach not only drives higher profitability and smoother operations but also prepares businesses for successful exits at a premium value. Rick underscores the importance of rigorous coaching and strategic planning, which help maintain high standards and continuous improvement within the team.
In this episode of America Open for Business, host Cameron Heffernan sits down with Rick Crossland, CEO of A Player Advantage, to discuss the secrets behind cultivating elite talent and Scaling Up success. They explore the importance of having a high percentage of A Players, the impact of effective coaching, and the significance of strategic planning in achieving business excellence.
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Cameron: 0:02
Hello everyone and welcome again to another episode of America Open for Business. I’m Cameron Heffernan, your host for the program, and the show is brought to you by your B2B Marketing, a truly global marketing agency. We help mid-market B2B companies overcome some of the typical challenges they encounter as they enter new markets or expand across borders. So we do end-to-end marketing strategy and content creation execution. Reach out to us to see how we can support your next expansion at yourb2bmarketingco.
Cameron: 0:36
Past guests of the program have included Brian Smith, the founder of the UGG Australia slippers and sheepskin boots billion-dollar brand. Ben Tija, who’s the founder and CEO of Earthly Wellness here in Central Ohio. That’s a $20 million-plus e-commerce brand that’s trying to change healthcare naturally. And recently Jean-Arthur Regibeau, who is the ambassador of Belgium to the USA. Having me I’m sorry my pleasure to welcome to the show today a close friend and the guest that we’re going to welcome from A Player Advantage. That’s Rick Crossland, who is the founder of the company. He’s an internationally known expert and thought leader on getting the best out of A Player talent. We’re going to delve deep into what Rick and his team focus on and look at some successes that he’s seen with his clients. Please welcome to the show Rick Crossland of A Player Advantage.
Rick: 1:31
Hey, thank you, cameron. I love what you said there America open for business and the world being open for business as well. So great to be here.
Cameron: 1:37
Great, so pleased to have you on the show, and let’s start with talking a little bit about Scaling Up. Scaling Up is one of the best known business books in publication, gone through multiple editions and revisions, authored by Vern Harnish, the founder of EO, and you even contributed some copy to one of the more recent editions of that book. You’re also a Scaling coach, a certified scaling up coach. What makes scaling up unique in this arena for business coaching?
Rick: 2:09
Yeah well, thank you. I brought a copy of the book. This is the original one and, in fairness, I was a contributor to the last two editions, so I’ve been a certified coach for about 10 years. Great program. So what it is? It’s a business growth system and savvy entrepreneurs. You mentioned entrepreneurial organization, eo, young presidents organization, ypo, vistage members.
Rick: 2:31
A lot of people who are in peer coaching gravitate because of the success their peers have with a system like this. So scaling up is the original. We have some intimidators, some good intimidators, people who may be taking slices of the system, but we want the purest Our CEOs want. They’re typically it can work for more of a startup to scale up, but typically it’s a more sophisticated, savvy CEO and they want it all. One of the things that we’ve seen is really two major factors that are kind of related. They want their business to literally run like a Swiss watch, so they want everything the real Rolex, they want everything bulletproof, buttoned down, and the other thing that we see is they want their team to win as much as they do.
Cameron: 3:21
And what made you gravitate toward scaling up as a practice? There are many methodologies and approaches out there. It’s been a while that you’ve been working with this practice. What has led to you, attracted you to it and made it sticky?
Rick: 3:36
for you. Yeah, and again, scaling up is a bit more of a sophisticated system. Nothing to might as well say who the other ones are? Primarily EOS, which is a sliver. Actually, eos was one of the guy that founded it. Gino Wickman was one of. I think it was Vern’s second coach behind John Anderson. Both those guys were in the Detroit area. I know John well. I’ve not met Gino yet, but Gino’s kind of simplified, it took a sliver when you’re you know, and it can work just fine at a $10 million revenue company or even a five. We start getting a 20 to 40 to 50 to 100 million to a half billion.
Rick: 4:16
Our full tool set is people strategy, execution, cash, and there’s a fifth, informal one but very important, arguably the most important which is valuation, growth valuation. So it’s a comprehensive system that looks at all of those four or five verticals I just mentioned and we just go deeper. A lot of people tools. Obviously I’ve parlayed those with the work we’ve done in the A player and we can talk about that. But then strategy, right, we just have richer strategy tools. Strategies about everything being differentiated in the business and that’s where I spend a lot of my time with teams. I tend to coach the CEO and their teams on everything being different. It’s easy to say a lot harder to do. And then execution right. Where you take that strategy and all strategy, by the way, is derived from military strategy where you want to outflank your opponent and win elegantly, it requires just really, really, maybe painstaking execution right. How are you going to do it? Improve your plan and we’ll come back to this because I know we want to talk about it A lot of CEOs think their teams are better than they are.
Rick: 5:27
Build a strategy, put it in a quarterly execution with detailed execution steps and let’s see how good they really are. And again, we want people to win, but most CEOs they are disappointed in what their team actually can produce. When you say we’re going to go take this hill, what’s the plan to take it Interesting? The fourth is cash right, and we have some very and I hope your listeners you know we had the passing of the late great Willie Mays. They called him a six-tool athlete. One of the things we endeavor to do at A Player Advantage is be the best in the world at all of these things. So, cash we are very good at working and most CEOs, let’s say, have a $50 million business. The tools we have elevate them, and I’m actually teaching the CFO, who might be a 20-year veteran, on new ways to look at profit versus cash, reconciliation, the power of one, the power of pricing versus volume, cost of goods sold reduction to improve the valuation of your business. And then that final part is coaching people through a very successful exit.
Cameron: 6:35
So your program focuses on the four components people, strategy, execution and cash. Done correctly, following your program, the scaling up methodology then drives a higher valuation.
Rick: 6:48
That’s exactly right, cameron, a great way to put it right. So that, fifth, the valuation is the sum of it. Actually, a client worked with him seven years ago, came back he was actually not on a scaling up program seven years ago, a slightly different program, and he’s got two elements to his business. This conversation was just yesterday and he’s like you know. I’ve gotten people wanting to buy one or the other, but not both. Right, that’s what we’re going to work on together is and we see that from our lens right, just taking a look at his website, this doesn’t make sense. A strategic buyer is not going to get that. So what we really endeavor is to get a strategic multiple, which we really ascribe to be about a 10x. So you know, private equity will typically buy, you know, between 4x and maybe 7, maybe 8x. On the upper end, a strategic buyer will pay upwards of a 10 X multiple.
Cameron: 7:52
So part of your approach must be you work with us, you follow the approach and you follow our coaching, our examples, and not only is this, the investment in that going to pay off, it’s going to actually make you more attractive to investors, make you more attractive to private equity rather than a two or three X sale, 10 X plus valuation.
Rick: 8:06
Correct, that’s exactly right and you know. The other thing is it’s like improving your house, right, you could put it off right to your sale, but you don’t get to enjoy that. You know enhanced gourmet kitchen. You don’t get to enjoy the back deck or anything else, your upgraded AC. So you never know when you’re going to get a knock on the door and you know we really want people to enjoy the ride. I mean, what a lot of things we do with the scaling up methodology and the Rockefeller habits, by the way, was kind of the foundation of this. And I’ll run into people all the time who 25, maybe even a little bit longer, from the birthing of giants program, mit successful business people like, yeah, I implemented the rock habits all those years ago. So they’re disciplines that take drama out of your business. And I mean, as most of us, if we’re really honest with ourselves, there’s a ton of drama in the business that really doesn’t need to be there.
Cameron: 8:54
So you remove that, you really focus on it and from good to great, the flywheel concept, repeatable, measurable process, that we just do it again and do it again repeatable, measurable process that we just do it again and do it again Exactly, and we say routine sets you free and I hate to say it.
Rick: 9:11
There’s people who are like adrenaline junkies who you know they feel, unless they’re putting on their cape and wearing their underwear outside their tights and being Superman, they’re not happy. But if you like that predictable business, if you like to watch your team grow and like more personal time to maybe you know business, if you like to watch your team grow and like more personal time to maybe you know, do some of the things in your BHAG, your own personal BHAG, the carry audacious goal. Yes, I have a lot of business owners who take two week vacations to incredible locations and their business runs without them. You know, one of our number one things is to make the owner redundant. And again, you could, you know, definitely coach your people, work on strategy and those things. Be involved in the business. I’d say, work on strategy, coach your team at that point, but take joy in letting that next generation emerge and you have a proven system. That again, don’t change the meetings up right, run the system, yeah.
Cameron: 10:02
Yeah, and I mean a founder, a founder driven business, where the founder is still involved and embedded in the day to day. That’s a much harder thing to sell because you still need that founder. You don’t have a process, you don’t have a whole team that’s trained and mentored. I think in the book maybe who, not how if they talk about building a self led team or self managed team, that is a great aspiration to aim for.
Rick: 10:28
Exactly, exactly. And you know, talking to a gentleman just the other day, he’s like the people who are interested want me to stick around. If the team runs without you, it’s going to help your exit right and I could show anybody wants to see I’ll show you the math right. If you got 10 exit, exit and walked away, you know, maybe do a little consulting gig, but you’re not a W2 employee, we’re entrepreneurs. We’re not built to be employees. They’re going to ride you so much harder than you’ve used to been riding yourself and harder than I’m going to ride a client.
Rick: 10:59
We are intense. I mean we ride hard, but we stress. We don’t de-stress. You might be de-stressed under a new owner. That math is better than staying on for five years at a 7X multiple and maybe having the worst five years of your life. Savvy entrepreneurs understand that, making them redundant Again. The other thing to that, cameron as well, is we like to get and I personally like to get people to where they can be the platform company Be better run than your acquirer, because if you care about your team and most of the entrepreneurs that I coach, most of our clients, definitely care about their team your biggest insurance policy to make sure that your team is in a good place after you leave is you’re better run than your acquirer, because then he will adopt your systems. Because, again, if you’re bought by you know what anybody procter and gamble, one of the bigger companies or a big professionally run private equity they’re going to work your team at a more intense, stressful level than you’ve been running them.
Cameron: 12:04
Almost guaranteed. Yeah, they just paid a premium for.
Rick: 12:07
They just paid a premium. They’re going to extract every last drop of value and you know, as an investor, I’m glad they do. But you know we need to condition the team and scaling up it just up-tempos it right. So, and again, when you do it all right, it’s almost never finished, right. So, and again, when you do it all right, it’s almost never finished, right, you do it all, you fortify it. But when you have all the elements of scaling up in place, you’re going to be run better than most companies that private equity or strategic buyers, and it gives you and your team and it gives you peace of mind that your team is still going to be running the business that you know you sold and got acquired, and more like a standalone division they might and, by the way, if you’re the platform company, they’ll bolt others onto you, which is why you can get a north of 10X strategic multiple.
Cameron: 12:57
So, speaking of the team and growth potential, there are a lot of competitors in your space. Coaching, business coaching, leadership coaching is extremely competitive. What makes your approach special, different, unique? What’s your secret sauce?
Rick: 13:15
Yeah, I mean really too, Cameron. As I said, we do people, strategy, execution, cash better than anybody else. It’s 100 percent solution. You probably don’t need a fractional CFO, for instance, if you’re working with us. So that alone. And back to the Willie Mays example being strong across the board.
Rick: 13:34
Right, there’s a great book I’d recommend to your listeners that you and I were talking about this morning, called the Right Call, what Sports Teaches Us About Business and Life? And you know, when we look at organizations or we look at people, right, there’s a weakness. Professional athletes work on their weaknesses and that’s part of what we’re doing with Scaling Up. And, as they say in the book, I’m a tennis player. You know, don’t live your life running around your backhand. Get good at your backhand so you can crack it. You actually usually hit a backhand a little faster than you can a forehand. Actually, a lot of people don’t know that because of the biomechanics, it’s great to hit a backhand winner. So that’s one is, we sweat all the details and we’re building you a very balanced attack.
Rick: 14:16
The second one is we eat our own dog food. We’re a very congruent practice. We’re actually doing our strategic plan, which typically are quarterly and cadence, our one phrase strategy, which is the key to making money, is one two punch. So one two punch for us means coaching Plus. We’re the only scaling up practice that actually has a boutique A player recruiting arm to it. So I have two people on my team who do that extremely well perfect for the mid market and we get people some of the best A players they’ve ever seen. I mean, we get thank you notes almost daily like, oh my God, this talent is incredible. How did you know? And we have a lot of secret sauce on that derived from our work on the A player, as I mentioned.
Cameron: 15:02
Okay, and Rick’s holding up the book. He literally wrote the book, so in this case, a player advantage is both the name of the book and the name of Rick’s company. What is an A player?
Rick: 15:14
A player, cameron, is top 10% in the industry for the salary you have available. So I’ll pick a round number here $100,000. And let’s say a mid-market company, you want a marketing director for your $100,000. So the candidates for that right, the selected candidate would be oh my goodness, for $100,000, what incredible talent, right. So it’s an industry, not an internal. Look, it’s an industry. Look that, for your 100,000, now the budget has to be reasonable. If you’re in California, it might not be 100. It might be 120, 110 because of the economics in the market, but for the talent available, for the offer you have and the person willing to accept your offer is top 10%. The other way I look at it is would the person cry if they left? So if someone on your team and you absolutely cry, that’s an A player. If you’re like you know what, I’m going to get better next time around, that was not an A player. It could be awkward to you to have to get back into the market, but that’s not an A player. If you’re like you know what I want more anyway. These are things to think about. The other important thing with an A player is they model your core values and behaviors. So these folks, they exude culture, and that could be a whole other podcast.
Rick: 16:41
I’m working on demolishing the culture fit industry because it’s typically the feel good industry. I didn’t say industry, I meant interview. The culture fit interview is typically the feel good interview, but we use top grading and we actually can tell by the results. By the way, please make results a permanent NATO voting member on your core value and we can talk more about that. But how they get results? They’re not coin operated. They work for the joy of achievement and the money follows, and that’s one of our secrets for getting great cultural fits. We’re getting very well-adapted, happy people who really get joy out of work. And actually we don’t get happy people, we get joyful people who love what they do.
Cameron: 17:29
So that makes me wonder then, what are B and C players? B is just basic.
Rick: 17:35
B is just basic. That’s the balance. If I had my presentation, if I could tell you the percentages. And the C’s really shouldn’t be on your team, right, they’re either a chronic underperformer, they’re anti-culture, or they just can’t do it, and the rule of thumb for either is so B is basic, right. Here’s the thing with B players and C’s. You’re already paying a player money for a B player. Yeah, that’s the thing.
Rick: 18:03
And, and that’s why it’s nice to have our one to punch, because, as working with people and, let’s just say, your marketing director is not getting you the results that you want, right, and you feel it in your bones as the owner. Well, we’re actually in a situation I’ll point that out, I’m usually the first one to point it out uh, why? This is a person and, and you know, we have something we call b player apologist, which is the ceo patting their bees on the head. Well, you know, they’re kind of getting back in the market this and that and there’s and all this kind of stuff, and I’m like you know what tiffany on my team can find better tomorrow? Yeah, you know, all it takes is seeing better talent at similar money. You know, if it’s two, five percent more, I mean seriously, who cares. I mean impact players who immediately make a difference. It’s like the lights go on the organization. So don’t be a B player apologist. I actually coined that term working with clients and I just saw people if you have fun for listeners, you know go to your business forum and ask about the B’s and they’ll kind of pat them on the head and talk about how that’s. You know their lot in life.
Rick: 19:09
But remember you’re really already paying for a team of A players. You know, for the B’s and the C’s they have six to nine months to get into an A player status. And oh, by the way, a B player cannot go to A potential. An A potential is the Eagle Scout that you hired out of your internship, that’s done everything well to date and is going to learn the next skill level, and they also have about nine months to perform fully as an A. I give the A potential maybe a year. You know what I mean. But here’s the difference An, a potential, you’re actually really pleased, value for money and think value for money, right. If you drive a luxury car and you’re like geeked up about every day, yeah, you got an A player luxury car. If you’re like it’s okay, you bought a B player, same with people, right? So the A’s in the A potential. You’re thrilled value for dollar, even if you paid a wee bit of a premium for an A player during its instant offense.
Cameron: 20:05
One of the best phrases I came across I think it was from your book or just talking with you is this question of just thinking of what it would do to your business if everyone on your team was an A player, and how to come at that, and what it would do to everything you’re trying to achieve.
Rick: 20:21
Exactly. Well, that’s an interesting point, cameron have have a client or had a client in, or uh, ontario I should say Orlando in Ontario. Uh, he had a ops director and he had a marketing and sales director. Both were B players, Cost that poor man about $4 million in revenue. Really decent guy. I was really encouraging to move faster on these. I mean, literally, the ops director during COVID would not get out of his basement and they were shipping faulty product and lost customers. I won’t say the industry just to protect him, but it was obvious. The product was literally dead on arrival, let me just say it that way. So it was a living culture type of product application and they were dead. You just can’t do that right. And he’s paying these guys a couple hundred thousand. The marketing and sales guy on the quarterly when he was playing oh Rick, I won’t do that, he was too cool for school. I find CEOs make a lot of apologies for their people. That you know. They they think their teams are better than they are.
Cameron: 21:30
I love that, Uh, that concept of you. Know, one of the most trite and overused business phrases is you ask a leader or CEO what’s special, what’s different about your company? Oh, you know, it’s the people. It is the people. I walk around here and on Friday afternoon, the summer, people are hard at work and they’re diligent. Have you ever heard a CEO say we have just basic mediocre people? You know, everyone thinks that their people are the best in the world, but it’s not really true, is it?
Rick: 21:58
Yeah Well, pretend this glass. This is water, by the way, not vodka. Pretend this is half the size, it’s a tumbler and there’s bourbon in here. One of my ways that I get a lot of business is I’ll be up at the bar, run to a CEO at a networking event and say hey, just curious on the people you have on your team right now, how many would you enthusiastically rehire? That’s on the back of my business card. We have a great team. As you said, people’s our differentiator. Right, they’ll take a sip. I’m sorry They’ll go. Oh, 70%, 70% of rate players. I’m happy with that. Right, take a sip. Oh, no, no, not so fast. 40%. Right, take another sip. No, no, no, not so fast. 35,. One more sip, 25%. Like, do you have a card? Can we meet?
Cameron: 22:42
So by the end of the bourbon it’s down to 2%.
Rick: 22:45
Exactly. I would say it usually realistically, probably about 25, 20% somewhere in there. But but the point is it’s so funny to see do that at home folks. You know how that precipitously drops. We track and I was tracking and then reading BE 2.0 by Jim Collins. You know he’s got like the fundamental metric, all that is the right people in the right seats. We simplified that metric and weaponize it to be greater than 90% A players. So if your business does have 90% A players, you know I’ll take people at that point as a strategic weapon.
Rick: 23:23
And I would say your real assets, probably your rifle shot recruiters. You know your top grading, your interview technique, all those kinds of things that yield. You know where you can. You know you become like Duke basketball, where you you reload, you don’t rebuild. And you know those dynasty programs. You’ll sell this one to 18th and I think they’re going to be good for a long time. They really get where they get homostasis and they really get good at that. But you gotta keep, you know you gotta be diligent and all this stuff all the time.
Cameron: 23:55
Yeah.
Rick: 23:55
Categorically. You know, yeah, you also have AP and AR. Everybody has that. Yeah, everybody’s got people. So, yeah, unless it’s exceptional, I’d say a high number greater than 90% A’s. That’s my recommendation. If you’re just starting out, do 80% that’s still a decent number of truly A players and track that monthly. When you get to over 90, yeah, you’re a lead. At that point, everybody else should be in process, right, so your B should be on notice. I think I skated over this before. There is no better feeling in getting a B to an A, but that is hard work and I will say this because I do this. My next book that I’m writing is called Coaching Up, and firsthand, 15 years of doing this. Most CEOs and your team members are not very good coaches Just not. That’s why I’m writing that book. I wrote the A player where define what A performance looks like. This is how to coach up your team. We’re far too soft on people. Watch Bill Belichick, nick saban, uh, watch a practice. There’s plenty of them on film and it whistle in your mouth.
Rick: 25:04
Coach like that, you’ll do great yeah, I mean there’s.
Cameron: 25:08
So there’s. I mean, part of your initial uh engagement with clients must be a lot of assessments, really difficult, challenging questions and, by the way, that’s what a good coach does too. Challenges is honest with their team. You know your, your performance is not there. What do we need to get you there? Is that? Is that? Has that led to some difficult conversations with clients?
Rick: 25:29
You know, and again, the best are coachable. And it’s just so interesting how, when you’re you’re reading this literature, I just had a really good note today about not being a chucker. I’ll afford that to you, cameron, about being a chucker. We all see those kids on, you know, middle school and high school teams, the ball hog, the chuckers. They’re not self-aware and they’re not coachable. Right, I’m great, I’m great you can coach them. You know, don’t shoot those, those air balls, and they’ll keep chucking them up. Yeah, uh, so uh.
Cameron: 26:02
I’m sorry. Can you repeat the question again? Basically, I will edit this out later. I lost it too, god damn. I hate that I didn’t see your moment, oh yeah, coachability I was talking about coachability. Coachability, yeah. So when you let me, I’ll ask the question again. We’ll start over, okay? So when you are first engaged with your clients and you do some intakes of some assessments, that’s probably going to lead to some difficult and challenging conversations about honesty and capabilities of people on their team, right?
Rick: 26:35
Exactly, and you know what’s great is and you see this in the best athletes. They’re highly coachable, right, and they have the same coach. Rafael Nadal’s coach is still his uncle, tony, who was coaching him as a youngster. So they’re very self-aware. So it’s not really actually a difficult conversation because people want the help and they’re like, yeah, that’s a weakness, I really really want help on that. We don’t over-assess people. I do see some of my competition if you would over-assess. They fall in love with assessment tools. I think obsessively A simple assessment, then we get going. Right, it’s pretty easy to understand where there’s some opportunities in the business. Then we uncover some in the quarterly plans or the annual. As we get going with the team, we’ll uncover some other stuff and I’ve learned that people do tend to overstate particularly the strength of their immediate leadership team.
Rick: 27:31
Right, there’s always one or two on there that just are not strong enough to make the journey.
Cameron: 27:37
For whatever reason. Long-term relationship, family member, past success, coasting all those things can contribute to that, and the longer you know somebody, that can often lead to familiarity. They’ve been doing it for such a long time. Tony’s doing a great job. Why make a change?
Rick: 27:54
Yeah, you know we were talking earlier about the, the Chukar. Back to coachable. So Chukar is George Costanza. There’s a Seinfeld clip where he’s just throwing up you know terrible shots and air balls and you know George is not coachable.
Rick: 28:11
The best CEOs are highly coachable or team members are coachable and I mean, I’ve seen this thing of a young man. He didn’t win probably. Well, my best program is coach the CEO and three other executives on the team. Everybody gets a biweekly coaching session. This guy thought he was too cool for school Finance professional by all accounts. Now he absolutely loves coaching and that client is at the forefront of everybody getting coached and I help them with content from my newest book, coaching, coaching up, rather to do that Right. So now they have a coat, a culture of coaching and he’s all gung ho on it. But there are a lot of people they don’t want to be exposed, right, they feel they need it and you know that’s limited self-awareness, because we could all get better. I mean I’d love to hit over a hundred mile an hour serve I’m. You know that’s limited self-awareness, because we could all get better. I mean I’d love to hit over 100 mile an hour serve.
Cameron: 29:12
That’s going to be a big goal for me, or it is a big goal commitment and also an understanding that I I, even though I’m at the top of my game I need to, you know, stay there and and to keep improving, just to stay ahead.
Rick: 29:35
You know what’s interesting is my best friends with ESPN, so I’ve had a chance to meet some of the all-time greats. A quick story about coachability. So we were at the finals when Cleveland was in them it was the year they won and upstairs at the Hopper House were well, I’ll tell you who the biggest star was, and the one who greeted me first was actually Scotty Pippen, and the bigger the star and I think you heard my Charles Barkley story. Same with Charles Barkley. They come up, they want to know what’s going on and they’re so open to feedback and tips. Steve Lavin, who’s now a coach in San Diego University, you know he would ask me hey, rick, how was my broadcast when he was a broadcaster for.
Rick: 30:19
ESPN and Fox Like they want feedback and it’s just amazing. And there were some other well-known players with Scotty. There were about six of them hanging out and chilling. We came up and it’s just interesting how they want to know what’s going on. What are you doing? And Jalen Rose was, at the same event, not in the, but Scotty, he has a foundation. He was like hey, as a coach, what, what tips do you have for me? I mean, it’s just amazing how coachable these guys are Right, right.
Cameron: 30:46
I think embedded in there too is good leaders. You know, great leaders have this inborn curiosity too about you know. How does this work, how can we make it better, how can we make this foundation a success? And that’s really I don’t know how you can coach for that, yeah, be curious you know.
Rick: 31:03
You know, as also I was saying about this the other day relative to sports coaching again, being a tennis fan anybody in the men’s top 50 probably could destroy their coach on the court, right, and they are better players, but they can’t see. They can’t see their swing, yeah, and they also can’t see their practice habits, right. So that’s what coaching brings to it. So you know those who I know, my business, anybody else, right, but those who are open for an edge, there’s kind of several levels going on and the coach brings a different and I’m not just saying perspective or sounding board, but different tool set. Let’s just take the example we’re talking, talking about valuation earlier.
Rick: 31:44
You’ve got a great widget right, and that widget I’ll call it the good looks widget is going to get you a decent multiple. But it’s the other part. It’s building the business, it’s scaling the business to really make it. You know I’ll call it Swiss watch bulletproof. I know it’s not really a thing, but it runs that smoothly and you’re fortifying your weaker flanks. That’s what you really want to do. So you know that could take a business that, on good looks in IT, maybe has a 20X multiple. Well, now you’re looking at 25, you got 5X extra turns, whereas a lot of good things you could do with that.
Cameron: 32:21
What does a good client, you know profile look like for you? Any particular type of leader or industry or sector that you’re better suited for, or is it more agnostic than that?
Rick: 32:33
Let me think on the sector for a little bit Attitudinally. The Juicy Core customer always comes from the attitudinally. It’s people who really want that Swiss watch business and they want their team to win as much as they do. And you know they recognize that they need more A players and they are also from a coachability. I am positioning with people. You know, three years from now we’re going to hit a hard point that you know. Either you know it’s gonna be a downturn or you know something that was working. We need to pivot the strategy. Or the other thing that could happen is, you know, you just kind of get tired showing up for practice and I’m looking for people who will persevere through that right, when things feel a little routine, you know, wow, this is the same thing. We’re talking about the same things we did last quarter, but a lot of times that’s when you’re at your all-time profits, right. So keep going, keep going. So people were long-term view in mind.
Rick: 33:36
Uh, again you’re talking about the sports coaches. No one’s going to go out. Patriots anybody. Uh, whoever’s the best in afl this year? Hopefully mike green bay packers. You know they’re going to go out with a coach on the field right and and Patriots, anybody, whoever’s the best in the NFL this year hopefully Mike Green Bay Packers you know they’re going to go out with a coach on the field right and again. Pro athletes get that. And there’s that practicing with precision, it’s getting better at strategy, like once you mastered this you can get a little bit more exotic right. You can go and you could take a core competency and pivot that to a new market segment. Most people try to do that too soon and the foundation’s rickety.
Cameron: 34:11
What does a good, successful outcome look like for clients at the end of this journey through your coaching program?
Rick: 34:18
What I tell people, cameron, is if they’re working with us three plus years, they’re not going to recognize their business in a positive sense right.
Rick: 34:28
In that timeframe I think maybe it was four years we 6X somebody’s business that’s a home services business, very strong business right now. I actually had a client exit at a 67X multiple. That probably won’t happen again. Wow, that was. They were a platform company that just was the platform of all platforms. Yeah, uh, and then that’s an obscene multiple, uh, but but just really good exits. Uh had some companies go esop where their their employees were able to buy them. Uh, by the way, that’s a great, big, hairy, audacious goal. That really is a lot of what’s in it for the team. But, yeah, healthy multiples, great exits. A multiple on revenue outsized industry profitability businesses that maybe were making 8% net income now making 15, 16, which is a game changer, candidly, even if you go from 8% to 12%, is a huge, huge improvement to your profitability and cash flow.
Cameron: 35:33
This time of year mid-year, between quarters a lot of people doing their strategic planning. What’s an insight that you can share with listeners on how do you guys do your own strategic planning, for instance, or how do you coach through the methodology to make it most effective?
Rick: 35:49
Yes, so great question. So we’re actually doing ours on Friday. I build a stock agenda and.
Rick: 35:57
I have all the components, all the elements of scaling up on that agenda. So I’m looking at core values, behaviors, balanced scorecard, core purpose, systemic actions, bhag, elements of the seven strategy, the pace, the process accountability tool, face, the functional accountability tool. So all those things on there, your profit per X, your profit per unit of one, your X factor, your 10 X to a hundred X underlying advantage. You’re, uh, one of my favorites. Uh, I love all this stuff. Differentiating activities, like how are you truly different? Yeah, so if you look at all that, I think I looked at our day. It’s it’s over a 12 hour agenda.
Rick: 36:42
It might be 15 hour content if you were going to do that. Yeah, my personal practice because I believe people are, you know, are fairly maybe time constraint is on the quarterlies. I do a day and we pick from that list ahead of time, we call it down, I work with the CEO on that and we hit that list. However, if we’re getting yield on something on the agenda and the team is super engaged in yield meaning yeah, this is going to either streamline a process, help us with execution there’s profit in what we’re discussing. You know kind of positive quantifiable yield. I’ll let you know kind of positive quantifiable yield I’ll let you know. I’ll say it’s a directional agenda because this is a team sport and I want people really digging in. You know things aren’t what they see and you can tell an elite team when they really really understand a scaling up concept like profit corrects and chew on it. What could this be? Because there is a lot of money and a lot of smooth sailing in getting those things right and a lot of people, a lot of team members, don’t have the the mental rigor to do that right there. They’re that kind of too cool for school person. We’re talking about where I got it. I, I got it. Just leave me alone. I’m busy, Let me do my thing.
Rick: 38:07
But you know, that quarter, that quarterly plan is you as a CEO, you as your executive team. That is your critical think time. Right, that’s our time to go together, chase that BHAG and put together a really, really concrete set of plans. And here’s another secret from that so stock agenda, we prioritize the agenda. You do that with the CEO, with the only caveat being, if we’re really on something, and we’ll, you know, we’ll chat and we’ll say you know, CEO, do you want to keep going here? And a lot of times, yeah or boy, we got a good place, let’s move and we want to cover some more of the agenda. That’s the CEO’s choice. At that point we broker that.
Rick: 38:51
The other secret we do and I don’t think anybody else does this is we carve out time in the day for everybody to go heads down and knock out their own company level priority or a big functional level. So we do this in about 45 minutes. And that’s where we see A players separate from B players again, because a B player just can’t build a strong, strategic and well thought out plan, A’s can. And then, once that’s done, we do a round robin and everybody shares their plan and we look for integration points and handoff points and for a well-functioning teams. You’ll hear, hey, do you have that? And we do this all in a cloud software, Cameron, and you’ll see those handoffs and such, and it’s a beautiful thing. And elite people like their plans make sense, the proverbial. Most of our clients do so well that if you won the lottery you’d still hang around. But if you won the lottery that somebody else your next day player could pick up that plan and execute it.
Cameron: 39:52
Okay. So your fundamental belief is you can’t go or you can’t make an employee make a shift from being a B player to an A player.
Rick: 40:03
No, no, I believe some are coachable. I believe that most people are not coaching stringent enough, hard enough. I had to say I am working on a personal improvement plan. We are, believe it or not, taking a C. I would believe the current status is B. They’re happy with her progress, but I asked some coaching questions.
Rick: 40:24
This was just yesterday and her leader I’m like your leader didn’t ask you this right, so I don’t believe her leader is pushing her hard enough. The CEO couldn’t actually actually told this person that the easy thing for you to do would be to find another job. Say these people are crazy and this isn’t for you. I said you are exposed and this is an almost $200,000 executive. Somebody’s going to catch you up on that. So she seems to take my coaching. The CEO, who is an elite client, said you really said that to her. She was amazed. Sometimes I’m the first one to say this thing. So, uh, you know again. And, cameron, you’re going to help me get some of the coaching out up. Uh, book content out there. Yeah, we want uh to get this content out there, because I don’t believe I know most CEOs are not coaching their team members to performance like Bill.
Rick: 41:25
Belichick or Nick Saban would.
Cameron: 41:26
Right, yeah, and the football team. You have a set roster size, whether it’s Ohio State or the Patriots or whoever it is, and you have cuts, and if you’re not good enough, then that’s the bottom line. I think a lot of businesses, I mean. I just love that, that B player apologist concept of making excuses or they’ll turn around next quarter. How is that going to happen? Just on its own? It’s not.
Rick: 41:47
Yeah, well, one of the things we do and again, that’s hard coaching, right? So once you have an employee and 75% of the time people aren’t getting who they thought, right, you thought you’re’re getting an a, you’re paying a player money and you got to be, and then there’s no formal coaching. Please don’t call them one-to-ones. It is a coaching session and your best weapon at that point is a weekly coaching session. If you can’t do weekly, then do bi-weekly. If you can’t do bi-weekly, do monthly.
Rick: 42:15
All coaching starts with a goal. How are your goals right? Are you doing on your quarterly priorities, a skill element of that? And this is why your leaders need to know the job to be done and that’s why there’s a lot of B player managers. They don’t know what their people should actually be doing. And you know we expose all this stuff. We have a tool called the A player agreement, which is a job description on steroids, where we it’s like a miniature playbook in a three to five page document. Then we have a playbook and, you know, too often they’ll hire somebody from their company and that new executive shows up B player and all they do is talk about their old company.
Rick: 42:55
And we call that the one time at band camp phenomena. Well, one time at my old company we did this and this, so we formally call them band campers. I love it so that hardcore coaching.
Rick: 43:10
Like I need you here. So one of my best ever clients named Sean Richard, at Palmer Donovan. We innovated the I need you here. And, like you know, and here’s what you do. By the way, like the issue isn’t B versus C, it’s non-A players, right? So what percent A players? What percent non-A players? And I need you here. I need you to be an A player. Are you saying I’m not an A player? I need you to be an A player. So you’re saying I’m not? Yes, I’m telling you you’re not an A right now. We need you here.
Cameron: 43:38
Right. That concept of a C player could be that, for either they’re in the wrong role or in the wrong company. The culture fit is not there. It’s just as harmful, could actually be worse. I’ve heard these people often called terrorists because they’re going to their employees complaining about the workplace, complaining about the team. That’s dragging down the morale of the others. They’re doing so much harm on the team than just a B player who’s kind of cruising along.
Rick: 44:04
Yeah, if we got a moment on this and Cameron, I feel like we can go all day long If you have a grid here. This is performance and this is your culture fit.
Rick: 44:12
You got two forms of Cs. One is the corporate terrorists down here. Right, really good at performance. They’ve got the motor, which I appreciate.
Rick: 44:20
What I have found and I’m in the minority on this is a lot of times the CEO is putting up with other fools family members in the organization right, and that person is acting out. I’d say probably eight times out of 10, it’s that the other times, the two times out of 10s, they’re either a Branch Davidian, a psychopath or a coin operator right, they’re all out for themselves, right. A narcissist, right. So two times out of ten, maybe three, two or three times out of ten, they’re a narcissist, branch Davidian. You know that kind of person. But seven times out of ten.
Rick: 44:58
When you clean up your own core values and stop paying favorites with underperformers, that person tends to get in line and you already have the performance. The performance was there, just like the child they were acting out. The ones I see as like the hypertension in the organization, the silent killers, are these lovable slackers because they do not have a motor and they prey on your core values. You know, be very careful if kindness is a core value, because you know, I actually believe freeing someone else to be great somewhere is actually kind and letting them just suffer and flunk around or observe wages, that should go. You know you got eight players but you can’t pay in bonuses because these guys are sucking out the profit. Those, I think, are actually the bigger problem.
Cameron: 45:48
And those are the ones.
Rick: 45:49
B player apologists, pat. Well, they’re so good for our culture, such a culture fit. Please make results a perma value on your culture fit.
Cameron: 45:57
That’s Jim from the office, isn’t it Lovable, slacker.
Rick: 46:00
Jim Halpert. Yeah, you and I talked about that. You picked up on it. Yeah, lovable Slacker, and Jim Halpert has control over Michael.
Cameron: 46:07
And we’ve never seen his quarterly numbers so I don’t know how he’s producing, but ultimately doing more harm to the organization. Those kinds of people, I wonder if they could put as much time and effort and energy into getting around responsibilities and skirting what they need to be doing. How successful they could be If they put all that energy and effort into just work and learning about their customers. How much things could be different.
Rick: 46:33
Yeah Well, remember, as the quarters go by, right, you’re chasing a BHAG, right? So time becomes very valuable. How much time do you have to waste on these folks? I believe, by the way, everybody has an opportunity to be an A player somewhere, just maybe not your organization. And so clear rules, core values, A player agreements, playbooks, performance standards we coach. We don’t manage people, we coach to playbooks. We are running at all of my clients New England Patriots, UConn basketball, Duke basketball, Alabama football types of systems You’re going to follow our plays of A potentials that your $100,000 marketing person we were talking about. You might be able to get a really good up and comer for 80. And now, all of a sudden, and by the way, we find the A potentials even more loyal to companies because you found the talent. Yeah, you found me, you discovered me.
Cameron: 47:31
When they were rising up. Did you hear? Yesterday they released the Chiefs Super Bowl rings, and the Super Bowl rings are enormous and on the back of it they actually have a diagram of Andy Reid’s play the Tom and Jerry play really engraved right onto the ring. So the playbook is crucial.
Rick: 47:51
That’s super. Yeah, I heard Jason Kelsey’s has a flaw and he said well, it’s going to make it more valuable. But that’s super cool. That’s a great insight. Yeah, the playbook like here’s how we do it here and then everybody can build those plays. And, by the way, playbooks are small systems. Think of the one-inch binders. Obviously, you can SharePoint and digitize them, but I do like starting with a small binder with a 20-tab. You know here’s the job. 20 tab you know here’s the job, and it’s amazing how well these work. And then the incumbent should keep updating it. Right, there should be this passion for knowledge and really optimizing, leaning out the systems. They work tremendously well.
Cameron: 48:30
Well, Rick, I’m going to ask you one last question, but before that, I’m going to recap by thanking you for joining us on the show America Open for Business. This has been Rick Crossland, who’s the owner of A Player Advantage, and my last question for you today, Rick, is I want you to fill in the blank. I do this sometimes on the show and to wrap things up. Without Rick’s scaling up, coaching leaders and entrepreneurs would instead do blank. What would they do instead?
Rick: 49:02
Drink too much Self-medicate. Self-medicate yeah, self-medicate lament complain to their spouse every night.
Cameron: 49:18
I mean, just, maybe not get every if they didn’t do scaling up, maybe not get everything they could get out of their business, and that cuts right to the heart of the emotion and things you know going to like the story brand kind of approach. That’s where the emotion lies, that’s what they’re going to care about and be passionate about, and their spouses and significant others would be eager to end that suffering.
Rick: 49:34
Yeah Well, the other thing that you know without a program like scaling up? Yeah Well, the other thing that you know without a program like Scaling Up, what we see all the time is the leader carrying the burden on their own shoulders, right, and sometimes you see the stress. Stress shows up different ways, right? This makes it a team sport and it provides a framework for where the right people thrive and play. Like you put in Scaling Up in your business and you’re recruiting and let’s say it is one of typically, our leadership teams are between five and seven, right, so you have that open seven spot. Like, yeah, you’ll be on the scaling up leadership team. That is a great selling point. People the right people like being on this. The wrong people it’s too much for them, yeah well then they’re exposed.
Cameron: 50:18
They’re exposed right.
Rick: 50:19
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a great. It’s a great A player litmus test A. Players love this stuff. The B’s really don’t like it because they’re exposed uh, strategic thinking by where everything’s strategies, the fun bit strategy done, right, your head hurts, right, Cause it number one. We’re in strategies, what are we saying no to, and you know when you and when you can’t do something else, right, because you’re going to marshal your resources on something else. Right, you really really have to think hard if you’re going to do that Interesting.
Cameron: 50:48
I think back to a time in a previous agency that I was running. We do employee surveys every year or two and we made them anonymous and one person responded not filling in the survey, just asking is this survey really anonymous? You just told us a lot about your mentality, thanks, exactly well camera.
Rick: 51:09
It’s been a pleasure. Let’s do it again sometime, really absolutely rick rick crossland of a player advantage.
Cameron: 51:13
Thank you so much for your time excellent. See you. Camera take care.
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