The Exchanges

Q track your personal growth so you can meet the ever-increasing demands of the company or companies you are passionately building. Time waits for no one, so let's get started now. Thank you for joining us today. I'm really excited to talk with you about how to identify problems in your company and how to fix them. So before we begin, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

A Well, hi everyone. My name is Michelle Diamond. Um, I am actually a growth strategist and execution expert. So that's just a fancy way of saying I help companies accelerate growth and help them to grow faster, more profitably than they could on their own. In a way from a strategic level, as well as an operational and executional level. I've been very fortunate. I've been on my own now. Actually, January will be 16 years with my own practice, which is Elevate Diamond Strategy. Before that, I worked for larger, um, companies, including Ernst & Young, um, Accenture, Colgate, Palmolive, Citibank, um, Cigna, and a host of others. Uh, I've been very fortunate, again, because I've worked with companies ranging from startup, um, early growth stage, small mid-cap, Private equity and venture capital all the way up to fortune 50. So I have worked with companies literally at every single growth stage imaginable and helping them to get to different growth stages and next levels as well. I worked with 64 companies and 34 industries to date. And, um, of that percentage, I would say about quarter, about roughly 25% have actually been startups. So I'm very excited to be able to share some of the experiences that I've had and the best practices that I've had as well, because One thing working with so many companies, um, has given me a really great purview to understanding from a business standpo…

AI assessment note: “My name is Michelle Diamond. Um, I am actually a growth strategist and execution expert.”

Q Thank you for the fantastic intro. I don't think I could have done it better myself. I'm curious to know you, you've had experience working with companies at all of these different sizes. What size is your favorite to work with?

A Honestly, I would say my size is between the kind of like late, early, early growth stage when a company is really starting to scale. And I call it like they're, they're kind of growing up. They're going from childhood to adolescence. I mean, I don't think you really get to adulthood until you pass, you know, you could rather become public or you at least pass like a hundred million dollar mark. And even then it's still infancy, honestly. But, um, you know, that kind of stage where The company gets out of bootstrapping mode. They're like, okay, this is what we were able to do to get to this place. Now we really want to be serious about growing. You know, they usually have some wins. They have some employees. They may have some investors, but it's that mindset shift and that they're really ready to get to the next level. And that's where I feel like I can help them most because, you know, while I help companies of all sizes, it's usually good when they have some kind of traction and they've already gotten to that place where, okay, they're operating now. They realize they're not just a product, they're an actual business. And they're actually running and now they want to do what it takes to really lay that foundation and, and fundamentals and foundation is what I'm the greatest at.

AI assessment note: “my size is between the kind of like late, early, early growth stage”

Q So how can companies create a strong foundation that allows them from a very early stage to monitor these internal and external changes so that a red flag comes up before it becomes a problem?

A Yeah, very simply. You have to stop putting metrics in place and you have to make it a systematized way of checking on these things. So again, when it's numbers, you should have metrics in place anyway. You should be knowing your numbers. You should be monitoring. In terms of your sales, in terms of your quantity, in terms of, you know, regionally or market-wise or industrialized, where they are coming from, being able to see trend information. You know, you need to be able to communicate your financials. You need to know what your P and L looks like. You need to know what your balance sheet looked like. I mean, those are cashflow, especially as well. Those are some basics that most companies at least know they should do, but not all do a great job of really following it and monitoring it. You have to have those things in terms of the employees. You have to do like customer stats the same way you should be, you think when you should be doing customer satisfaction for your customers. And again, People think that's such an easy thing and it's no big deal, but most companies don't do it. And if they do it, they don't do it, um, again, periodically, like, you know, so that you can, again, track your customer satisfaction metrics. Have they improved? Have they remained the same? Are we seeing any pockets anywhere? And then being actionable. So if a customer says they want something,…

AI assessment note: “make it a systematized way of checking on these things”

Q All right, great. So I'll have links for both of those books on our show notes at we live to build.com slash listen. What is the most important lesson you've ever learned in your life?

A In my life? That's a big question. But honestly, I'm going to say with the first thing that comes to my mind, because my instinct has gotten honed as I've gotten older, um, I would say. It's what we mentioned earlier, honestly, to be authentic, and just be my genuine self, and to just tell the truth, and tell the truth to myself, as well as tell the truth to others. The biggest mistakes I've ever made in my life and career is anytime I ever went against what wasn't peaceful for me in my spirit, and what I kind of knew wasn't right, or didn't feel a hundred percent comfortable with, and that dealt with people, that dealt with situations, that made with decisions, um, personal and business life, and every time I did the opposite, Where I went with my instinct. I went with what felt right, as well as, you know, what my gut was leading me to, and my instinct led me to, and I was just being my true self. That's where, you know, all the wonderful opportunities came, the wonderful relationships that, you know, the peaceful things are just kind of easily and effortless business wise and just personal wise. And so I think sometimes life can put us in situations where we allow things to go on longer than they should. And, you know, and then afterwards we have to kind of do the cleanup or we realize we're not being as authentic as we should be. And then you kind of get back to that. Um, b…

AI assessment note: “to be authentic, and just be my genuine self, and to just tell the truth”

Q market leader, you have to differentiate yourself beyond features and functions. So how the hell does somebody do that? How do you As a company founder or as a management team, develop a strategy that allows you to get outside of that race to the number of functions and features that makes you have more than everybody else. How do you, how do you escape that in order to grow?

A It's interesting you asked that question because especially with everything going on now, that's something that is critical. You have to, to understand your customer in such a way that you're connecting with them. Let's make it simple. So there's tons of paper towels out there, right? You have bounty, have brawny, you have, you know, what is Scott, you have name and brands, you have store brand, you know, at the end of the day, it's paper towels, right? It's not like a big thing. That's all sexy or it feels different. I mean, they could come up with all these different things about, oh yes, we have the most innovative, whatever. To pick up your spills, but at the end of the day, it's paper towels, right? And people are going to buy these things based on brand recognition. They're going to buy it based on an experience they had. They're going to buy it based sometimes on price. You know, if the price is less, sometimes they may buy it even because the price is more if they feel like it's a premium product, right? So even though the core product has your basic products and features and your functional, you know, things like, okay, this is what we're offering, you know, the way that you can, um, Differentiate yourself has to be on other levels. So if you are, sometimes it's a matter of doing more. Let's say I'm, I'm paper towel. We use the same analogy, right? So I'm selling paper…

AI assessment note: “the way that you can, um, Differentiate yourself has to be on other levels.”

Q then this is how I can make my business fit that need so that everything is balanced and in tune as I'm building them. Um, and so again, that was a really interesting comment from you as well. How can a company align their strategy with their growth in order to focus on how to identify the problems that they're facing so that they can get rid of those problems?

A First, again, like I said, assessing where your company's at, okay, I talked about the growth goals, but the other part is you have to do comparisons in your market and how you're stacking up to everything that's around. Now there definitely is a lot of different metrics. Certain industries have metrics that, you know, are kind of like baseline stuff. Sometimes you can have it where it's just certain company sizes, things of that nature. But if you're a, let's just say making a profit margin of. Right. On whatever your product or services and you say, okay, great, you know, make money. Well, let's, but then you never looked outside of yourself and you realize, wait, when you actually do a competitive analysis or some kind of market assessment, you realize the average is 40% for what you're doing. Then you don't look so great. Right. Or it could be the opposite. Then it could be the other way around too. Maybe let's say the average is 10%, then you are doing great. Right. But the point is you need to know how you stack up. You know, a lot of businesses and it's no fault, right? It's very difficult to run a business and still strategize at the same time. That's why a lot of times companies bring on other people because it's different. It's difficult to do both of those things when you're growing at the same time, but you have to have some kind of perspective as to how you're doin…

AI assessment note: “First, again, like I said, assessing where your company's at”

Q understand that from that point of view. So you're talking about creating metrics and finding a way to Uh, measure them, analyze them, and, and manage the company based on them. How does the average company you work with manage them? Are they on spreadsheets? Do they have a SaaS platform that they're working with? Like, or have they built these dashboards themselves? How does, how do you manage metrics?

A Honestly, it's a mix. Um, and quite frankly, some of them do it better than others. Like I said, the best practices ones, the top ones, honestly, the, the mechanism they use, um, Really isn't, uh, what makes them great or not great. Um, what makes them great is the ones that actually take action based on the results versus the ones that just report them. It's really that simple. You know, once you, whether you do it by a spreadsheet, whether you have a program, whether you build a dashboard and you customize it, um, those things aren't important. The important thing is, like I said, to make sure it's comprehensive, to make sure you get consensus on it. You know, if, if, if it's a, you know, you guys are just starting out and everyone's, you know, still on board, get everyone's opinion as you grow. Like you said, there's levels. So it might just be with your managers at a certain point, your supervisors or whatever it is in yourself, or, You know, I mean, it may be different depending on how big you are or how big you get, but the point is put them down, make sure it's credible. And like I said, when you get the feedback and you see the trends, do something about it, you'd be surprised. Like people just don't do stuff with their reports. And then when you do something, especially if it's an employee or some other kind of stakeholder, I mean, if you, if they just ask you to do so…

AI assessment note: “Honestly, it's a mix. Um, and quite frankly, some of them do it better”