In this exponential episode, Dominic Monkhouse, founder and CEO of Monkhouse and Company, shares how he uses frameworks that can be applied to any business sector and has helped his clients in the UK, Ireland, America, Australia and the Philippines.
You will discover:
– The one criticial skill almost every entrepreneurial CEO lacks
– The problem with having 14 people on your leadership team
– How to practice and train for the skills to scale
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach that is Dominic Monkhouse. He is a master business coach, founder and CEO of Monkhouse and company. It’s a no nonsense coaching company that helps entrepreneurs, CEOs and their leadership team reach their goals faster. He’s a proven architect of business growth and has delivered revenue growth from zero to get this $30 million in five years. And he did it twice. Although much of his experience has been with technology firms, the frameworks that he uses can be applied to any business in any sector. And he’s helped businesses in the UK, Ireland, here in America, over in Australia and the Philippines as well, Dominic, such a pleasure and delight to have you here. I can’t wait to unpack this, the story of what was going on? So let’s start there. Talk to us a little bit before we get into all the coaching that you’re doing. Now. Tell us a little bit. How did you do it from zero to 30 million twice?
Dominic Monkhouse
Ah, lucky. I mean that you be in a market that’s going up that helps find and differentiate your business so that it’s unique. That helps. And, you know, I had found myself at a, I was running any CRM consultancy business that got acquired in the.com bubble. And we had to flip that to a web hosting company. And then I joined this nascent web hosting company called Rackspace is employee number 120. And we took that took the UK business in a recession. In fact, the business was due to be sold the day after 911. So after 911, we had 90 days of cash left. And I’d been there two weeks. And the question was, should we close the UK business down or keep it we kept it, we got it to we got it to 30 million, then left that and did a turnaround. I didn’t actually know how bad that was. But I turned up and we were losing it lab, we were losing about 65,000 pounds a month. So we had, we had 90 days of runway otherwise we would call it turning the lights off. That was 2002 1007. So another recession. We met we survived there for two years. We turned that around. And then I joined a got asked to join a Canadian business called peel on hosting which was I suppose a competitor to Rackspace. And could we build another? Could we build a UK competitor to them. And so we did, we did that and built, got that business to 30 million, got it to 200 million globally, sold it for 685 million Canadian dollars. And along the way we hired hired 120 people in the UK built the greenest data center in the UK had a load of fun. That’s all then and then I thought, okay, let’s have a pause, I had a small child. And I just thought, you know, I’ll pause. And I didn’t expect, I didn’t expect to now be a coach. Still, I didn’t quite know what I was going to do then. But I thought, let’s take time off from having a proper job and flying around the world. And I’ll do something else. I learned some skills and be a better CEO the next time and then I’ve just got stuck doing this. And this is the most fun I’ve ever had.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s awesome. So So now you’re sitting on the other side of the table, if you will, helping CEOs that are trying to scale, what would you say some of the most important work that you’re doing right now as a coach?
Dominic Monkhouse
Well, so I think people come to me, because they have, they have a they have a problem. You know, they’re, they know sales isn’t quite working, or they you know, they’ve got a positioning problem. So there’s sort of a sales and marketing growth thing. That’s one problem, or they’re growing so fast, they’ve got this Ferrari, and they’re in the fog. And they’d love to put their foot down, but they can’t see past the end of the bonnet. And so they’re terrified by that most of the CEOs I work with are running the largest company they’ve ever run. And their leadership teams are likewise in the biggest jobs they’ve ever had. And so there is a sense of foreboding, if you like this, this is all going to Well, something is about to happen. And so they they come looking for often for those who are trying to build culture or hang on to culture as they scale. I think often one of the things that they haven’t thought about that we uncover and work with them on is the is the people interaction. So one of my mantras is no company outperforms its leadership team. And, you know, if I’m thinking about working with a client, and they’re on a 10x journey, well for the people in this room to be in the same seats when we’ve 10x this business, they’re going to have to grow 10x I think that comes as a surprise to most people. They think the business is gonna grow 10x And I’ll be okay, because it’ll be easier. Maybe I’ve got more staff, right so so they hadn’t thought about it been easier, but they sort of you know that but then, you know, there’s always a couple of weak links in the team. And how do you get over that interpersonal challenge? Sometimes that’s global. Sometimes it’s cultural differences. Maybe they’re doing a whole load of acquisitions in the some integration that we’ve got to do. Or as they grow their product portfolio proliferates, and they get their revenues going up, but their profit starts to go down. And how do we overcome that? So it’s mostly I’m working with companies, structurally, it’s a growth real growth related challenge. But I really enjoy working with the team on how do we make this team a better team. And most people, I mean, most people have never been trained to interview and they’re interviewing so. And so. But sometimes people have been trained to interview, but almost never have people been trained to how to build a high performing team.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s so true. I love it. So no company outperforms its leadership team, one of the things that I’ve found working in a similar space is very few teams. You know, the starting team and the ending team I’m working with are the same, right? And there’s this natural desire, and I understand it, and I’d like for you to speak to it. But you know, most CEOs, you go and ask them, like, do you want this team to be the one that takes you from your 10 million to 50,000,050 to 250? Whatever it may be? They’re, they’re going to say, yes, there’s a comfort with their team most of the time, even if there’s difficult things. But generally, that’s not the case. How, how do you approach that with a CEO? And how do you help them really get through, like you talked about the interpersonal side of that?
Dominic Monkhouse
Difficult conversations are difficult for a reason. I mean, we call them that because nobody likes to have them. Some CEOs are better than others at having difficult conversations. But I would say the sort of entrepreneurial CEOs that I typically work with, are often particularly poor, at holding people to account that often shows up when they turn up. And there’s a leadership team of 14 or 16 people, because they’ve never been able to tell anybody that they’re on the leadership team anymore. And, and so, and they are not particularly good at building a culture of accountability. And it’s in some senses, it can be overwhelming. So I say, look, we’ve got we’ve got to do is you’ve got to get the team to help hold each other accountable. And we might have some, there might be some bullies on the team, we’ve got to sort that out. And if you fix it, the dynamic changes. But often, the dynamic is they’re not the same for everybody. So you know, I’m just thinking about a team where there was a couple of sort of alpha male, strong characters in a team that then left over a period of time. Well, what that that that was actually being used as an excuse by some people that they couldn’t get everything done. Yeah, and then be careful what you wish for because that gets fixed. And it’s actually now we now actually all have to deliver on I suppose it’s a bit like the gold score is in a soccer team, you know, if the if the goalkeeper keeps letting all the goals in the soccer, you know, the strikers like what doesn’t matter that aren’t very good, we lose it, it’s obviously we’re losing because the goalkeepers rubbish, you put a good goalkeeper in and then the spotlights on somewhere else in the team. And so I think those they come out in a series of exercises, we will get the team to do. And sometimes they just crop up in really unusual places. And if I, if I can, I’ll get the team to stop and reflect on something that happens. Because I’ll say that thing that just happened. Okay. So why did you all behave the way you did? Why did everybody else sit in the room and pretend it hadn’t happened? Why has nobody in the room stepped in and said, there’s a thing going on here that we need to fix. This is undermining the team, we often do an exercise where we ask people to identify who they believe in the team are the two weakest links. And on one occasion, we had one guy, he didn’t put himself down, but everybody else had him and somebody else so and he took it, he took it very well, but it was complete news to him. Wow, that everybody else in the team thought his relationship with somebody else was the weakest link in the team and, and so sometimes people just have total blind spots about that. And then if you can get them to work on that, see that that’s the blind spot, work on it and improve it then. The whole team can take take a step forward, but nobody wants to nobody wants to bring it up because they don’t feel they have the tools to bring it up and fix it. They feel as if they bring it up. It’s just gotta make it worse.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Cuz you gotta, you brought up a great point. And that is that there’s kind of two big transitions that have to happen, you’ve got to get the right team in place. But you also have to get the tactics and the structures and everything right at the same time. And those almost feel like they’re completely opposite things. One’s kind of like messy and interpersonal. And like, Is it is it not? The other one is super, like nuts and bolts, almost boring, you know? And both of them are hard. Why is it that you have to have both of those things happening at the same time?
Dominic Monkhouse
Well, I here’s a good analogy. So I’ve got a personal trainer who said, until we can’t load you up until you can squat properly. And it took him 18 months to get comfortable with the fact that I had been, I was able to squat properly. And then he said, now we can load you up. And so one of those things is just training and sort of muscle memory. And we haven’t done any work yet. Or we’re still sort of playing around. So it’s quite enjoyable. There’s no great weight. It’s sort of frustrating, but we’re getting there. And then it’s like now we need to just what lift weights, like three times a week. Now you got to do a load of work. And so often, you’ve got you’re teaching people a framework. And then they go, okay, got that. And you go, no, no, no, no, what you’ve done is now you know what you’re supposed to do now you need to do the work. Right? Look, there are plenty of people listening to this podcast, even who wish they weren’t as large as they were, wish they were somehow thinner. wish they were somehow fitter. Or, you know, maybe they wish they spoke a foreign language and they don’t. And it’s like, you’ve got to focus on the few things you want to do. And then you’ve got to put in some effort. Yeah. And so often there’s, there’s, you know, once you can show people the problem, show people how to solve it, still have to do the work. And so all the frameworks in the world. And the difference between having the framework and doing the work, I think then is 10x, you can tell that team can be 10 times better than average. And the average, there might be some teams who know some of the frameworks, but you still got to, you know, learn how to squat and then load the bar up. Yeah, that’s a great, great analogy. And when, oh, God, I know Malcolm Gladwell talked about 10,000 hours. But the guy who wrote range had written another book whose name escapes me. I’ve written another book about sports performance. And he looked at those the same people that Gladwell was referring to the violinists or the viola players from the Viennese orchestra, who had that what was interesting is they all had talent. And even the people who did 10,000 hours who went on to be soloists, none of them enjoyed practice. Yeah, but the people who went on to be soloists, did say, you know, they, they practice the right things with enough intensity, you know, Tiger Woods, out playing in the rain in the dark, you know, you don’t. And so, I think that’s a moat, you can’t motivate people that has to be from within, hence why purpose is so important. Because when it’s raining, and you need to be, you need to be practicing or learning. Then without purpose, you’re just going to give up.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so it’s a fascinating thing. Because in the sports world, there are discrete moments of practice and discrete moments of, of play, you’re in the game, you’re, you know, or you’re, you’re, you know, on the field practicing in, in business, we don’t necessarily have the benefit of a scheduled time that you’re in the game, right when the opponent is there. So it’s a lot muddier the difference, but when you look at I mean, sports teams will spend somewhere around, you know, seven to 50 times as much time in practice as they do in the real game. But in in business, it’s kinda like, we’re always in the real game. So how do you practice this stuff?
Dominic Monkhouse
I think you got to carve out time. And you, I don’t know about you, look, if I drive, I drive a lot. But I’m not practicing just driving. Right? If you if you are a formula, one driver, you don’t just aimlessly drive around, you know, you just you you are analytical about the things where you are losing time relative to the pace or the winners, whatever it is, you get specific. And then you say, right, I am going to over index on this until I do it without thought. And then I’m okay. I was with a client the other week, and I was doing a presentation. And one of the chief revenue officers said to me later, he said, as you were talking, he said, I thought to myself, I thought that was what I thought. And then I realized it’s something that you’ve said to me so often over the last eight years, that it’s now just in my brain, and I can’t tell the difference between what I thought before I met you and what I now think is a result of having worked with you. It’s just there. And so he doesn’t even have to think about it. And so, I think you have to find it, find the area of weakness Then you got to say, how are we going to fix it, then you got to find time. And you know, most people spend about four hours of useful work a day, whether they’re working from home or in the office. And so there’s that. There’s always time if you want to put the time in, and people just say, Oh, I’m so busy, I haven’t got time. And the the winners, put the time in.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah, it’s fascinating. So what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes the CEOs you’re working with are making that have that are preventing them from really being able to achieve scalability?
Dominic Monkhouse
I occasionally go back and read the works of Jim Collins. And I did that did that last year. And I came away going, I knew that the people the right people in on the bus in the right seats was important. Ah, but I now push people really, really hard push people much harder on that than I did before. Yeah, because I think they are, often they’re settling for a B player. And an A player would be five to 10 times more productive for no more money. And they’re just thinking about the effort, and what, forget it wrong. And so they’re playing not to lose rather than playing to win. And I had this conversation with a client who’s been with us this week, you know, they’ve got a plan to 5x their business in the next few years. And we redid the numbers with my aspiration on it, and it was to 10x their business. And then that forced them, if they did accept my numbers, which they said, Okay, we’re prepared to play the mind game. If they did, then that forced them to look at some of the people they had in some of the seats. And if they kept the people in the seats, they could maybe do 5x. But if they wanted to do 10x, they weren’t the right people. Yeah. And so I find often it’s, it’s that, where are we settling? You know, and I was on the phone to another client today. And, you know, they’ve got they’re completely the opposite. They’re like, I want for every seat on our bus. I want the best person in the world. And their ambition is strikingly different. They’ve and so they’re growing 10% a month. And they’re 100 million pound company. Right? So yeah, I have people going, Ah, you know, is that possible? Could I really get somebody better? And then you’ve got other people who just say, we’re gonna go into the transfer market, we’re gonna get amazing people. Amazing. People will want to join a winning team. 10% a month growth at 100 million is is a winning team.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, remarkable. Remarkable. All right. So here’s the question, I’d like to ask all my guests. And it’s this. What’s the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody listening today knew?
Dominic Monkhouse
Look, I say this all the time, and people still don’t believe me. But I don’t believe you have to pay great salespeople commission. And the sales world hates me. And whenever I say that, I get hate mail on LinkedIn. But you don’t have to pay great people commission. Great people are motivated by money. People are motivated by money salespeople are people can’t find evidence to say that salespeople are different to people, and that there is a certain type of person called salespeople that you can actually motivate with money. I think maybe I’m thinking I’m thinking about stuff, which is cognitive as opposed to transactional. Maybe you can get people to do peace work right with money. But that’s not what I’m thinking of here. I’m thinking about consultative, selling, persuading somebody persuading you to do something today that you weren’t going to do this morning when you’re brushing your teeth. That selling anything else has taken an order. Those people don’t do that for the money. The money might be a proxy for something else. But so that and often I say that to CEOs, and they say: Why is nobody told me this before. I’m spending all this time trying to build a compensation plan that doesn’t destroy the business and doesn’t make people envious and doesn’t annoy everybody. And now you’re telling me I didn’t need to do that. What Why why is this a secret?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah,it was off just totally lost his name in Dr. Pink, Daniel Pink that is right there with you. So it’s, it’s fascinating. And I think you’re onto something I think what it is, and it kind of tying together all the stuff that you said we’re kind of satisfied with someone else’s advice as the truth. Right. Yeah, one of the questions you said where are we settling? And sometimes we’re settling in it we’ve never actually asked why. Right? Why is it?
Dominic Monkhouse
Those, those those beliefs that we hold and it’s just so the difference, the difference between an opinion, something we hold to be an opinion and a belief, I think you can find out whether somebody has a belief or not. And you say to them, what evidence would I need to give you so that you’d be prepared to change your mind on this topic? And that’s an opinion. And, and but sometimes people have got something, which is an opinion is just stuck as a belief. You know? If you say to somebody who believes the world is flat, what evidence would I give you to persuade you that the world is actually round? They just say you can’t, can’t give me any evidence. I’ve seen it all. It’s not true. The world’s the world’s flat. And so lots of people are hanging on to things like that. And because they don’t challenge those beliefs, they’re not curious. They, they get stuck. It’s a constraint, self imposed constraint.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I could go on that for a very long time. But is this so good? And, but I’m gonna shift gears instead, I’m gonna ask you this, again, it’s a question I’d like to ask each of my guests, but I’m gonna have you take off your coach hat for a moment, and have you put on your CEO hat, you’ve done that thing, you’ve, you’ve run that race multiple times now, but did to an extent with your coaching business, you’re still there. So put on your CEO hat for a moment, and tell us a little bit about what this stage of growth looks like for you and your business.
Dominic Monkhouse
So I decided a few years ago, that, you know, we had to grow, I wanted to grow the business, and maybe I just can’t help myself. But I think if you have a purpose for your business, and at mine is to demystify business growth, for entrepreneurs, and so you are then compelled not to settle you are compelled, I am compelled to try and grow the business and grow our influence and reach. I don’t necessarily need to make any more money to do that. But I need to sell books, podcasts, blog, you know, do all of that. Speaking, maybe, but I think the if I think about how I could, this business could transform, there’s only me. So I’ve got to work out how to do less of, or how can I carry on, do what I love doing, but then have other people do some of the work. So I’ve now got a number of associate coaches that we work with. We’ve delivered an online program to 150 executives in the last 12 months. So that’s something we decided to do. And then I think where the growth will come from from here is around a series of collaborations. So I’ve got experts that I’ve worked with in sales, marketing, martec, valuation readiness for those clients who are looking to do to exit, are you looking at a P lens? And saying, What would how do we structure your business, so it gets the biggest multiple people who’ve built businesses and sold them around customer insight. And so got a great guy who I’ve worked with for that. And so I think it’s, it’s putting together a sort of collection of collaborators who solve really specific problems in a deep way. Because what I find often is a CEO said, we do some work and the CEO has a problem. And they say, Doc, do you know anybody? And I say, Yes, I know this person. And they then don’t go to market and get five quotes, they just talk to the person that I put them in touch with, and hire them to do a piece of work. And so I think that becomes because often those bits are holding the team back or holding the company back. Sometimes it’s recruitment, sometimes it’s some HR or org stuff. And so I think that will be how to create this sort of team of experts. So I’m doing some coaching and they can plug some holes.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there’s so much power and having that, because one of the challenges you face when you don’t have a team that’s working together side by side is, you know, everyone’s got their opinions, right, going back to your beliefs and opinions. And it’s like, well, you have to do all of it this way, as well. But touch just told me to do it this way, right and, and then see, you’re stuck there like this is supposed to be easier. And now it’s harder because I have two people that I’m supposed to trust telling me the opposite thing. What do I do? So I love that you’re doing that it’s a hard thing to do, but it’s so rewarding when you can actually see it work.
Dominic Monkhouse
Well, I think I think because my success at Rackspace in it lab and Pier One was built on Vern Harnish his racket Rockefeller habits and now scaling up, I think you can agree a framework or a set of principles or even some tools. And so then people who aren’t bringing in experts who are then disagreeing about how we do something. So this is the framework. So if everybody’s playing to the same framework, then it’s much easier to bring different people in.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Fantastic. Now, I know there’s some folks who are listening and and me just everywhere it is like we’ve got gotta hear more from this. So how can folks get in touch with you find out about the work that you do and and even bring you in to help.
Dominic Monkhouse
Look, find me on LinkedIn Dominic Monkhouse there’s only one of them. One of me. And monkhouseandcompany.com is the website. So, go there sign up for the weekly insights that we generate. Listen to the podcast, The Melting Pot with Dominic Monkhouse
is available wherever you get your podcasts. And if I can help in any way, just let me know. Delighted to help.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love it. Well, Dominic, just an absolute pleasure having you thank you so much for coming on. So, so many rich nuggets in here. This is one of those episodes, folks, you’re gonna have to go back and listen to again, right? Because I guarantee you missed about half of what Dominic was saying. So go back, started the beginning listen to it again. You’re gonna pick up a whole bunch of stuff you missed the first time through. So again, thanks for being here for everyone listening you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did. And I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic Monkhouse is a master business coach, founder and CEO of Monkhouse and Company, a no-nonsense coaching company that helps entrepreneurial CEOs and their leadership team reach their goals faster. A proven architect of business growth, he has delivered revenue growth from zero to £30m in 5 years — twice. Although much of his experience has been with technology firms, he uses frameworks that can be applied to any business sector and has helped clients in the UK, Ireland, America, Australia and the Philippines.
Want to learn more about Dominic Monkhouse’ work at Monkhouse and Company? Check out his website at https://www.monkhouseandcompany.com
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