WMTW 029: Verne Harnish – Gazelles Inc, EO, ACE, Birthing of Giants MIT

Posted by Toby Jenkins

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“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Verne Harnish (Tweet this)

Verne Harnish is the founder of Gazelles, Inc., which serves as an outsourced corporate university for mid-size firms.

He’s the author of Mastering The Rockefeller Habits and The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time, writes a regular Growth column for Fortune  Small Business Magazine and has a major update to Mastering The Rockefeller Habits coming out this year called Scaling Up.

Verne also founded Entrepreneurs Organization and the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs (ACE) and chaired the renowned Birthing of Giants entrepreneurship leadership program at MIT for 15 years.

We’ve been huge fans of Verne’s one page strategic plan and his books and presentations (he’ll be in Australia and NZ in September).

In the show, we talk about Verne’s concept of “owning the ink” and how he’s executed that in his online tools, education, email marketing, and books.

One of the key take aways for me was that Verne partnered with a major business publication for each of his ventures – profit AND non-profit – at the START of each venture.

We also talk about lessons in business that have helped him in his family life (it’s topical for me so I couldn’t help but ask!).

Enjoy the show!

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Show Notes:

What worked well?

• No-one wants to be sold, they want to be educated.
• Hard to get attention if you’re throwing a sales/marketing lesson in front of an entrepreneur
• Book codified what Verne had been teaching for years.
• Positioned and partnered with media – Fortune Magazine.
• First give before you receive – put it out there first.
• Tools are open source and anyone can access them.
• Where are your core customers hanging out?
• Getting a book out there immediately
• Attracts talent
• Great calling card
• Visibility in industry
• Easier to interview from a media standpoint.
• What is the book you need to write?
• Inbound marketing

Email marketing:

• A need to communicate ideas on a more frequent basis
• No marketing expense but 3hrs every Thursday to collect thoughts and ideas that Verne is interested in
• Taken 10 years to get to 50,000 subscribers
• It’s Verne’s funnel
• Book/hear about Gazelles, join the list for the nurture cycle.
• 10 year nurture cycle!
• When the student is ready, the teacher appears
• Shows up in their lives every Thursday
• Divide by business function and geography
• Address specific customer’s issue

New Book – Scaling Up:

• Significant update to Mastering The Rockefeller Habits – case studies, tools, learning
• Presentations in Australia in first week of September
• New tools available now

Family:

• Parent Effectiveness Training
• Handful of rules and repeat yourself a lot. Hopefully some sticks!
• 1 page personal plan – relationships, achievements, rituals and routines you need to change, wealth – number and what are you going to do with that to make the world a better place.
• 22nd wedding anniversary celebrated – relationship is stronger and as strong as it’s ever been.
• 15 minute daily ritual – just before dinner 6pm.
• Rabi Steven Barrs – common issue is that we treat our spouse as our children should be treated, and our children as our spouse should be treated.
• Ask your spouse how was their day, not your children!

Connecting with Verne:

• Gazelles.com

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About Toby Jenkins

Toby Jenkins is co-author of Web Marketing That Works. He also released 33 free marketing templates, is CEO of Bluewire Media and co-hosts an iTunes podcast and has written for Fairfax Media, ProBlogger, Jeff Bullas and many other blogs. Toby is an Athens Olympian.

• The Olympic story I reluctantly shared – Nov 20, 2015
• Time Management and Productivity Hacks of Billionaires & Olympians [Podcast] – Nov 18, 2015