E2A 052: Scaling your business with Chris Green 

If you’ve chosen the entrepreneurial path, you know that scaling your business can be a chaotic and overwhelming experience.

In this episode of The Entrepreneur to Author Podcast, your host Scott MacMillan speaks with Chris Green, an entrepreneurial strategist, mentor, facilitator, and author of Business by Design: Take Your Business from Chaos and Overwhelm to Scalable and Rewarding about the unique challenges of family businesses and the keys to scaling sustainably.

EPISODE LINKS

Website: chrisgreen.au

GUEST BIO

Chris Green is an entrepreneurial strategist, author, mentor and facilitator, and works across a broad range of industries.

Chris started his practice in 2001 in Wangaratta, Victoria. He has more than twenty years’ experience in management consulting, supporting entrepreneurial SME owners to grow their businesses and realise their leadership potential.

Chris has worked with and supported some of regional Australia’s most successful family-based businesses. He is always looking to represent the needs of the business in partnership with the entrepreneur to achieve strong outcomes, outstanding business results and maximise their leadership potential.

Having owned and operated a number of regional businesses, Chris has great empathy and understanding of the challenges facing SME owners. Noted for thinking outside the box, his creativity and passion shine through and set him apart.

A keen member of his community, Chris believes in giving back. Chris has sat on many community and sporting boards and he is a life member of the Wangaratta Magpies Cricket Club.

Chris has an MBA (Strategic Management) from Charles Sturt University, an advanced diploma in Hospitality Management and a qualification as a Registrar of the Magistrates Court of Victoria. He’s also a qualified Chef!

CONNECT WITH CHRIS

Email businessbydesign@chrisgreen.au

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chris-green-gyb

CONNECT WITH SCOTT

Episode Transcript

Please note: The transcript is produced by a third-party company from an audio recording and may include transcription errors.

Scott MacMillan:

You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott MacMillan.

Scott MacMillan:

Scott A. MacMillan:
My guest today is Chris Green. Chris is an entrepreneurial strategist, mentor, facilitator, and author of Business by Design. Take your business from chaos and overwhelm to scalable and rewarding. He's worked across a broad range of industries and has coached and mentored some of regional Australia's most successful family businesses. Having started his strategic management in 2001, he partners with SME leaders to amplify their leadership potential, grow their businesses, and create their business by design. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.

Chris Green:
Thank you, Scott. Thanks very much for having me.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Lovely. Well, listen, to start, I'd love if you could share a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how it is that you developed your expertise and specialization.

Chris Green:
Thanks Scott, it's been a wonderful journey. So I started off in rural Wangeratta, which is in Victoria, just below the New South Wales Victorian border. And my first 10 years of my working life were in the Victorian Courts branch. So in law courts. In 1995, my wife and I bought our local hotel where I actually grew up. And for the next five years, to run a hotel. My wife had never been in a public bar before that time, so that was quite an eye-opener. And me during my university days had actually worked in restaurants right through Melbourne and had actually got my trade as a chef, so we thought it was a good idea to actually own a hotel. That five years, our daughter who's now 23 was born in the hotel and I learnt just how hard business was and how lonely it could be trying to run your own business without the right help, without the right support. So it was a really defining moment, really defining period in my life in my mid to late 20s where I was really impressionable. I was really ambitious to try and I really loved the idea of business and fell in love with the idea of business but realized I just didn't have the skills, didn't have the support, didn't have the knowledge to really grow that business. When I completed, when we sold the business in just in and strategic management and then started my consulting practice and 20 years later haven't looked back I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of regional SME predominantly family-based businesses and learnt so much about what to do what not to do and how to grow a business successfully. It's been quite a journey.

Scott A. MacMillan:
That's wonderful. Yeah, yeah, certainly. So what are some of the challenges that, in your experience, family businesses struggle with that are perhaps a little bit different from other types of businesses?

Chris Green:
Family-based businesses, particularly in regional settings, even though I'm sure in capital cities that this would be no different, it can be quite lonely at the top. You have sometimes generational limiting beliefs. You might have inherited the business or taken over the business from the family. Could be second or third generation, or you might have taken on the business from a different career or a different skill set. And what you find when you get into a business, an SME business, it's actually quite personal. So your relationships with your staff, your relationships with your customers is very, very personal. And quite often you can put your business needs second to those of your, to your customers and your staff. And without having outside influence, it's very difficult to know what you don't know. So interestingly in 2020, I actually surveyed my client base and I asked them, what's the thing that I bring to the table that creates the most value for your company? business and I got a really interesting response Scott to almost to a person they told me that the thing I bring is confidence. Now that was really fascinating to me in that it says that it's really hard to be a leader quite often in an emotional environment complex relationships particularly family businesses are at play in family businesses that's at play so it's quite challenging and quite isolating and lonely sometimes to be a leader and that outside influence, it can be really hard to grow, adapt and change your business model. You only know what you know. Yeah, that's it.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Yeah that's so true. I found that too, is often when you have the ear of somebody who's trusted that you kind of know, knows where you're going, has been where you're trying to go, or just has some ways of thinking about things, that confidence is so important. It really does, it's a really valuable asset to have on your team.

Chris Green:
Absolutely.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Now you recently published Business by Design. Could you share a bit about it? Who did you write it for? And what is it that you want your readers to take from it?

Chris Green:
Thanks Scott. Yes, so I wanted to bring the 20 years of doing this into a book that people could then get hold of and actually find the answers they've been looking for. And when you start your entrepreneurial business, you're normally incredibly creative, or when you first take on your business, it's normally an incredibly creative endeavor. And you tend to be a little bit uncommercial at that stage because you're in there, you're having fun, you're being creative, you're doing your thing, and it's great fun. to increase which is really interesting and quite often it's a thrill you can't believe that that's happened. You move into this high growth phase where the business is very customer driven so the customers will continually ask can I have this, can I have that and you say yes the big boys won't do that but I will and customers love you and they love your product and they keep coming and you're in this high growth phase and incredibly reactive to what the for a while, you hit what I call the entrepreneurial ceiling, where supply outstrips demand. You can't balance supply and demand, and if you try, you'll only do it for the briefest of periods. But at this stage, your product or your service has become incredibly popular. You've grown to the point where there's lots and lots of customers coming and coming and coming, but you're at capacity. It's an incredibly chaotic period in business, and quite often, this is where I get involved at this point, where customers can be, businesses and business owners can be in total overwhelm. They don't have the systems or processes or knowledge normally to be able to transgress through the entrepreneurial, what I call the entrepreneurial ceiling. In 2007, I actually took on a Victorian state government project and I I did a SWOT analysis for 107 local businesses and in an intensive 12-month period it was speed dating of consultancy at its highest and I learned an incredible amount and what I learned was that some businesses will do what I call porpoising, moving up and down based on their energy levels under this entrepreneurial ceiling of trying to balance supply and demand, this incredibly chaotic process and quite often never ever break through. So I've used that terminology a lot in talking to my clients over the years as I mentor them and it just seemed a natural progression that then I take that philosophy into a book and how to break through the entrepreneurial ceiling and ultimately move to a very scalable visionary and business that provides them with the freedom that they want. And so that was why I wrote the book and that was the capturing that 20 years of knowledge of watching people struggle under the entrepreneurial ceiling and then trying to get to as many people as I can on how to break through that ceiling.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Wonderful, wonderful. You talked about capturing 20 years of experience as you wrote the book. How did you find the writing process? Was it easy for you? Did you find it was a struggle? What was your impression of the writing experience?

Chris Green:
It was an incredibly creative experience from my perspective. I absolutely loved it. I got up every morning and did a thousand words a day during my working week, Monday to Friday. And it was an awesome way to start the day. During this period also in writing the book, I really nailed down what my IP was. What it is that I do that leads to success for businesses because I knew I went and did my thing and I'd been doing it for a long time, but I'd never really taken the time to sit down, work out what it was that I was able to do that was able to help these businesses break through the entrepreneurial ceiling. But I mapped, in writing the book, I mapped through in my electronic diary a 5,000 word a week cadence. And so week one was 5,000 words, week on the Friday I put 10,000 words. And I had these little markers in my diary right through to 55,000 words. And my ambition in the first phase was to get up, have a bit of fun, just write up a thousand words a day, and then get to 55,000. trust the process that from there we would be able to turn it into a great book.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Yeah, absolutely. But that's often the best way to do it, right? Is just get the ideas out there and the iteration that happens in the publishing process often takes care of the rough edges. So let's talk about that publishing process. Was there anything that you found perhaps a little bit surprising or exciting or frustrating or all of the above?

Chris Green:
Um, mostly easy to be honest. It was the process that was mapped out from you guys, from Grammar Factory, from the outset was really clear. Like it was your diagrammatical processes. Here's what's gonna happen on this time. Very clear timelines, very clear understanding of what was happening. So to have that from the outset was really empowering in understanding the process. I really loved that. The editing process was just amazing. feedback from my editor, Carolyn Jackson, who did a brilliant job. And then she was able to harness my words and in fact my clients that read my book feel like I'm talking to them. So it's a real credit to her that she was able to still harness my sayings, my words, my thinking, but really refine it to make it so much more readable and so much more and flow so much better. final edit from the first edit to the last edit, I remember sitting down and reading it in a block going, oh my good this is good. You know, you just, it was quite a surprise to watch it evolve and when you sit down and read that final you go, wow that is a really good read, that flows really really well. So that was really surprising. If I have a tip around the process in relation to the editing process is take your time. I was probably very specifically and get my edits and reviews back to the editor too quickly. If I had my time again, I would take more time in doing my edit once it came back. And in fact, in the process, I actually asked for another edit when the final one came through and that's the best thing I did because that really bought my stories and case studies much more to life and I got a much better outcome. So if there's one tip I have, it's take your time at your end, as in my end, in really making sure the edit reflects what you want it to reflect. 

Scott A. MacMillan:
Yeah, that's really good advice.

Chris Green:
But a great process, easy process. Yeah, really easy process. Loved it.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Oh, wonderful.

Scott A. MacMillan:
That's very good. And I like what you said about how Carolyn was able to capture your voice and that it really comes through in the writing. Because often when I'm talking to people and they have questions about editing, they wonder how am I going to find an editor who gets my style and gets my genre and all of this. And what I always say is the hallmark of a great editor is that they're able to kind of take on your style and really reinforce it. And that's really the difference between a great editor and somebody who might be a great writer is that ability to kind of put themselves in the author's skin, so to speak, and really have that come through. So I'm really happy that you shared that, thank you. What are your business goals for your book, or what were your business goals for your book, and how are you using it to support your business?

Chris Green:
So the number one goal of course was in my mind was to create legacy around, I built up all this body of knowledge and it was just a way to be able to share it with a broader audience I thought was a valuable thing to do. So that was a piece of legacy and it's interesting I walked into one of my clients offices the other day and my book was there all dog-eared with tags, hundreds of tags all through it and then my clients at the moment are all feeding back my own words to me in our way one-on-one meeting, so it's a very interesting process. And I'm getting lots of emails saying, well, this is awesome, thanks so much. So that's all been a real bonus. But in looking to write the book, it was legacy first, but I've also got a program called Business by Design where I mentor online a group program and it includes a one-on-one, it includes master classes that I run, and a collaborative group get together called Ask Me Anything. going really, really well. People in that program are loving it and this is a way for people to first of all read the book as an introductory process and then if they want more support or help in growing their business they can then reach out and look to potentially join the Business by Design program. So that cluster of my book and the program naturally flows through to my business model.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Yeah, wonderful. And so I know it's still early days, but has it been having that impact that you'd hoped that it would in terms of kind of facilitating people coming along the buyer's journey for your programs?

Chris Green:
Certainly it's generated a lot of interest and there's people starting to float through I guess now into what is called a pipeline I guess around reading the book and certainly people reaching out saying we loved your book, we got a lot out of it, how do we take that further? So we published in December I think so we're only in March so it's fairly early days and there's probably five or six hundred books out in the world now so it's starting to get a bit of momentum. expect to see more and more of that as it goes along. But it has surprised me on LinkedIn, the number of comments, people saying, I just love it, every business owner must read this. Or I get a very direct email saying, this is fantastic. I've implemented this, this, this from your book. So thank you so much. So, you know, if nothing else, that's just really gratifying.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Yeah, it certainly is. For those who have, because we've got a lot of listeners who haven't yet written a book, but they've considered it, what advice would you give them in terms of taking that step towards authorship?

Chris Green:
I think what worked for me that I outlined a bit earlier was to create a process that made it easy. It's a bit like if you want to go to the gym, you lay your clothes out on the couch the night before so it makes it easy to make it happen. So I just mapped the time into my diary and got up in the morning and really enjoyed it. But if you're going to write a book, get your process sorted so you can make it easy so you don't have to find the time. The time's already there to do it. which was also probably a little bit of a surprise, it really helps clarify your offer and really helps clarify your IP that you've developed and what you do and what you don't do. And if you write very specifically, one of the great tips I got early was to create an avatar of who I'm talking to. And my introductory chapter does that. It outlines that avatar. And the rest of the process was really easy because I'm just talking to that person the whole way. So, My tips would be get yourself set up in a process, get your avatar sorted around who the book is for and be very specific in that. And then just enjoy the creative process of even if you're not a great type or anything, it doesn't matter, enjoy the creative process of getting into it, talking to that person so you can put your knowledge forward to the world. It was a really great process, really creative, I really loved it.

Scott A. MacMillan:
Wonderful. Chris, how can people get in touch with you to learn more about what you do?

Chris Green:
All the www.chrisgreen.au. This is the new .au. So chris @ chrisgreen.au is my email. Please feel free to drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you. Jump on my website. There's some really great videos on the website of people that I've helped on the journey that some of them are actually case studies in the book. So the book was written in a case study that I'm dealing with and have worked with on the journey. Most of my clients have been with me 13, 14, 15 years now so I've been very much part of their journey the whole way. But a case study, the lessons learned from that case study then I finish the chapter with how it actually ended. So here's the issue, here's the problem, here's all the things we did, here's how it actually ended. So each chapter has an individual case study and on my website you'll see a lot some of the videos on the website are actually the case studies, the people from the case study. So they're all real-life examples, all examples that anyone could follow and they're all very very typical SME family-based businesses. So anyone would like to drop me an email say hello if you want if you want to do an introductory chat for an hour with me we can get you in the diary and just if at the very least you'll come away with a few ideas on how to grow your business on on some of the strategies you need to get through the entrepreneurial ceiling and no obligation at all I just enjoy chatting to business owners so please feel free to reach out love to hear from you.

Scott A. MacMillan:
We're going to put those links in the show notes so that it's easy to reference. Listen, Chris, I try to read all of the books that we publish at Grammar Factory, and as a business owner myself, I found your book to be especially compelling and particularly insightful. And I know that our listeners will agree. So thank you so much for sharing your experience with us today.

Chris Green:
It's been a pleasure, thanks so much for providing me the opportunity Scott. Well done, thank you.

Scott A. MacMillan:
As we wrap up this episode of Entrepreneur to Author, remember this. Now is the time. Time to write. Time to publish. And time to grow. I'm Scott McMillan. Until next time.