CEO and Leadership Coach, Shannon Byrne Susko appears on our podcast to discuss Metronome Growth Systems- A proven system that any CEO, entrepreneur, or executive can utilize to grow their business. Her best-selling series of books are blueprints to success and can be easily followed with the steps and strategies outlined.
RT
I would like to introduce Shannon Susko. Shannon is an expert in strategy and execution. She is well known for her ability to lead and execute with her team in implementing a repeatable strategic execution system, creating it in her first company and validating in her second company by the speed in which the company was built and sold. She now coaches CEOs and leadership teams from around the world who want the same success using the same system.
Shannon founded her CEO coaching and worldwide speaking business in June 2011. She is the co-founder of Metronome Growth Systems as of January 2016, which is a cloud-based business platform for high growth businesses. They’re CEOs leaders and business coaches.
Shannon is the co-architect of Ace Text Market Validation program and the architect of Ace Text Growth Strategy program. In July 2014, Shannon wrote and released Amazon best-selling book, The Metronome Effect: The Journey to Predictable Profit, coined as the street version of the best-selling book Scaling Up.
Shannon released her second book in April 2018, which was recognized in Amazon bestseller new release, 3Hag Way. Shannon was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 and was awarded Sarah Kirk Award for Canada’s Leading Women Entrepreneurs in 2006. It is my pleasure to introduce Shannon Susko: – CEO leadership team, coach, author, speaker, and serial entrepreneur.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Wow. That was awesome. Where did you get all that from?
RT:
You are very accomplished. I’ve done my research, and I see that you are very accomplished. And I want to talk a little bit about the accomplishments and where you started and how you got there.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah, absolutely. I was listening to that, and I was like, wow, that’s pretty good research.
Starting out on my entrepreneurial journey, as most of us do. We start when we’re really young, like, as a kid, we’ve got that sort of idea to do things, and that was no different for me. But I really got going on building high-growth companies. After I finished school and joined up with a few partners; three to create my first business. And I think probably our incredible naiveness of how to build a company was why we actually started the company.
And it’s okay to have that. You know! We just thought, yeah, we saw an opportunity. We thought we could fix a problem that was in the marketplace and we thought we could solve it. But there’s so much more to it than that as we learn. So, my first business took ten years to build.
It was a global payment processing business. We leveraged the Internet at a time where today anyone listening would go, whatever the internet. But this is like when payments didn’t go over the internet. So, this is, like, the late 90s. There’s a whole lot of hype and not a lot of real. I’d say automatic hands-off processing at that time. There’s a lot of, yeah, we took the order, but then there’s ten more people touched it kind of thing we did that. And that’s where we started.
We learned a lot in that business. And I think the only thing I was hoping for in that business was maybe, like, the secret to how to build a business, to how to build a high growth business. And I was coached. I was a very young CEO in my 20s, and I had a coach, and I kept asking leaders and coaches and, frankly, read so many business books on, like, someone must have written down a system like their system.
I really don’t care what system it was that would make it a bit easier to balance growing a company, growing a team and having a life. And that sounds a bit weird, but in your 20s, yeah, you have lots of energy. But I’m still looking for that. And I was very grateful. Maybe I wasn’t handed that solution because everything since then has been all about giving back, learning, growing, giving back some more, learning, and growing. And my first business took ten years to grow.
We met what we call our Big Harry Audacious Goal, what Jim Collins coined. And we sold it on our 10th anniversary, and we sold it to a US company. And people like that technology, that platform; it still exists today. Team members of that time still work in our organization. So great, good story! But the big learning came in that company whereby we were just floundering, struggling to figure out how do we tie everything together to get the momentum to grow.
And when I say, tie everything together, it’s like how do you ensure that the team is cohesive, it has a culture, there’s clarity, there’s a strategy, we have an execution plan, we have our cash figured out, and we know where we’re going to end up. And we learned a lot from many thought leaders. But it was the commitment of that leadership team.
I was very grateful for this global leadership team that came together to build the company, though we had to agree amongst ourselves that we’re going to do this in a way that would be repeatable, that we were going to create our own system because we couldn’t find one. And so, we did come together. We created a system we leveraged lots of thought leaders. One you mentioned in my intro was the author of Scaling Up. And his first book was Rockefeller Habits. And he wrote a book. His name is Verne Harnish.
He wrote a book that brought one of the great tools towards us, which simplified us being able to write down our plan. But writing down the plan is like 1% of the problem. Actually, getting the team to behave and execute the plan and work together to common goals is the tougher thing. And I think that’s where we started.
We built the system, we put it in place, We sold it, we got the value from the company. Then we moved on. And within a few years, three years of that sale, we decided to build another company. This company was global.
It’s a global automated compliance platform for broker dealers. Think of every trade that happens out there. Somebody has to look at that trade that has done a buy or sell and make sure it’s within the rules of the marketplace that the trade was made. And so, in 2008, I would expect that was an automated system. It wasn’t at that time, as I found out. And we created a company in a platform, another technology platform that broker dealers could use in order to make sure all those trades were in compliance with the rules in the marketplace.
So, we solved another problem in the marketplace. But the thing that was great about it is that we got to take the system, the repeatable playbook that we used for our first company that we put in place and got the sale. We’re able to save time, come together as a team, decide on what we’re going to do, and then work towards it. When we think about that, we got to take that same system, nut not the exact same team. Probably only half or less than half of the team was the same and we applied it to the second company.
As a co-founder of that company and as the CEO, we actually implemented the system. And the system allowed us to actually grow up the company, create more than probably about 100 times the value of the first company, and do it in a third of the time.
So, people go, yeah, that’s nice. Shannon, you’ve got this playbook. You used it in your first company. You now have used it in your second company. And you’ve sold those companies. And the interesting thing is each of the acquiring companies adopted the playbook in the system. So, I thought that’s interesting. We were a 100-person company.
In our first company, we became a 400-person private company – the leadership team. And I was part of the leadership team, but not the CEO. We put the system in place, and that company sells in some years down the road for a half a billion dollars. And that team is still there. I know that the system is still being used even through these acquisitions.
We were only three years old when we got bought in our second company. But we were one of the top three mid-market deals on Wall Street that year. And it’s because our acquiring company actually valued the company because they believed that we are within our predictions of where we’d be in three years. They valued us quite high because of that.
They didn’t value us in our past three years. Rather, they strategically valued us on the future. And again, the same system was used with different people. We got acquired in by a public company this time again. Not only did they integrate everything we had into their organization, but they also integrated the business system.
I though that’s pretty interesting and retired after that time. It’s now 2011, and I decided I’m retired. I have three young kids and live in Whistler, British Columbia. I still do want to enjoy the outdoors, the skiing, the mountain biking, the riding, hiking, and my kids and my family. And so, I really retired and stopped.
But soon after that, I got this call from a fellow CEO in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he said, I just watched you build one company, and then I would just watch you build a second company. And you sold these companies. You did this less than six years apart. I’ve been building this company for 15 years, and I’ve been slogging along, and I just can’t get any momentum. You must have done something different. I would love to hire you as a coach.
I was like, a coach? what kind of coach?
A coach that would coach me and my team! I said, okay, that’s interesting. I definitely started with a CEO only coach when I became a CEO, but I asked that coach to be a CEO plus leadership team coach plus team coach. So, I thought that’s interesting that he was already aware that it’s not about a CEO getting a coach. It’s about getting a team coach.
I was like, what would that mean to you? What would the outcome be that you’d want and all these things? He told me everything, and he said, I really want to use your system. And I knew we had a system, but I wasn’t sure it was going to work unless I was the CEO, right? So, I said, we do have this system and definitely we’ve leveraged the system four times, but all four times I’ve been on the team somehow, either CEO or executive.
But I just wanted to say, look, I haven’t coached like this, and I’m not sure if the system is going to work. Long story short, I did go working with the team. I did bring the system in, they tell two friends because it works and so on. So, I ended up being a coach, but I’m still going to recognize my family, time balance, and all that. So, I said, I’m going to coach six companies which I got through word of mouth.
I didn’t have a website, I didn’t have a business card. I sort of prided myself on that because I was retired. And so sure enough, I have six companies because people are telling two friends. And I’m sort of getting picky and choosy about who I will coach. But it didn’t serve the true purpose. Which is, how could I help leaders who were as desperate as I was to grow a company? How could I help them? I could only help six at a time, coaching them, sort of one on one.
So, I was part of this Ace Tech group that you talked of earlier and as you said, I’d helped build a bit of a program for early stakes companies even before I sold my second company. And I went to them and said, maybe we should put a program in for many CEOs and leadership teams. And maybe we could just run it every year and people could join in. That would get to many more companies than just the six I could coach. And that would help more. And so, we did that program and it became hugely successful. I still work with Ace Tech as a coach.
It’s a bit of a give back because I grew up as a CEO in that environment, learning community and all of that. But the interesting thing was that now hundreds of CEOs were using it and it was working for them. I was happy this works and it doesn’t really matter if I’m involved or not. They’re taking it back into their organizations.
I’m meeting more coaches now, as time goes. By 2013, it’s only been a couple of years since I’ve been coaching, but I’m meeting more coaching coaches. And there’s groups. Rockefeller habits’ Verne Harnish has a group: Scaling Up. I met some of those coaches along the way and I was one of those coaches.
We learn, we apply, we learn some more, and we apply some more. Those coaches started asking questions about some things that I would say along and I wouldn’t think much of it. I’m like, you have your system. I’ve got this system where you’re using the same thought leaders. We’re good. And then got to a point where many people started asking more.
I said, I’m just going to write it down prescriptively what we did as a leadership team and lay it out step by step. Something like I was looking for in 2008 and 1998-99.
I wrote down our experience of building the companies that we worked with from the point of view of our CEO and leadership team. That’s the book, The Metronome Effect, which has done amazingly well. It was so prescriptive that the publisher said, do you really need to keep writing down these steps? I was like, yeah, we do because someone’s going to open the book and go to that section and just apply pieces.
So, we wrote that book. That book did amazing. I wrote it so they could read and leverage it and take the prescription and apply it to their business. Lots of people have read it. But it actually attracted more coaches who wanted to know the system and why I thought this way and how did it work and all these things.
I wrote down everything I know, but I left out actually one piece. And this is what happened. More coaches came. I still had my clients, I was speaking. I was doing lots of great things and trying to get that one to many. Right! So if I could tell many people the story and get them to think differently, that they can save time, have a balanced life, use a repeatable playbook, that would be great.
I think we believe it’s really hard and the results I’m going to get are not that exciting. It’s okay! I’m going to slog along like that first CEO said. And I just think let’s not do that. That’s really hard. Not fun. It’s no fun to win when you’re losing all the time. You can say, look, here’s what the win is. And I’m going to get there.
More coaches were attracted to this system, which is really cool. I had no expectation of that. Someone asked me, what do you mean when you say the 3Hag.
And I was like, don’t you know what a 3Hag is? It just came out of what we were doing and building our company. We had a 10-30 years goal, that big Harry Audacious goal that Jim Collins put out there. We had our one-year plan and we had a 90-day plan. The thing that tied it together was this 3Hag.
They asked, what is that? And I said, Well, it’s a three year, highly achievable goal. What you want to do is to draw that line in the sand with your team. It is no different than any Olympic team would do. They always write their 3Hag on the Olympics, and then they go, we have three years to get there. What do we have to do every quarter to build the team, to be prepared to win our Olympics?
I came from a heavy athletic background and we did the same thing. We worked together as a team. We said, this is what it’s going to look like in three years. Here’s our strategy. Here’s our plan. Let’s map it out. Twelve quarters, 36 months, put it out there.
What I learned is not many people did that at all. And quite frankly, less than 1% of the people did that. But coaches were interested in it. So, I said, look, here you go. I’m retired and having fun. But you can take this information and leverage it with your clients. I didn’t teach it and just gave it to them.
I was once at this growth conference with a lot of coaches. And one of their clients was up on the stage and they were being interviewed on their incredible growth. And they asked, tell us about this incredible growth. What was it that is the turning point of all this growth? And they said, it’s all about the 3Hag.
After that day, I decided that’s a huge impact that makes me so happy. I got to write this down because I didn’t put it in to the Metronome Effect because I thought it was a bit obvious and I thought people already had it. I thought they were already doing it. And I leveraged some other tools. But what we learned is that no one had a 3Hag at that point and many thousands upon thousands of companies now have a 3Hag. I’d say tens of thousands of companies have three hags since 2018.
We wrote that down, published the book in April 2018. The book was the best seller on Amazon in many countries. I was so happy with that. It’s prescriptive again to the point that the publisher said again, why do you keep writing this down over and over? And I was like, you got to follow the steps. There’s a flow. You got to honor the flow.
The most interesting thing is that it attracted more companies. Okay. I’m on that now. I understand, write a book, attract people. But it attracted more coaches. And the coaches actually wanted to be certified in this methodology.
RT
Oh, wow.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah, about 40 coaches reached out, and I was like, it’s all there. It’s written down, step by step by step. I think you got it. You can leverage it!
But they needed more insight and certification. I said you need to be certified, so I blew them off for about three months. Then my own team came back and they said, we’re doing planning for the year, and the team is small. I’m talking about me and two others. But we follow the methodology and we’re planning for the year.
They suggested our core purpose is all about growing up others, the CEO, the leaders, and getting them to wherever they want to go. Make sure they grow themselves, their team, and their business, that and their life is balanced. What better impact would be than training the coaches on how to do this? You’ll have an exponential impact.
I was wondering if I want to engage in this, because it means I’m going to create a community of coaches, we are going to collaborate. But I agreed. Today, we have this amazing community, who knows the system across all continents around the world. We have this global group of coaches.
In September 2018, I started training coaches – started in Australia, then went to the US, then did some in Canada, did some more in Australia, Canada, and the US and I did some in Central America. Some coaches flew over from Europe and the UK and now we have over 90 coaches around the world who use this system.
The funny thing is they originally got trained in the 3Hag Way, and everything in there sets out your strategy system and connects it to your execution system. But after we had these coaches on board for a couple of years, they said you’re doing something more. I wasn’t sure and said, I’m doing what you guys are doing.
You got to make sure there’s a strong culture, the team is highly cohesive, there’s clarity of how the team plays together, what’s expected, and what they’re accountable for. They’re clear on the strategy, execution and cash and that we’re going to grow these leaders into coaches. The CEO will coach the leadership team, leadership team will coach their team, and we’ll cascade this out.
But they said, you’re doing it in a certain way and flow a certain timing of it. I had assumed again they might be doing it sort of in the same flow that I was doing it. However, we learned that they were doing all the same pieces, but not at the same time, not at the same order, and not maybe honoring humans. If you can imagine writing down where you’re going to be in three years’ time, it’s very human to not actually want to write that down, because when you write it down, then you’re either going to be wrong or you have to do it.
It’s like saying, I’m going to go to the Olympics, I’m going to get on that hockey team, or I’m going to be a runner. As soon as you say it, you got a map, how you’re going to get there. So, it’s a commitment and it’s very human. Teams are excited, and it very much just spreads throughout the team.
Metronomics is my third book that got released on June 15th. On the day it was released, it was the best-seller in Australia, Canada, and the US. And that has a little bit to do with the community we have. It’s available worldwide – hardcover, soft cover, eBook, and audible.
But the thing is that those coaches said, can you just write down the flow? Can you write it down? Like, how does it work? Why does it work? Just because they all had their own ways of doing things. But they could see that I save time. And my clients save time. And they were consistently reaching their goals in an exponential way; the same growth I had in my first company.
The other piece that they thought was interesting is one of my oldest standing clients is ten years old. Now coaches say to me, why would a CEO plus leadership team need a coach for ten years? Don’t they have it yet? And I’m like, well, name me a professional winning sports team that doesn’t have a coach, that doesn’t have a repeatable playbook, or that doesn’t have a scoreboard. So, Metronomics brought those three things to business.
It’s a system for the sport of business. And the one thing common between any sport you can name out there and the sport of business is humans, people. And it’s set up for the same team atmosphere and the same plans and the same collaboration and the same better, faster decisions as any team be it football team, hockey team, or basketball team.
It’s really amazing to me when I think back to my first company, where I started. The long story is that I was struggling, trying to figure out how I balance team and how do I balance business and, of course, our lives, our team members’ lives. Because if you’re a professional football player, you don’t play football 20 hours a day, like a lot of budding entrepreneurs. And we shouldn’t either in business, because it gets us out of balance and cranky.
So, I always think about the journey I’ve been on, especially the last ten years. As I said, I’m retired. But everyone goes, you’re not! You are doing stuff all over the place. And I go,
How about priorities?
It still serves the core purpose that I had as a CEO, which was always to grow up people. But this one now is I get to grow myself, grow the teams I work with, grow the coaches, and that we work together as a community. We get to grow up thousands of companies and tens of thousands of team members. So, it’s been an incredible journey.
The whole thing gets back to the very first day or two of growing my first company, asking my coach, can you tell me a system that we can use? Do you have a playbook? Do you have a playbook? And he really didn’t. He had built a very successful entrepreneurial venture, built five, six, seven companies and sold many of them. Then he went on to the next one, but didn’t have that one playbook that was written down.
So, Metronomics is that playbook. We wrote it in a way to explain what people want and have empathy for that, because I certainly experienced that and then what the outcomes should be. We did it painfully like the other two books, step by step, quarter by quarter. Then we even timed it out to say, here’s how it works altogether. Stay within these bounds. And then we finish it off with a trust the system kind of framework because it’s human.
If we follow the flow onto the flow of the system, human beings will just grab hold of it. It’s no different than playing on a team. And we’re playing towards a Championship. The same thing will happen in business if we honor the flow and recreate that flow. So, that’s a very long story of where we started. But that brings you right up to where we are right now.
RT
Wow. That’s the journey. You just wanted time to get out on the skis!
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah, that was the goal. I still get to ski a ton. I’ve never, ever given that up. And that’s one of the things when I was challenged in my first business, I’ve lived in Whistler, British Columbia, for 32 years. The reason why we were there and building a global business out of there, and we’ve grown two out of there, was to live where we wanted and have the life we wanted to live but not let it hold us back and not make an impact on the rest of the world.
I think the one thing that really gave me back the time, if you go to the very tactical bed of time, time is a scarcity resource. If I ask people what’s holding you back from growing up, your company. so many people say time. If we take a repeatable playbook like this, it’ll give you back time. Lots of people chuckle when I told the story in the early days, it was to give time back so I could ski more so I could enjoy the outdoors more.
Then I get married and was going to have kids. So, three kids less than three years apart, no twins. There was no way I could have pulled that off being a company CEO, having the kids, and then obviously bringing the kids up. I have an incredible husband who took on that role, but there’s no way physically you could even pull that off unless there’s a system like this in place when we just put in the first.
If anyone’s listening in and they are like, how do you get started. There are such simple things that got started in the chapter two of the book is, how do you practically and tactically kick it off. The one thing is if you just follow us in that first chapter two, how to Kick It Off, it’ll give you about 40 hours back in your week, individually, 40 hours.
Most entrepreneurs, most leaders, and you don’t even have to be an entrepreneur. All entrepreneurs are leaders, so let’s just talk leaders. Most leaders are putting in too much time into the business and most people go, what do you mean? I go, yes, anyone, any leader of any size of business. They’re working 60, 80 hours a week. That’s a lot of time.
RT
Definitely. Yes. And the thing about it is at this moment, it’s normalized. People are saying that as an entrepreneur, that’s what you should be working to be successful. And when you look at it nine times out of ten, the reason you became an entrepreneur wasn’t to clock in. That’s a conundrum.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
It is a conundrum. And that’s the one that when we built our first company, we agreed with co-founders. We’re doing this in Whistler, British Columbia. We’re going to be a tech company in the late 90s. Everyone was like, what are you doing? Who are you guys? We’re like, the third largest business in Whistler at that time. We’re a tech company, right. And they thought, that’s crazy. But I said, not really.
I said, because people want to work hard, obviously, and play hard. That’s cliche. But they do want balance. And it’s hard to get balance many times. I was unbalanced in growing up companies. But I can say it was in the early years of my first company when I didn’t have a repeatable playbook, that I didn’t have that guide.
I want to add the other thing that I think is so important that many people miss and don’t invest in. And the weirdest thing is, everyone goes, oh, you just say, get a coach because you’re a coach. Actually, I don’t say that. I always say, get a coach because I was coached. That coach was a blind spot remover and saved me so much time.
I run into leaders all the time and ask them what their support network is? Do they have peers? Where are they learning about their community? But I always ask of a coach and someone will say, yes, they have a life coach, a personal coach, even a CEO coach. And I go, that’s great, but do you have a team coach? And they always look at me like, what is a team coach?
I go, for you and your team, because everything you’re learning out there, it’s then up to you to bring back into the company. That’s really hard. Most cannot do that. I’d say, probably 90% of CEOs out there are not able to do that. It’s hard. It’s so much easier to have an outside party come in and say the things that you want to say, but can’t say.
RT
Definitely. That was one of my questions that I did want to ask you was how imperative is it to have a coach as far as business is concerned? Yeah. That takes away a lot of what I’ve heard. It called a dummy tax. So, the coach takes a lot of that away.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
I grew up a software platform. So, the business model is Software as a Service and growing those up in financial services. Most people think because I have that background that I must coach tech companies. I can’t think of any companies. None of the companies I coach are software companies, not SaaS companies.
Everyone says, how could you coach a manufacturing company or how could you coach largest exporter of something in the US? And I said, well, it’s actually better that I don’t know anything about their business. I know a lot about how to grow a team to win, and they’re experts at their business, the hardedge. I am an expert at this playbook in getting it into the company.
Frankly, I get to ask the stupidest questions that maybe people are afraid to ask or they just haven’t thought of from an outside perspective. And when I’m an expert in a company that I coach, I actually can’t ask stupid questions, right? You just can’t because they are like, aren’t you the expert? Shouldn’t you know that answer? And my expertise is coaching and getting the best out of the team towards the goals that they commit.
Lots of people say, do you have a coach that knows XYZ? And I go, I’m sure we do. We have coaches that know so many genres of business that come from all walks of life. But I said it’s really about fit, meaning a human fit with the CEO plus leadership team coach and the team. And that you align no differently with the core values and the behavior and all of that.
When I think about any leader out there, most of my clients today that I coach, I’m the CEO plus leadership team coach for them. I’m the team coach, and most of them have their own executive coach, life coach, as well as personal coach. And I’m coaching the team on the field. And why we have Metronome Growth Systems is that it’s a platform. It’s the open playing field. It’s a behavioral accountability platform, no different than the soccer field, or the basketball court, or the ice hockey rink.
When we’re playing on a team and get on those fields where we’re going to play the game, our behavior is a bit different. So, in business, it’s really hard to create the playing field. We created a playing field that everyone can see one another playing together every day. You could ask for help, you can offer help, you can see the score. It’s such a key piece, because when we play a game, we look at the scoreboard 1000 times during a game or more. Almost every minute. Even spectators are looking at how much time is left. What do we need to do to win? And then they’re going to make better, faster decisions.
Well, teams need that, too. So, Metronome Growth System is a platform that goes with that repeatable playbook. And together with the coach drives that balance that leaders are looking for. That’s what Metronomics has pulled back around and so have all the coaches out there.
RT
I’ve never heard it put that way. I’ve heard blueprint, but not really as far as a playbook and sports. And that’s an excellent way to put it, the fact that you’re all on the field and looking up at the time clock and having a goal set the three halves. So, the 3Hag.
Let me get this straight. The 3Hag is different than the BHag because it breaks it down into small feats. So, this is your working out and your cardio.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yes. And all the big milestones that you have to get along the way to get there. Because if I think of, say, any hockey team going to the Winter Olympics, that’s coming up here in China, they didn’t just start training now and going, oh, we’re going to go to the Olympics. They started training like a lifetime ago. But to this Olympics, they picked a team.
They probably picked a team three years away from the Olympics. Then the coach set out they had their process. They set out their plan of what they need to do, what they need to win along the way for the last twelve quarters. They’re just entering that last quarter. They’re three high quarter because the Olympics is in February, and they’re just entering it. And they’re hoping they did everything they possibly could to win their Olympics.
So, I always say the 3Hag is about winning your business Olympics and competing with someone else to win your business Olympics. But when it’s your business Olympics, you’re actually competing with yourself to win the business.
Okay. This is what is going to be three years from now. We all believe this is the right thing. It’s going to get us where we need to be, the growth, who we need to serve, our core purpose. The big thing around that is then you’re going to just March towards that. And your business Olympics is what you say the win is – and nothing more. Most people are afraid to say what their win is going to be three years from now.
RT
It should be the bait, something pretty big that you want to accomplish. Speaking of that, just yesterday, I was going over my mother’s house to have Thanksgiving dinner. And about a quarter mile from my house, I said, oh, man, I forgot to get the tea, the specific tea that I like. And it happens to be Milo’s. So, I looked at your case study, and that was very interesting. Is that a company that you still work with?
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah, I still work with Milo’s tea. Love Milo’s tea, by the way. And it’s such a great story because this is their 75th year in business, third-generation CEO who I’ve worked with. I’m just rolling into my fifth year working with them. They have more than doubled in size since I started working with them. I think they’re closer to tripling in size. And the interesting thing is that’s the hard edge, right?
How are we going to grow the business and putting in their 3Hag. They kept putting in a 3Hag and kept getting there before three years was up, which is great. Lots of companies do, by the way. And the big thing around that whole story with Milo’s is pretty similar to lots of companies who put this in place because it’s about growing up your team. And bringing your team, culture, design, accountability, and the clarity of the score. The more we did that, the more the team comes together and drives.
I’ll be going to a meeting here with Milo’s in a couple of weeks, and it’s a whole lot of fun because of their ability to focus, from the CEO through the leadership team on what the team score is for Milo’s beverages.
They’re producing beverages to ensure everyone enjoys them, gets it on the table, enjoys the Milo’s moments. And once we could actually break that down, cascade that through the organization, what an amazing difference!
But the number one reason why it works and works with Milo is that the CEO plus leadership team made a commitment to evolve their behavior. I started working with them when they were over 70 years old. Most people go, why would they need a coach?
RT
Right. And they’re set in their ways.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah. They were committed to where they wanted to go, committed to the system. It was human and made sense. And then they’ve been committed to cascading it through the organization and hats off to all of Milo’s because they are just amazing in their willingness and desire to honor the flow of building a team and committing to team goals.
RT
Okay. The growth is excellent when you put it in sports terminology, like, reaching goals is the ultimate thing. First you want to get a win. You may want to score a certain amount of points, then you want to score more points. Then you want to stop the other team from scoring as many points every time you can touch one of those goals. There’s a reason to celebrate.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah. I love that you just said that. And that’s one of the most important things. If we don’t set them even on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, there’s nothing to celebrate. But the more you celebrate them, it creates the momentum that you need. It’s so human.
RT
Right. So as far as the coach, let’s just say we open your book. We read your book. You have the leverage because you have grown these businesses to exit and have been able to sell them. So, how would a coach reach out to you and say, hey, I want to teach your program.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
They can reach out to us through our website, which is metronomeunited.com and they can apply there. We have been blown away at the interest of coaches from around the world who can come and join us. It has just elevated our game. And that’s what’s all about.
We’re learning from one another. It’s probably the biggest benefit that this coach community has grown out of this because we are helping each other get better. And in turn, we’re helping so many clients. So, on metronomeunited.com, there’s an area where you can click the button if you want to be a coach. And if you’re a company looking for a coach, same website, metronomeunited.com.
RT
As far as coaching is concerned, you should really start an affiliate program to send people your way, because you have the credentials.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah, definitely.
RT
So, a piece of advice if you could, what is the importance or is there an importance as far as coming from a coach, a business coach, the importance of working from the end goal. And with me saying that starting from an exit strategy.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
I think that’s the number one thing that most people will only put out their end goal that they think they are for sure going to do it. And I’m from a perspective of I’d rather you put out. That’s why I love Jim Collins’s Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
I want you to put one out there, a huge, the people will laugh at you kind of goal. That’s 10 to 30 years out there. We did it in every one of our businesses as well. The 3Hag is a stepping stone that truly is risky enough and scary enough. But it’s not a year away. It’s three years away. So you can reach out and touch it. But you have to then go take a deep breath and go.
I’m going to map our way from here to there. So, I’m a huge fan. I definitely grew up goal-oriented and grew up going, I want to do that. But I wasn’t the willy-nilly around. Oh, I’m going to be an astronaut and just say that, and it never happened. Whatever I said I was going to do, I then had to figure out.
That’s ten years. What do I have to do in one year? What do I have to do in the next 90 days? And what should I do this week? And that’s just inherent in me. But that’s how this whole system works. That’s why I’m a work back. It’s always that work back plan makes it real. And then we can get our heads around and convince ourselves we can do that. And that’s what we have to do.
RT
I like that working from the end goal backwards and the fact that as you said earlier, once you say it, it’s out there. I’ve heard that it’s not in the universe. You’re either going to be wrong about it. Then you’re going to be upset with yourself because you’re like, I’m not even getting to what I need to be. I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m not doing this cardio every day. That’s going to give me a Championship. That’s definite. So, I would like to get a copy of your book. I would like for all of my listeners to have a copy of your book. Where can they find your book?
Shannon Byrne Susko:
They can find book in any version you can think of off. Amazon.com or audible, please grab a copy. We would love that. We’d love your feedback. I would love your feedback on it because that’s how we get better.
RT
Yeah, definitely. And where can they find you at YouTube?
Shannon Byrne Susko:
We have Metronomeunited.com, a LinkedIn group – Metronome Global, and a Facebook group, Metronome Global as well. It’s pretty active.
It’s really fun because we’re getting people from all over the world. We’re getting their feedback. We’re learning. They’re learning. And I think by now in this conversation, you probably recognize I’m still learning. And the more we share with other people, the more we all learn together.
RT
Awesome. Last question.
What qualifications does a business or business owner have to have to work with Metronome United?
Shannon Byrne Susko:
The only qualification you need is you need to be able to commit and have the willingness and desire to actually reach your goals. That’s it. You need nothing more than your pure desire to actually get to another place, whatever that place is, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing more than that. You just need to commit.
RT
There you go. There you have it need to commit. So, I want to thank you very much for coming on.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Yeah. You’re very welcome. Super fun. Thank you.
RT
Oh, yes. What I’m going to do? I’m going to order your book. I will read it, and then I will circle back and we’re going to do another interview because I have more insight on the book and what I read.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
Beautiful. I would love that. Thank you.
RT
All right. Well, you have a great day.
Shannon Byrne Susko:
You too. Thank you. Bye. Talk to you soon.
RT
Talk to you soon. Bye.