Fast Growth In Business – John Lincoln

On today’s episode, we are going to talk about preparing for fast growth in business with one of the top CEOs in the country.

We’re here with John Lincoln. He’s the CEO of Ignite Visibility, a company that’s been on the Inc. 5000 list twice.

All right, Thriving Launchers, let’s bring on John Lincoln on to the podcast.

John, are you ready to launch?

Yes! Absolutely! Thanks for having me here.

Let’s talk about fast growth in business because that’s something that a lot of companies, a lot of people no matter where they’re at in their business, once they experience some sort of level up that’s big or tremendous, it can mess things up.

This is something that coming from a relationship background and working in the background of relationships, I’ve seen too where if couples are happy, they almost have to do something to self-sabotage and that’s the same thing when you’re having fast growth in business.

I’m curious. What do you think are some things that we can do or think about even before we have fast growth in business to prepare us so that we don’t sabotage?

Yes!

A little about me, I own a digital marketing agency. It’s called Ignite Visibility. We are an SEO, paid media, social media, email marketing, conversion rate optimization company which I started 6 years ago with my business partner Krishnan Coughran. We’ve been growing fast since day one. Now going on 6 years, we’ve gone from nothing to 58 employees.

It’s a lot of fun. I think fast growth in business is great. It keeps people excited at the company. There are always new challenges and you really have to embrace it. I think that’s the biggest thing. You have to enjoy where you are, you have to enjoy the journey, and you’ve got to make sure that that’s part of it.

Also, another really big part about fast growth in business that I’ve learned over time is planning ahead. Really forecasting and having a great system for forecasting where you’re going.

What we’ve done here over the last year or 2 since we’ve consistently have had fast growth in business is created a really clear model for our growth.

How many new clients are coming in? Is there attrition? What is the attrition percentage? Where do we need to add employees? In what individual department?

Then also even taking it a step further, really standardizing and making sure that we’ve got really clear processes and procedures in place and that there’s no ambiguity around the company with the way things are done to continue to have a really high-quality level of service.

Even right now, we’re working on something called Ignite 3.0 which is really exciting for us. It’s the 3^rd version of Ignite and all the latest new services that we’re bringing to market for our great clients.

When it comes to fast growth in business, there’s a lot of planning involved. It’s not maintenance mode. It’s not kind of sitting around and just having a chill type of business. It’s about planning ahead but after you’ve done it for a while, for me going on 6 years, it starts to become a norm and you know how to deal with it and how to scale effectively and it’s a ton of fun.

What are some strategies that you recommend to plan ahead for a team to grow fast in business?.

About 2 years ago, I read a book called Traction. Have you guys ever heard of Traction before by any chance?

I haven’t heard of it. No.

Okay. It’s a good book. There are a lot of good books out there. That’s one that’s amazing.

Traction and also Winning by Jack Welch are 2 books that I really like. Traction is for the smaller business owner.  What it allows you to do is systematize and process your entire business using something called the Entrepreneur Operating System.

About 2 years ago, I went through that whole process and we just dialed in every single aspect of the company; timelines, training programs, processes, tests for every single department and exactly how we do every single thing.

Even though after you do that, it’s a constant process to continue training the staff, reiterating what’s important and making sure that you’ve got good quality control. Also letting your really smart team, with all these people helping out contribute to making things better every single day.

I would highly recommend that book and then Winning by Jack Welch, that’s for the billion-dollar companies which are much bigger than us of course but when you read it, it really teaches you how to look at things from different perspective.

Finally, I also wrote a book a couple years ago, it’s little older now but it’s called Digital Influencer and that teaches people how to become an influencer in their space through the modern day digital marketing landscape.

That really talks about how we used our blogging, our content marketing to become the number one SEO company ranked in the world right now and that’s really fueled our growth. Those things are really hopeful but generally, there’s a lot that goes into it.

It’s not just the things that I talked about. It’s also developing a great leadership team around you, having people that can support you who have been there before who you can talk through different scenarios with. That’s another thing that’s really important also.

As you’ve gone through your fast growth in business, have you guys hired some consultants or coaches to come in and support you through that growth?

If you have, I’m curious what are some pointers that you might recommend to people as they are looking to potentially hire somebody to help them have some of those insights? I think books are wonderful and I also believe that at some point, we probably end up hiring somebody to come and support or coach us.

It’s a great point. Thank you for bringing that up.

I went out and found everybody who had accomplished what I was looking to accomplish and who had already done it before.

I do have three consultants right now; one on the HR  side, a CEO coach and we’ve got a new CFO COO who’s really helping more as an implementer and part-time employee at this point.

Yes! About a year ago, I knew we’re going to keep growing. I knew I wanted to get some great guidance and not be guessing at things and it was really helpful.

I do have a CEO Coach and meet with him every 2 weeks, make sure things are heading in the right direction. The person’s had a company three times my size and it’s just amazing because I bring our own unique vision to it. I have a business partner, Krish Coughran as well. We put together the vision together but then just to have experience from this leadership team is just great.

I highly recommend it.

If you can’t afford a premium coach, it’s great just to get a mentor and just meet with somebody regularly and talk through it, somebody who’s gone where you want to go because eventually you end rising to that level. That’s a great point, Luis.

Yes. Find someone who’s gone where you’re looking to go and follow them as much as you can.

I’d love to hear if there are any other tips or tricks about fast growth in business that you would give us before we wrap this up.

Yes.  Most people want to have a successful company. Most people want to grow and there’s all kind of challenges that come with that.

First, it’s really important to figure out what you want out of life. Don’t just grow to grow. Make sure that you really do want a big company instead of some different type of lifestyle type of business. That’s pretty important.

If you do you want to grow fast, one of the keys to our success is, even though I’m the CEO of this company, I invest a lot of time and marketing and thought leadership and really pushing things. That’s allowed us to have a little bit of an impact on the industry and kind of get noticed.

Consistently, don’t back off of it. If you keep the throttle going at the same rate, then you’ll continue to grow. That’s important.

Good luck to all new fast growers out there. If you have any questions, I’m always happy to answer a couple through Twitter or something like that.

Thriving Launchers, we’re going to link up his books there on the page; the ones that he recommended as well as John Lincoln’s own book that he recommended there also.

We reached out to John because his company has done fantastically well. They’ve really won some great awards.

Thriving Launchers, take to heart some of the suggestions that were noted here about fast growth in business. For me personally, the number one thing I got away from today’s interview was there are some books that I should read and some books that I haven’t read that I should really look into because books are really great to set seeds and they help us guide through processes that maybe we’ve never thought that is really incredibly important, our mindsets that are really important as we’re looking to grow, scale, make more money, and just make a bigger impact in the world.

With that being said Thriving Launchers, we’ll catch you on the next episode. Keep thriving you all.