Brad Giles is one of Australia’s most sought-after coaches. An experienced business speaker, adviser and entrepreneur, Brad helps some of Australia’s leading mid-sized firms, CEOs and leadership teams to thrive. He is also the author of Made to Thrive: The Five Roles to Evolve Beyond Your Leadership Comfort Zone
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
None Specific
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I couldn’t learn fast enough. I’ve always been a very passionate learner. But just knowing the sheer amount that I needed to learn, back then as well as now, but knowing the amount it was challenging because I understood the risk but I knew that I didn’t want to build an ordinary business. I wanted to build a great business even twentysomething years ago. And in that the challenge was I knew I couldn’t learn quick enough, I couldn’t learn all the things I needed to, to build that business and to set all of the things in motion that I needed to”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t Book by Verne Harnish
- 3HAG WAY: The Strategic Execution System that ensures your strategy is not a Wild-Ass-Guess! Book by Shannon Byrne Susko
Favourite Quote:
“The signature of mediocrity is not unwillingness to change. The true signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.” Jim Collins
Recommended Online Resources:
- I think the best online resource is a highly curated twitter feed
- Twitter – It’s what’s happening. From breaking news and entertainment to sports and politics, get the full story with all the live commentary.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“stop doing other people’s jobs. So, you’ve got to understand if you are a leader and you are doing the sales managers job you are doing a disservice to him and plus you are not doing your job. So, stop doing other people’s jobs, whatever it is. Give people the space around you to thrive. Number two, build cash. Ideally, we want to have a cash reserve for small to medium businesses of two months of fixed expenses cash at bank. If you don’t have cash in the bank and you are worried about paying bills you are never going to be able to think strategically. Then number three is to always have 3 to 5 priorities for yourself, for the whole business, for each of the teams, for everybody in the business to always have 3 to 5 priorities ”…[Listen for More]
More About Brad Giles:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal – a commitment to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success you seek.” Mario Andretti
Other Quotes From the Chat with Brad Giles:
- “set aside time to read curated books. And what I mean is understand where you are at in the journey and what are the top 10 books that are recommended for that? People have written books to solve exactly the problem that you are at. So, set aside time, maybe two hours or ten hours a week or something like that and work through those books because there is no substitute for learning… We have got to understand what these people are teaching us”
- “get a coach that you consider a peer. So, you have got to have respect for your coach and you got to look at them with that peer mentality so that they can really challenge you and they can really add value to you ”
- “don’t do other people’s jobs. Now that assumes that you’ve got other employees. So, if you haven’t got any other employees you just got to outwork everybody else. It’s as simple as that. You got to work harder and you got to think more and learn more than everybody else. If you are prepared to work harder than everybody else then that’s a great recipe for success. It doesn’t mean longer hours it means harder; it means understanding priorities, it means understanding cash flow, it means understanding so many things. If you have employees however draw a very big line in the sand and be very, very, very, very clear on what’s the difference between your job and the other person’s job and don’t do the other person’s job”
- “we have got to relentlessly focus on the boring basics for a huge amount of our time in order to be highly successful”
- “the signature of mediocrity is not unwillingness to change. The problem with entrepreneurs, and I say this as an entrepreneur having started six companies, the problem is that we get distracted by the shiny things. We think I can start a small satellite business on the side, I’m so clever and then we go and start. I did that right. And then we go and start a little business over here… And we get distracted. And then suddenly we are supposed to be executing one thing and then we go over here and we do something else, and then we do something else. So consistent, consistent, consistent”
- “what I try to do is build endearing great companies”
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