Purposeful Growth in Life and Business | Brendan McGurgan

Potent with Steven Lawson

Scaling your life and business

On today's episode of Potent, Steven Lawson and Brendan McGurgan discuss behaviors for success in life and business, the importance of mindset, finding purpose in one’s work, and what it takes to scale your life.

About Today's Guest

Brendan is a global business leader who builds profitable, scalable businesses delivering on his strong personal belief that if you have a wonderful product or service then you have an obligation to bring this to the world.

Over seventeen years, twelve as CEO of CDE Group, he helped the company achieve 25x revenue growth and become an industry leader. During his time as CEO the company delivered almost £500 million ($750 million) cumulative revenue and £50 million ($75 million) cumulative profit, scaled from 15 to almost 700 employees spanning 6 continents and exported to more than 100 countries.

Driven by his own purpose to Inspire, Connect and Enable ambitious leaders of SMEs to scale with purpose, in 2020 he co-founded Simple Scaling with Claire Colvin with whom he co-authored the Amazon Best-Seller, Simple Scaling: 10 Proven Principles to 10x your business cited by Kirkus as comprehensive concrete counsel for business leaders. Through Simple Scaling he co-hosts the successful ScaleX Accelerator business scaling programme.

He is host of the acclaimed podcast ScaleX™ Insider now ranked in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally.

Brendan is a qualified Chartered Accountant and Chartered Director. In 2016, he was awarded the Institute of Directors, UK Young Director of the Year and Overall, UK Director of the Year. Brendan is also a coach and mentor to scaling CEOs, a regular keynote speaker, and graduated in 2021 as a Wim Hof Method Instructor.

Outside of his professional work he has a love of all sports. He holds a 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a sport he has practiced for 25 years and has previously competed in triathlon (completing Mallorca 70.3 Iron Man in 2019). In 2021 Brendan graduated as a Wim Hof Method Instructor which he now integrates in his ScaleX Accelerator Scaling programme.

Simple Scaling https://simplescaling.com/

Personal LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-mcgurgan-11854a13/

Links to social media and website: https://linktr.ee/simplescaling

Show Notes

0:00 Intro

05:34 Why do you care about helping businesses?

06:51 Becoming CEO - scaling to 700

08:03 Finding why

11:25 marga hoick "business for good is good for business"

12:43 Growth for growth’s sake

13:48 Anchoring in purpose

15:18 Positive ripple effects

18:06 Entrepreneurs in community

19:47 People are usually stuck

21:35 How can I make selling rugs purposeful?

21:49 purpose 1

22:27 purpose 2

23:14 purpose 3 (Patagonia summary of 3 purposes)

24:59 Different starting points

26:18 Build people, not businesses

29:09 Use the Three C's

32:23 Hermit crab analogy

34:28 Four personas

39:48 Theater brain state - what were you told?

43:35 Get into a 'scaling club'

49:20 Community to scale your life

52:14 Summit scale Everest

54:07 The Scale X Framework

01:01:03 Gratitude

01:05:14 S.E.N.S.E

01:08:18 Not about too busy, it's choice

This podcast is brought to you by the Monk Manual. The monk manual is dedicated to providing best-in-class tools for helping you build a more potent life, and experience peaceful being and purposeful doing on a daily basis. If you’d like to be more intentional with your time and energy - please visit monkmanual.com.

The Potent Podcast is produced and edited by Justin Sinclair, who also composed the the theme music. Additional editing support and mixing by Aaron Feeney. Design by Kristin Bural of Soulbeam Studios.