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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

224: Mike McDerment, CEO Of FreshBooks - Lead With Trust

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Ryan Hawk

Business, Management, Careers

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2017

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world's #1 cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Built in 2003 after he accidentally saved over an invoice, Mike spent 3.5 years growing FreshBooks from his parents' basement. Since then, over 10 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, and collect billions of dollars.

The Learning Leader Show

"We give trust to earn trust. Lead with trust. That's the world I want to live in."

Show Notes:

  • Sustained Excellence. Common Themes of Leaders who Sustain Excellence:
    • Been through something hard
    • Strong morals - set of values, make upstanding decisions, believe in people, don't compromise
    • Creative
    • Surround self with great people
    • Strong desire to grow
    • Default Trust to "ON"
  • First Principles -- Distill things down to underlying system: The act of taking a problem and breaking it down
  • Building FreshBooks -- "I didn't know anything about anything."
  • The #1 place to work -- have won awards for their culture
  • What do you do? "We are in the business of saving people time."
  • Moving to his parents basement to start the business... Running lean
  • Culture takes deliberate thought
    • Must have people who are diverse but share your values
    • Need guidelines/rule sets
  • The 9 Values:
    • Passion - Love your craft
    • Ownership
    • Results
    • Change - Bring learning and growth
    • Honesty
    • Fun - Deliberately make it fun
    • Empathy
    • Strive - Stretch
    • Trust
    • Secrecy - Open inside, but nothing leaves from inside
  • Values/Culture used in 2 ways
    • Publicly recognize people living the values
    • Swiftly eliminate people who don't embody those values - Listen, hear, be open. Recognize that cultures need to be hacked, evolve, change.
  • Inner office dating? Why is that promoted? What does it mean?
  • Everyone spends the first month in customer service. All build that foundation -- Why they prolong onboarding and how that leads to long term success
  • Make decisions today to win in 3-5 years
  • Decided to re-platform even though the rule is to "never re-write or re-platform"
  • "How do you minimize risk, but maximize impact?"
  • "Something that no one had ever done before. Create a new company in secret."
  • Lead with trust: "We give trust to earn trust. Lead with trust. That's the world I want to live in."
  • Imposter Syndrome and FEAR. Embracing it
  • "Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable" -- It's the path to growth. Nobody has all of the answers
  • Advice to 20 year old -- He was lost, not doing well. Realize that everyone else is too. Nobody knows what they are doing even if it looks like they do."
  • Read -- E Myth (Michael Gerber), Idea Virus (Seth Godin), Execution (Ram Charan)
  • Learning Leader -- Per Mike, "That's me." The challenge & personal growth.

"How do you minimize risk and maximize impact?"

Social Media:

More Learning:

Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon

Episode 216: Jim Collins -- How To Go From Good To Great

Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions

Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why

Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

there's this notion of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

0:05.0

And I think at the heart of imposter syndrome,

0:08.0

you know, that's like what I would say to you is if you're experiencing it,

0:11.0

just know that it's kind of a path to growth, right?

0:14.6

I think part of it, you know, the whole thing is like it kind of has an outside

0:20.1

in like people you think people are thinking one thing or another and you know

0:23.9

and what you start to realize when you're leading people and if you're doing

0:26.8

anything that's kind of interesting or challenging enough like nobody has all

0:31.9

the answers.

0:32.8

Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show.

0:39.0

I am Ryan Hawk.

0:40.8

Thanks so much for being here.

0:43.7

It is mindful Monday.

0:46.1

Go to learning leader.com, enter your email address,

0:49.5

join thousands of other fellow learning leaders

0:52.4

from all over the world to discuss the latest trends and topics conversation pieces in the world of

0:58.8

Leadership would love to have you learning leader dot com now on night's featured leader, it is Mike McDermott.

1:05.2

He is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks, the world's number one cloud accounting

1:11.3

software for self-employed professionals something that I use as

1:15.9

well.

1:16.9

A few of the topics that Mike and I got into, I love this one, self-doubt, imposter Syndrome, the powerful story of Mike moving back to his parents'

1:27.4

basements for three and a half years to create and build this company.

...

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