New Principles of Growth and Success

Anita Brick: Hi. This is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we’re delighted to be speaking with Steve Coughran. He is an author and his latest book is, I’m so excited Steve, thank you for writing it, it is called Outsizing, and we’re gonna talk about that today. He is the CFO of an international, billion dollar company, and management consultant and has over two decades of experience driving business excellence.

Steve challenges conventional wisdom and has launched and managed three across industry companies. He's a CPA and earned his MBA from Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and studied international business across four continents. He is married to his wife, Lilana, and has two children. Steve, thank you again for doing this, and in the book you talked about how running for you is a big challenge compared to some runners who, as you put it, are built for it.

Steve Coughran: Yeah, absolutely, and Anita, thank you for having me. If you saw me run, you would probably laugh because I am short and stocky and I'm bowlegged. The first time I started running, you know, running a mile was very, very difficult. And I just stuck with it over the last decade or more. I've competed in a lot of races and had a great time doing it.

Anita Brick: I think to your point, which is really in part our point for our conversation today, is you need to have the right tools so that you can elevate the talents you do have to achieve the results that you want.

Steve Coughran: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: Okay. So to get us started. So we're all operating from the same definition. What is outsizing.

Steve Coughraun: Outsizing is the idea of taking a person, a place, or a thing and stretching it beyond what was thought possible. Breaking through these mental barriers that hold us back. Whether that's in business, whether it's taking a company from just average to exceptional, or whether that's in our personal lives and really pushing ourselves to reach our full potential. That's the essence of outsizing.

Anita Brick: Okay, and an Alum reference, in your book, “You talk about finding the root prize for lack of growth. I feel that I am so close to my situation, I don't think I can be very objective. What advice would you have for someone like me? Thank you in advance.”

Steve Coughran: That's a common trap that we can fall into is self-deception or being so close to the problem that we can't see solutions. My advice to that is making sure that we constantly stay connected to people. Some of the solutions that I've encountered in my life have stemmed from serving other people or having conversations with other people. How we receive feedback and respond to that feedback is really going to determine how receptive people are to providing that advice and feedback that we need to grow.

If we're closed off or we get defensive, people aren't going to be willing to share that valuable information that we need. We have to remain humble. We have to separate feedback from an attacking type standpoint that may be offensive to ourselves and really trying to separate ourselves and look at it objectively rather than taking offense.

Anita Brick: It's a very good point, and there was a question around that. It was almost like a statement and asking for advice. I would be curious as well, and maybe we do that first, who should you seek feedback from?

Steve Coughran: Great question. In the book I talk about S-Teams, and ‘S’ standing for strategy, and in life, you know, you could look at this S-Team as your strategic team personally. So first of all, if we just seek feedback from people that are farther along the path than us, that are highly successful and we forget about everybody else, we can be led down the wrong path, having a very limited, non diverse perspective given to us.

Anita Brick: Okay, so diversity is good, but who you put on your team, especially if you're asking for feedback. How do you mitigate the risk in terms of who's on your team?

Steve Coughran: The people on our teams, and I think the common ingredients really stem from this, this idea of open mindedness, authenticity, no arrogance allowed on the team. People that are open and willing to solve problems. So when I'm looking at individuals to get advice from or to seek mentorship from or just to have on my team, I'm looking for people that lead their life. What I mean by that is if you see the world is full of problems and you talk about problems and you focus on problems, but you never provide a solution, it can be very, very draining. Minutes start a value add. I'm constantly looking for people that see the problems that exist, but they also come up with solutions to those problems. That's really the key and that's really the mindset that I like to look for.

Anita Brick: There's no shortage of having people in our lives who will point out what's wrong, what's missing, but if they don't have either the interest or the capacity to provide potential solutions and be open to our saying yes to some of them, no to others and I would also say, and I'm assuming this is baked into what you were saying, that they have to care more about us than their own ego.

Steve Coughran: Absolutely. That's absolutely true. Sometimes we can get advice, we can get good feedback from people that we least expect. The key is, like you said, Anita is really focusing on that person and being people centric.

Anita Brick: I agree, a student had a question. He said, “I understand that like CSCs or customer experience, how I come across to others is essential in having someone help me in my career advancement. Yet, what are a couple of things you see when you work with leaders that helps them build enduring positive relationships?”

Steve Coughran: That's a very common question that many of us have on our minds is how do we build these enduring relationships? How do we build authentic relationships, and how are we more intentional with people? I'm a true believer that the people that come into our lives are not coincidence. So I think there's a time and season in each of our lives, and people will come in and they'll provide help and support in times of need, and sometimes those relationships change and they ebb and flow.

The key is to be people center. In chapter two I talk about this power customer centricity. So if you just replace the word customer and insert people, this people centricity really stems around this idea of working out and figuring out what other people value in their life, and understanding how we can help them along the journey. Help fulfill their values. In our lives we have personal values. We may say we value hard work, and we value creativity, and we value perseverance or whatever those values may be. Those are great. Those are great foundational things that we must define, but also we need to start uncovering the values of people around us and then look at ways we can help them fulfill their values and figure out ways we can help serve them. Because I believe that if you focus on only yourself in trying to achieve what you want to achieve, ultimately, you'll just become self-absorbed and destructive behaviors.

The end of the day we have an endless number of problems in our lives, and there's always something to focus on within our life that's wrong or it's not working out perfectly, but when we start focusing our attention on other people these relationships really start to blossom.

Anita Brick: I love the quote when you were quoting Brian Solis, and one of the Alums said, “I really liked your quote, ‘Ignorance plus arrogance equals irrelevance.’ I think people worry about that a lot. What are ways to eliminate each of them, to the degree that you can? Because I don't want to be irrelevant.” Did Brian mean ignorance? It's not a lack of knowledge or data really, is it? Is it more lack of wisdom?

Steve Coughran: It's a lack of wisdom. And one of the principles of the company that I currently work for, Signal Energy, is seek wisdom, and that's one of our guiding principles. I, in my life, I constantly have to challenge my belief and my assumptions that I have to really understand what is true.

And then the second piece is, arrogance, that's a child of ignorance and lack of pursuing the truth. The arrogance really stems from thinking that we know everything that we need to know. I've worked with leaders who have told me point blank I don't read any more because I know everything I need to know and I sit back and think, wow, that's pretty arrogant. That's pretty crazy. There's always stuff that we can learn and grow from.

Anita Brick: That's how you stay relevant too

Steve Coughran: It is, because this world is changing so quickly. If we're just so set in our ways and we're not looking for ways to build our skills or capabilities to increase our aptitude in certain areas, then yeah, we become irrelevant very quickly in the marketplace.

Anita Brick: I like that. I think it's really important. Can we shift gears for a quick start?

Steve Coughran: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: So a student said, “I appreciate the perspective you provided in the book. While I understand a laser focus on my competitive advantage is key, how does this work when my goal is to pivot in a new area, from software architect to strategy consultant?”

Steve Coughran: Great question. There's a lot of information written out there around this idea of competitive advantages. In the book, I point out that competitive advantages have to be things that people actually care about. Think about our own lives, our competitive advantages have to be things that the market actually cares about. So if you're pivoting in your career, you have to look for advantages that may carry over to other careers, or that may allow you to remain relevant regardless and irrespective of the career you pursue in the future.

If you sit back today and think what capabilities and skills do I need to start building today based on where the market and where the industry is going in 5 to 10 years, those are the things that you need to focus on. I talked with CFOs and I did a lot of training around the CFO function. The CFO, if you think about the CFO of the past, is somebody who is more caught up in the technical side of accounting and finance.

They were very technical. They were in charge of ensuring compliance was being followed. That the transactional side of the business was completed on time in an efficient manner. The role of the CFO is transforming from one of this technical transactional type role to a more strategic role. The strategic leader is somebody who can lead the organization from a strategy perspective, from a maximization of resources, whether that's human capital or financial capital.

And it requires this transformation of skills and capabilities, which ultimately lead to competitive advantages. The long short of this is as individuals and as leaders and people pursuing different professions or looking to make pivots, we need to build capabilities that employers care about. We need to build these advantages that the marketplace cares about. And that goes back to my previous point, being in tune with people and understanding the values of people really gives us a better understanding about where we need to be building out different advantages to give us that competitive edge in the future.

Anita Brick: I would agree, and I know you also talk about taking risks and how you need to take some risk, of course it needs to be calculated. There was a student who said, “I work in an environment where taking risks can be risky to me. How would you advise someone on where to invest professional social capital where there is a risk?”

Steve Coughran: Okay. Great question. Well, I think with risk there has to come reward. Okay. What type of risk am I about to embark in? Then I counter it with okay, well what type of reward and how big is the reward on the other side? When I'm pursuing things, and this is just Steve Cochran personally talking here, but when I'm pursuing things I look for things that have a big upside.

So time is very, very limited in life. So when we're looking at risk, if the risk is big, there should be a subsequent big reward. If the risk is small, then go for it and get the experience. When the risk is small, the best way to pursue it is trial and error. Jump right into it. You'll learn if it works out. You'll learn if it fails. So no big deal. If the risk is really, really big, then you're going to want to really think about it and study it and make sure it's the right thing and make sure that the payoff is, of course, worth the risk you're about to take. We all have to take risks. If you live in fear and you don't take any risk, then you're definitely not going to have an outsized life. You'll just be very mediocre. You'll have average results.

Anita Brick: Good point. I've had some interesting conversations about this next thing, and some people say, you know what? If you don't feel comfortable with risk, build up the comfort level, build up the courage and the history, and other people are like, you know, dive into the deep end of the pool. It sounds like, in part, it depends how important a risk or the result is to you. If the payoff is going to be there, maybe it's big, maybe it's small. Do you think it matters if you start small or you go big, or does it not matter?

Steve Coughran: That's a great question, and when I think about taking a big risk, you know, you have to be calculated. You have to be strategic in what you're doing because I do not advise just, you know, just taking all your money and going after an idea that's not fully vetted out. That's number one. But number two is, you know, when I was 16 years old, I moved out of my parents house. It was a bad situation and I went and lived with my sister, and I was living in her basement, and I decided to start a landscape company. I started this company from scratch. I had no clue what I was doing, but I just went for it and I started handing out business cards. I started putting myself out there in the market. And then over the years, you know, I grew from this little enterprise out of my sister's garage to a multi-million dollar business. I wasn't fully aware of the risks that I was really taking on.

I just started small, to your point, Anita, each day I got up, I did a little bit more and I took baby steps. Sometimes it's starting small and moving quickly that's really the key to taking on risk and being successful.

Anita Brick: I would tend to agree with that too. Here's a question. I know you talk a lot about finding the value and then being able to capture the value. So one is to see the competitive advantage and the other is to monetize it. So this Alum has a dilemma and I'd love to see if we can help him. He said, “Thank you for writing the book. The section on capturing value really resonated with me. I'm very good at creating value for others with my knowledge, skills and experience in the startup world. Yet I rarely get paid for this. Sometimes a bit of equity and you know how risky that can be. What advice do you have for someone who has a great deal to offer, for which people don't seem to really want to pay?”

Steve Coughran: To answer this, and I'll provide a little bit of context for the listeners here, there's two different types of ways to look at value. First thing is creating value. It's easy to create value. If you want to create value for your customers, you can lower your price by 10%, and that creates tremendous value. Or you could give them free products, or you can provide a platform where they can be entertained or to share information or get valuable data. But if you can't monetize that, if you can't capture that value, you could run into some some big problems.

So capturing value, there's three ways to capture value. You could charge more, you could do it for less, or you can grow through scale. If we just take those three principles of capturing value and apply it to our personal lives, first, charging more, which equates to you can gain unique skills and capabilities which allow you to earn more, or to build something that is worth some equity or some value. You could do it for less, so you can save money for a company, or you can save money for customers and as a result, you know, maybe there's some upside with those savings. Or the last piece growth through scale. You can be a rainmaker for a company. So you can be involved in sales or acquiring capital for the business and really be a valuable asset on the growth side. So those are the three ways to capture value.

Into the day, the Alum was asking the question about how they can create all this value, but sometimes they don't get paid for it, and I would say this: we get paid in life for things that we do. Almost everything we do, we get paid for it. Now, sometimes that payment comes in the form of monetary rewards. Other times we may be getting paid through social capital, or by building better relationships with our friends, or by fulfilling a deep desire or passion and purpose. We're getting paid. We're getting some type of reward there. If we're not capturing the monetary rewards that we want when we're creating value, we may have to look at those three things that I just reviewed. If this person is working on a startup, helping the startup reach different milestones, then maybe they get their first round of funding, or they could take a business beyond that into a public offering or whatever their financial goals and strategic goals are. That's where you'll start creating and capturing value for yourself and for the company.

Anita Brick: This is not an unusual question that I hear. People will say, yes, I am able to consult around interim CFO work, doing some consulting and once I asked to be paid for it, then people aren't interested anymore and I know there could be a whole bunch of different reasons for that. Is it mostly how you frame things at the front end? They do want the content, they just don't feel that they want to pay this person for it, and I think it's especially crushing when people, I’m thinking of somebody in particular, she went in and provided a whole bunch of value, and they took it and didn't really give her anything in return. They said well they'd love to, but they can't afford it and then they went and hired someone who was in the same field.

Steve Coughran: Up front, we have to demand what we believe we're worth. There has to be economic reality in what you're demanding and what you're creating and capturing for the company, but also you have to just be upfront. And look when I first started consulting, I did consulting and added a consulting firm for almost ten years. I completely undercharged for my services. At first, I didn't have that confidence to demand what I truly believed that I was worth. As I gained a track record and as I turned companies around and I helped boost their bottom line and produce tangible results, I built that confidence within me to just go and ask what I thought I deserved. I think if you have the upfront conversation and you can show the value, then you'll get compensated accordingly.

Anita Brick: In the book, you talk about how difficult it is to work with friends. If these people are friends, it complicates the issue. The people who are saying, oh wait, Steve, you're my friend. Can you help me out with this? And then maybe they were buddies, so I don't really need to pay you, right?

Steve Coughran: Right, friends and business, difficult to navigate unless you can have a very candid, open relationship and you can separate the personal side and business side. That's going to be absolutely key.

Anita Brick: That takes a very special person. Do you have time for one more question?

Steve Coughran: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: Okay. We've talked about a lot of things in many ways boils down to both being able to deliver the value, capture the value, all of it goes around the relationships that we have. So when you think about it, what are three things that you would advise someone who wants to increase their level of growth, success, and contribution?

Steve Coughran: I love this question Anita. If I had to give somebody advice on outsizing your life. First thing is do the scary stuff. So I always tell myself and tell others that I know when I'm on track when I'm doing the scary, gut wrenching, sweaty palm type activities. At first, I had this fear of getting up in front of a group and speaking. I forced myself to get in front of a group, and I was terrified and absolutely terrified when I did this, but I did it, and I spoke. And then afterwards I was excited. I had this adrenaline rush, and then I did it again, and I did it with a bigger group. And then I found myself, I was out in New York and I was facilitating a panel at a big conference, and I was scared then. And then I did it and and that's how I know in life if I'm on the right track. First thing is to do stuff that's really scary, because if you're out of your comfort zone and you're doing the scary stuff and you're putting yourself out there, you know you're going to be doing stuff that other people aren't willing to do to reach new heights.

That's number one. Number two, dead ends are okay. I went and I pursued my CPA after I got my master's in accounting, and I thought I wanted to go down that path. My family members thought I was crazy. They said, Steve, you're this creative. Why are you pursuing your CPA? We just don't get it. But I really wanted to build my quantitative knowledge and my financial acumen so I pursued this path. I thought at the time that I'm going to get my CPA, I'm going to go into public accounting, and this is the path for me. I did that, I got my masters, did the test, passed all parts of the exam, got my licensing, I went into public accounting and I worked for one of the big four and very quickly I realized that this was not the place for me. When I look back on this experience and at the time, I was so upset with myself, I felt like I had the answer. I felt like it was a great direction and it didn't end up working out, and I had to pivot but dead ends are okay because what that taught me now, in retrospect, is that I needed to go down that path to know that that was the wrong path, so I can quickly pivot. Sometimes going down the wrong path and getting a sure answer that it's not the right path is better than dabbling with something for too long and wasting time. Sometimes it's better to go down the wrong path. If it’s the wrong path you hit a dead end and you pivot, and then you go down the next path and you can move forward with confidence. So that's my second thing.

The last thing is I'd say velocity of opportunities is key. So I was once looking at this business to acquire. I wanted to do my first LBO, Leveraged Buyout, and I knew the owner of this business had this personal connection with the owner. So we're going through the due diligence and building out the financial model, talking to banks, and I'm lining up financing, but somebody came in and they offered a higher price. The price did not make sense for me financially. I did not want to overpay on my first LBO and the deals did not work out. And I was a little discouraged and a little frustrated, but I could say that the reason why I was so frustrated is because my velocity of the opportunities, the number of opportunities, was nonexistent. I was so reliant on this one thing, and when it didn't work out, it was heartbreaking. So in life similarly, if we have three different prospects with different careers and we have different offers, then all of a sudden our opportunities are expansive. So if one doesn't work out, then we got two others that we could focus on.

In life, I constantly try to create these velocities of opportunities. I'm moving and shaking in all different parts of business, and speaking, and writing, and being a CFO and looking for ways to create value, expand my network because I want so many opportunities in front of me so if something doesn't work out, I'm not devastated and I keep moving forward with confidence. That’s really what drives me. So those are the three things. Do the things that are scary. Dead ends are okay, and velocity of opportunities are key to outsizing your life and having a successful life.

Anita Brick: I love it, that's great. Thank you very much for writing the book. Thank you for doing those scary things. Because if you didn't, you probably wouldn't have written the book and we wouldn't be talking today. So thank you, Steve, very much for making the time.

Steve Coughran: You're welcome. It's been great talking with you, Anita.

Anita Brick: Appreciate you taking the time for us.

Steve Coughran: You betcha.

Anita Brick: All right, so there are actually a lot of really good things on Steve's site. And it is www.Stevecoughran.com, and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Burke with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.