Blank Page to Billions: How An “Ideas Guy” Strategizes
How do you identify and develop the ideas that generate a multi-billion-dollar business using strategic thinking? In this episode, Rich sits down with Bill Harris, former CEO of TurboTax, PayPal and Intuit, and current founder of Evergreen Money. Bill is a prolific founder and “ideas guy” who has spent 30 years building and leading companies at the intersection of investing, tax and technology. Bill shares his framework for startup strategy, his advice for interacting with the board, and the competitive advantage of starting with nothing.
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Key Takeaways
“The two most important words in my life are purpose and curiosity, and it’s a flare and focus function.”
“What was important in order to change my life that way was to admit to myself that there were things that I was not good at, and some of those things that I was not good at were central to my understanding of myself.”
“If you’re going to start a business…, it better be new, different, and better.”
“That is my competitive advantage. I have nothing. And having nothing in a period of rapidly accelerating change is an incredible strategic advantage if you know what to do with it.”
“I have been blessed by being pretty deep in financial technology, but always being able to find the next vertical or the next use case where I had not done it before. I could see enough into the process to understand what might be done and how it could be improved. Then with inspiration, you start to focus on it and hone the idea.”
“If you’re in trouble, then you have the opportunity to really change the business, the basic foundation and DNA of a corporation.”
“..starting young companies–going zero to one–strategy, is really product strategy. We’re thinking of putting a product together and then how do we go to market and who’s our customer base and what are their needs and what is our business model?”
“I’m talking from my own perspective, which is a startup. You can never focus enough. You can never shave off enough bells and whistles. You can never identify your customer sharply enough. You can never focus your efforts of yourself and your company enough. You have to pick the single most important thing and get it to the single best segment of people who will appreciate it.”
“The biggest failure is when management feels that it has to go to boards with all the questions answered.”
“If it’s a highly fragmented market, or if you are a new player doing something different, which just means that you’re going to be tiny in relation to everybody else who’s out there, competition is meaningless.”
Practice Makes Profit
A key criterion of strategy is the trade-off. A trade-off is made when you focus on one area and intentionally exclude others. A method for practicing trade-offs is to use a Trade-off Matrix. Consider where you and your team allocate your resources—time, talent, people, budget—and then evaluate your current tasks, initiatives, meetings, etc. and determine if they should be placed in one of four quadrants: Eliminate, Decrease, Increase, or Create. As Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix said, “If you are not genuinely pained by the risk involved in your strategic choices, then it’s not much of a strategy.”
League of Strategic Minds
What are the primary steps in developing a strategic plan? There are five steps in the strategy development process: 1) Discovery 2) Strategic Thinking 3) Strategic Planning 4) Strategy Rollout 5) Strategy Tune-up
Winsights: Ideas for Advantage
Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the Virgin Group said: “The number one thing I take with me is a notebook. I could never have built the Virgin Group into the size it is without those few bits of paper. If you have a thought and don’t write it down, by tomorrow morning, it may be gone forever.”
Where are you recording your insights each day and how often are you going back to review them?
References
Time Stamps
- (1:41) Deep Dive Interview with Bill Harris
- (47:32) Practice Makes Profit
- (49:21) League of Strategic Minds
- (51:50) Winsights, Ideas for Advantage
The Investment Tax Guide, by Bill Harris
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Strategic Thinking Institute Website
Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 book for 2024: STRATEGIC Book
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About the Guest
Bill Harris
Founding CEO Evergreen Money
Former CEO, Turbo Tax, PayPal, &Intuit
LinkedIn
About the Host
Rich Horwath, Founder & CEO
Strategic Thinking Institute
Rich is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books on strategic thinking, including his most recent work, STRATEGIC, which was named a “top 4 must-read business book for 2024” by Inc. Magazine, and a national bestseller by USA TODAY. He has been the top rated keynote speaker on strategic thinking at national conferences for nearly 20 years.
This Episode Brought to You by the Strategic Thinking Institute
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The Strategic Thinking Institute has developed hundreds of resources to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically. In addition to facilitating workshops and strategic coaching with executive leadership teams, STI has assessments and products for functional groups such as sales, marketing, finance, human resources, operations, information technology, account management, business development, accounting, clinical, medical, and other technical specialties. STI’s experience in a wide range of industries brings your team the best-of-breed practices and resources to enable your team to outthink and outperform the competition. Remember, be strategic … or be gone.
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