IAM1445 – Coach Helps Executives and Employees Elevate Performance and Productivity

Rod McDermott is the CEO + Co-Founder of Activate 180, which helps companies elevate employee performance, productivity, and happiness through affordable coaching for all; the CEO + Co-Founder of McDermott + Bull, one of the fastest-growing executive search firms in North America with offices domestically and internationally; the President + CEO of M+B Interim Leaders, which he founded along with Angela Anderson in 2011 to address an increased client need for time-sensitive solutions to important leadership challenges; and the Founder of the M+B Executive Network, a community of in-transition senior-level executives seeking guidance to land their next role, serving over 10,000 members since inception.

Rod has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, growing companies from the ground up and challenging industry norms. His ultimate goal is to meaningfully contribute to the greater good, which is showcased through his passion for hard work, fostering relationships, and conceptualizing solutions for professional development.

Rod resides in Laguna Niguel, California, with his wife Laura, their four children, and three dogs. He is a multi-thousand-hour turbine aircraft pilot and flies his CJ2 Jet for business and for his other passions, which include philanthropy, skiing, and traveling. Rod received a bachelor’s degree in economics and business from the University of California, Los Angeles.

• CEO Story: Rod started at a very young age at 13 doing weeding and gardening, business cards, then working with banks. Deep down he knew he wanted to have his own business. And now it’s over 21 years and has kept growing and expanding internationally like Canada and Europe.
• Business Service: Coaching Executives and down to the rank & file position.
• Secret Sauce: Coachable, open to listening, growth-minded to your coach.
• CEO Hack: Clearing conversations and making sure people are heard. Sometimes you need to move slower. Failure is the best teacher.
• CEO Nugget: My ego is not my amigo. If you want to scale your business, you can no longer be the superstar. Your job has to be the star maker.
• CEO Defined: Having an obligation to what people want in their lives and what role you play.

Website: activate180.com , info@activate180.com

Linkedin: activate-180 , rodmcdermott

Instagram: activate180

Facebook: Activate180

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:50 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Rod McDermott of so many awesome Things. Rod, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

01:01 – Rod McDermot

I am ready man. I've been looking forward to this. Thanks, Gresh.

01:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm looking forward to it as well too. You're doing so many phenomenal things and before we jumped into that, I wanted to read a little bit more about Rod so you could hear about some of those awesome things Rod is the CEO and co-founder of Activate180 which helps companies elevate employee performance, productivity, and happiness through affordable coaching for all. He's also the CEO and co-founder of McDermott & Bull, one of the fastest-growing executive search firms in North America with offices domestically and internationally. He's The President and CEO of M& B Interim Leaders, which he founded along with Angela Anderson in 2011 to address an increased client need for time-sensitive solutions to important leadership challenges.

He's also the founder of M and B Executive Leader Executive Network, a community of in-transition senior-level executives seeking guidance to land their next role and serving over 10,000 members since inception. Rod has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, a serial entrepreneur as you can hear, growing companies from the ground up and challenging industry norms his ultimate goal is to meaningfully contribute to the greater good which is showcased through his passion for hard work, fostering relationships, conceptual solutions for professional development and Rod resides in California with his wife Laura.

There are four children and three dogs and he is a multi-thousand-hour turbine aircraft pilot who flies his CJ2 jet for business and for his other passions which include philanthropy, skiing, traveling and Rod received a Bachelor's degree in economics and business from the University of California in Los Angeles. Rod, you're doing so many awesome things. I love that you took some time out to be with us. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:43 – Rod McDermott

I'm exhausted after what you all just said. I mean, I got to scale back.

02:48 – Gresham Harkless

You have to scale back too much. You're making so much impact that you have such a science and a way and a methodology behind what it is that you're doing. So I love that you are doing so many awesome things and making that impact. But are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

03:03 – Rod McDermott

I am ready. Let's go. Let's dive in.

03:05 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen. So before we jump into all the awesome things that you're doing, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

03:13 – Rod McDermott

Yeah, sure. So I, you know, you mentioned serial entrepreneur. I, you know, I was one of Those kids at 13, started a weeding and gardening business and did all that, had business cards. And so I've always had my own business for a long time. I did a stint where I was working with some big banks, Citibank Security Pacific, which is part of Bank of America now. So I did that. But I always knew deep down I wanted to have my own business. And so I've had a few. The businesses that I've been in now for the last 21 years. McDermott Bowl executive search We've grown, as you mentioned, we're international, so we've got offices throughout the U.S. Canada, and Europe as well.

We bought a company in Europe five years ago and we're using that to kind of build out through starting in the Netherlands and then Canada. We opened four years ago, so that's been quite fun. And as you mentioned, I started our interim business coming out of the last recession, the great recession, where companies weren't ready to get, get going, hiring again, but they needed, I always say they don't want to get married, but they needed a date to the dance. Right. I need a, I need a treasurer for like 90 days to help us with this thing. But I'm not ready.

I laid off 20% of my company. I'm not ready to hire back. And so we saw this need and we said, let's start this interim business where we can rent executives and leverage our McDermidable executive network, those 10,000 senior executives that we have. And so today that interim business is one of our fastest growing businesses. It should do about 13 million this year, and next year. We just finished our Strat plan yesterday. We're on track to hopefully get to 20 million next year. And it's one of those companies we want to grow to $100 million. Our executive search business has been around 21 years, so it's a bigger business.

But the interim business is a lot of fun as well. And they work hand in glove. And you mentioned Activate180. That's our newest company we started three years ago, and it's executive coaching, but not just for executives. It's for every employee at every level of the company. And I've had an executive coach for 20 years. Gresh. And that relationship has helped me live the life I get to live today, which I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, I'm loving my life. I'm getting to do the things I want to do day in and day out. I built the leaders in my organizations the way I want to do it, and they're loving life, too. And a lot of that I owe to our coach. And I thought, gosh, how come? How come coaching is only for executives? You know, we pay him a lot.

He's expensive. But if we could figure out a way to crack that code and create an affordable coaching model where companies could say, I want to coach everybody, not just my high potential. I actually challenge CEOs when they say, well, I'm identifying the high potential that I want to put into this. I said, shouldn't everybody on your payroll be a high potential? Why are you paying low potentials? You know, I mean, what's the opposite of a high potential? Right? So let's not pay low potentials. Let's assume everybody on our payroll has the potential to be great. And if I can come up with a coaching model that costs you like 1,500 a year for rank and file employees, you know, it's literally $125 a month.

And they have their own personal coach. They do one hour a month. We do two hours for the first three months to build that intimacy. But after that, it's one hour a month. And we're helping people really level up their games. So it's my newest business. We're coaching 400 people now. It's scaling rapidly. We're in some really great companies. We've got a few NDAs, so some companies are household names that you would know.

We've got one client that's a very well-known company that's doubling in size this year from half a Billion to a billion. And we coach all the way up to the CEO, and so it's really, cool. And that is changing the world because we're changing lives. And I see emails from people all the time on how their lives have been changed through their relationship with their coach. So, anyway, I've spoken a lot, but that's in a nutshell, what we're doing.

06:51 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, you're in the right place to speak aloud. You're doing so many phenomenal things. I love kind of hearing how all the experiences that you've had, and it's interesting.

06:59 – Rod McDermott

I mean, if you look at our search business, our average fee is over $100,000. You look at our coaching business, our average fee is right around $100. So you got a high margin and you got a low margin. But this is the one. I think there's a time that we're going to be coaching 100,000 people, and it will be a big company and will be changing a lot of lives and a lot of companies who actually want to be employers of choice and say, you spend most of your waking hours here.

Let's let you have a great life, let's help you get there, and let's give you the tools to do it. Because if I can give you the tools to bring your best self to work, you're going to pay me back in spades. Your performance, your productivity, all that's going to go through the roof. And so that's what our coaching does, and that's why it's so impactful. And it's not just on, like, career development stuff. That's one of the modules.

07:49 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And this could be for yourself individually, the businesses, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique is your ability to kind of understand that and be able to kind of have that. I'm going to use the word embedded in everything that you do.

08:06 – Rod McDermott

It sounds like, yeah, I'll say this, I think my secret sauce. And I'll tell you, my employees have been with me all along. They say I've known Rod 1.0, I've known Rod 2.0, and now I get to work with Rod 3.0. And I would say my superpower is that I'm coachable. Right. I listen to my coach like I would my attorney. Right. You tell your attorney everything because they can't help you if they don't know the truth. Right. So you tell your Coach everything. And you just have to be open to listening and you have to check your ego out the door if you want to be a growth-minded individual. And so for me, I want to be growth-minded.

You know, I haven't always had these philosophies, right? I've had philosophies that businesses battle, businesses war. There is no win-win. It's win-lose. And you know, I don't win enough. If you don't lose, right? I've got to get it. I had a good friend of mine say, it seems like every time I negotiate with you, you get more dimes on the table than I get. And I feel kind of like my pockets are empty. And that landed on me like 18 years ago. And he was a good pal. He was our first client. I'm like, crap. Really? That's, that's how it is. I'm like, I don't feel that way. But if that's what I'm doing, then I'm doing it wrong. Because our relationship should be lifelong.

And it is, it is. We're still friends, but it was a wake-up call for me to say, stop doing win-lose. Start doing win-win. You know, it's a loss for me if it's a loss for him. Right? Because long term we can't keep playing together because he's not going to keep losing. He's going to pick up and go somewhere else. And so, you know, my big thing is I think I'm coachable and I, you know, I want to be a growth-oriented person. I think I'm a better husband today than we're celebrating on Sunday, our 29th anniversary.

I think I'm a better husband today than I was 10 years ago and 10 years before that. I think I'm a better father, you know, so that's my big thing. But the other thing too is I also view, you know, this life is pretty finite, right? And it's not all about me. It's about the people around us, right? And so I look to those who have helped me get to the life that I have, which is a pretty amazing life. And I love it, right? And I say, well, you need that too. And if you're not living your best life, then I am winning and you're losing. And we need to change that dynamic. And so that's another philosophy I have. I want the people around me to feel like they're living their best lives too. And if not, we have to change things.

10:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And it makes so much sense for one, you know, I Appreciate you talking about and being so transparent about the journey as well. Because I think we see all the things that you've been able to accomplish, and we think that you kind of woke up yesterday and today, now you're accomplishing all those things. But just hearing the journey that you've had and the growth that you've had, you know, yourself and how that has manifested itself on your team, and I love that.

And I don't know if you would consider that to be like one of the hacks, which is kind of like an app book or habit that makes you more effective and efficient. But it sounds like the clearing conversation and understanding the nuances of that allows you to get rid of the things that could potentially hold you back, but also potentially hold the organization back as a whole.

11:08 – Rod McDermott

Yeah, that's a big one. The clearing conversations. Make sure people feel heard, and not just that they feel heard, but you actually do hear them. So it's funny, I had a coach tell me once that sometimes you gotta go slower because I move fast, right? They call me right now Rod. That's my rep at the companies. And I'm like, okay, we agreed on that. Let's do it. How come it's not done by the end of the day? Let's just get it done. Well, we're building a whole brand new website. We can't do that in a day. I mean, that's an example of something I would say, how come we can't?

And my coach said to me once, he goes, imagine you're driving the bus and you're pulling up to the bus stop and you've got 100 people there in your companies are trying to get on that bus. You open the door and it's open for like a split second and then you shut it and you drive off and you're like, hey, you're not fast enough. I can't take you with me. You're on the bus alone. Stay at the stop for a little bit. Keep that door open. Sometimes you might have to give them a few reasons to get on the bus. But when you get 100 people on that bus, your company is going to go a lot farther and a lot faster than it will be if it's just you.

12:13 – Gresham Harkless

That makes so much sense. I think that's so powerful.

12:16 – Rod McDermott

Failure is the best teacher. That's another hack of mine. Yeah, let people fail. Most failures aren't fatal. We're afraid of letting people fail. So as CEO, I call it the red cape syndrome. I got to be wearing the red cape. I got to be Superman. I got to dive in, and I got to solve the problem. Right. If you do that, people don't learn.

12:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like, you know, a lot of, you know, being a great leader, being a great CEO, entrepreneur, business owner is all about having the ego to believe that you can make that impact and change, saying, hey, that I can create, you know, this new innovative thing. But at the same time, as you said so well, it's all about balancing that ego and putting it behind you to understand that there are people who can actually learn by themselves, and the best way for them to learn is by going through that situation themselves, not having that red cape, as you said. Yeah.

13:02 – Rod McDermott

I'll tell you two, two quick things about that, too. I have a really good friend who has a saying. He runs a really great, successful business. His saying is, my ego is not my amigo. And I remember that whenever I feel like, you know, I gotta defend something or I gotta jump in, and, you know, I'm like, okay, let me just take a breath. Let's. Let's hear this other person. Maybe. Let's. Let's sit on it. And the other thing that I was gonna share with you too, is, you know, I have a coach who tells me, if you want to scale your business, you can no longer be the superstar. You have to be the superstar maker. Your job has got to be the star maker now. So it's a different role.

13:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping out different, quote, unquote, CEOs on this show. So what does being a CEO mean to you, Rod?

13:53 – Rod McDermott

For me, it means having an obligation to really know what my people want in their lives and what role I play, whether that role is three years or five years, or for much of their career. I have people who have been with me for a really long time that I hope will be with me for the rest of their careers. I don't know for a fact. Part of the success for you, by the way, is that you develop a successor so that when you leave, we are all clapping and we are all better off for the experience we had with you over that five-year period of time. So I can play with that.

A lot of CEOs are like, whoa. I say, listen, I'm here with these people, some of them for a long time, some of them for a short time. Let's make an impact. And that, to me, is the big thing As a CEO, I'm a leader and I want to help people get to where they want to go. Not necessarily just where I want to go, but where they want to go. And we can go together for a while and then sometimes they veer off and that's okay.

14:53 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that, Rod. Right now, Rod, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get a hold of you. Find out about your team, all the awesome.

15:06 – Rod McDermott

Things that you're working on, website, operation, any of that stuff. Hey, where's that check coming out? Don't do that. Let somebody else do it. And then you can scale your business faster. These are, these are lessons I learned from my first business, which scaled slowly and could have scaled so much faster. And so in our future businesses, they're growing so much faster because we are offloading a lot of things to other people and we're building them up.

So you can find me at activate180.com so it's R mcdermottivate180.com. You can also find me at my executive search business mcdermottbexec.com mbexec.com But I answer all those emails. You can find me on LinkedIn. There's a whole lot of ways to find me. So happy to take any calls or emails if anybody wants to reach out.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes too so that everybody can follow up with you. But I truly appreciate you for taking some time out today. I know you do a lot of mentoring, as you mentioned, with your son's business and you also did a lot today. So truly appreciate you for all obviously the work that you're doing, but also the time and experience that you shared today and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:15 – Rod McDermott

Thanks, Gresh. This is a lot of fun. I appreciate you having me on.

16:17 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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