The Ugly Side of Unintentional Growth with Mark Rickmeier, TXI
Mark Rickmeier, CEO at TXI, and Aram discuss the ugly side of growth. They explore what growth for the sake of growth does to employee and customer retention, why your competitors are worthy rivals that you can teach and learn from, why investing in experience pays you dividends, how being humble allows you to avoid being tunnel visioned, and how to strike a balance between time spent running a business and time spent with loved ones.
About Mark Rickmeier
Mark is the CEO at TXI - a product innovation firm. He believes in creating rich employee and customer experiences. But, not everything scales well. Even good intentions don’t necessarily scale well. In the pandemic, TXI tried to deliver cooked meals to all members of the team. That didn’t scale well. Mark shares lessons he learned about scalability throughout this episode. Besides TXI, Mark founded The Kermit Collective where founders of software companies get together to share how business is going with their competitors in a high-trust environment.
SHOW NOTES:
00:05 | Who is Mark Rickmeier?
00:57 | What is the ugly side of growth?
02:19 | Focusing on resilience instead of growth
05:16 | What is TXI (product activation firm)?
10:09 | Why would you want to make your competition better?
16:13 | Removing stigmas around your industry through cooperatition OR Revealing your biggest failure to your biggest competitor
19:22 | What to prioritize when scaling SaaS companies
22:32 | Making employee growth paths at scale
25:40 | Growth, accountability, mentorship at scale (mistakes when scaling SaaS companies)
27:49 | Being transparent with job descriptions and salaries OR What is harming you as you scale?
30:13 | Building a community through collaborations OR Spending time in different company culture
34:09 | Do things that don’t scale: is it good advice?
37:36 | Fireside questions (going bankrupt, walkshops with other leaders, balancing family and business)
QUOTES:
[01:08] “The ugly side of growth is the unintentional side of growth; sometimes there's this pursuit of growth at all costs or growth just for growth's sake.”
[02:57] “Resilience is what people should be pursuing more than growth”
[21:40] “You have to be very intentional about the big things you want to get done because the little stuff will always take up all the room.”
Links We Mentioned:
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game/
The Kermit Collective: https://kermitcollective.com/
Walkshop - https://www.walkshop.io/
Follow Mark Rickmeier
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrickmeier/
Mark is the CEO at TXI - a product innovation firm. He believes in creating rich employee and customer experiences. But, not everything scales well. Even good intentions don’t necessarily scale well. In the pandemic, TXI tried to deliver cooked meals to all members of the team. That didn’t scale well. Mark shares lessons he learned about scalability throughout this episode. Besides TXI, Mark founded The Kermit Collective where founders of software companies get together to share how business is going with their competitors in a high-trust environment.
SHOW NOTES:
00:05 | Who is Mark Rickmeier?
00:57 | What is the ugly side of growth?
02:19 | Focusing on resilience instead of growth
05:16 | What is TXI (product activation firm)?
10:09 | Why would you want to make your competition better?
16:13 | Removing stigmas around your industry through cooperatition OR Revealing your biggest failure to your biggest competitor
19:22 | What to prioritize when scaling SaaS companies
22:32 | Making employee growth paths at scale
25:40 | Growth, accountability, mentorship at scale (mistakes when scaling SaaS companies)
27:49 | Being transparent with job descriptions and salaries OR What is harming you as you scale?
30:13 | Building a community through collaborations OR Spending time in different company culture
34:09 | Do things that don’t scale: is it good advice?
37:36 | Fireside questions (going bankrupt, walkshops with other leaders, balancing family and business)
QUOTES:
[01:08] “The ugly side of growth is the unintentional side of growth; sometimes there's this pursuit of growth at all costs or growth just for growth's sake.”
[02:57] “Resilience is what people should be pursuing more than growth”
[21:40] “You have to be very intentional about the big things you want to get done because the little stuff will always take up all the room.”
Links We Mentioned:
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game/
The Kermit Collective: https://kermitcollective.com/
Walkshop - https://www.walkshop.io/
Follow Mark Rickmeier
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrickmeier/
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