Scaling Up Coaches Community

The Scaling Up Coaches Community is a global network of over 270 experienced business coaches committed to helping businesses thrive and grow by implementing the highly acclaimed Scaling Up Methodology™. Our community of experts brings together the best practices and insights from around the world to equip entrepreneurs and executives with the strategic tools necessary to achieve sustainable growth.

Our approach is anchored on the belief that businesses can achieve long-term success by focusing on four critical areas: people, strategy, execution, and cash. To this end, we provide our clients with comprehensive guidance and support in implementing the Scaling Up Methodology™, which includes:

• Building a sustainable company culture that fosters collaboration, innovation, and employee engagement

• Developing a solid business strategy that aligns with your vision and goals using the One-Page Strategic Plan™

• Executing your plan using proven tools such as the Rockefeller Habits Checklist™, which helps you prioritize and track your progress

• Exclusive cash acceleration strategies to improve your cash flow and optimize your financial performance

Our highly experienced coaches have a proven track record of helping businesses achieve remarkable results. With our expertise, tools, and support, we can help you take your business to the next level and achieve sustainable growth in today's ever-changing business landscape.

We are committed to working closely with you to understand your unique needs and challenges and tailor our approach to meet your specific requirements. We aim to help you achieve lasting success and become a market leader in your industry.

What Is Scaling Up?

Scaling Up provides executive education, coaching, and technology services to help mid-market companies around the world build and execute strategic plans. Best known for our One-Page Strategic Plan and other one-page tools, the Scaling Up Methodology™ focuses on helping executive teams make the right decisions in four key areas: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash.

Executive education with Scaling Up consists of attending live and virtual events — such as our CEO Bootcamps, semi-annual ScaleUp Summits, an online Master Business Course, and online seminars focusing on issues related to strategic planning. Our faculty includes leading business experts such as Seth Godin, Pat Lencioni, Geoff Smart, Jack Stack, and Neil Rackham.

Our Story

As Verne Harnish launched Gazelles in 1997 with the impetus to coach CEOs, he heard familiar feedback: Entrepreneurs were finding it difficult to implement these ideas throughout their organizations on their own. In 1999, one of the CEOs from his very first Birthing of Giants class at MIT, John Anderson, became his first coaching partner.  And at the advice of that coach’s spouse, Cindy, he read Titan, the biography of John Rockefeller, which inspired Verne to write Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, published in 2002. The book became a bestseller and established Verne as a leading expert on business growth.  More and more CEOs used the book and Verne’s workshops to implement the Rockefeller Habits in their organizations. As many of these leaders found successful exits from their companies, they sought Verne out to give back and teach other growth companies in the methodology and became coaches. Gazelles transformed into Scaling Up Coaches in 2014 when Verne published his updated version of the methodology, Scaling Up.

Following in the tradition of former “Rock Habits” entrepreneurs and leaders to become coaches, John Ratliff, founder and CEO of Appletree, a Gazelles company chronicled in the Scaling Up book, took on the Coaches organization as CEO in 2018. John’s former Appletree COO, Kevin O’Connor, joined the team as Chief Operating Officer in 2022. Today, the organization has over 200 coaching partners on six continents around the globe, and over 80,000 organizations have implemented the Scaling Up platform.

Scaling Up Coaches is a community of diverse leaders who share a passion for helping scaling organizations push past the barriers and constraints that choke most organizations and grow their businesses to their fullest potential.  Our Coaches also share an immense desire to give back and share the knowledge they have accumulated – whether being a CEO, Entrepreneur, or executive leader in growth organizations.  Our coaches also love our sense of community and are open to sharing proven practices that they have seen work with companies implementing Scaling Up.  Our coaches are avid readers (we have a book club), enjoy sports, the outdoors, are active in their communities and have fun- we even have magicians!

Our Purpose is to Transform the World by Empowering Scaleups as we see the world’s economic engine powered by these growth firms. We empower our coaches to provide value to their clients by providing the best tools: Scaling Up Cash, Scaling up Scoreboard, Scaling Up Assessment, and our world famous Growth Tools, to name a few. We also provide our coaching partners with the best education, with access to our Growth Institute, regional community Coaching events, and virtual Professional Enrichment events where coaches share their own tools that they have seen provide value for our clients. 

Our coaches come from all walks of life – former entrepreneurs and leaders who leveraged Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up in their former businesses, existing professional coaches in leadership development or other disciplines who have hear about Scaling Up and have existing coaching practices, and semi-retired leaders and entrepreneurs who are seeking a platform in which to apply their experience with growth organizations.  While extremely diverse, our coaches share a passion for learning and a desire to give back by educating entrepreneurs and leadership teams to successful growth.

Our open-sourced platform allows coaches to build the practice they want – a personal business to support their lifestyle or a larger firm with multiple coaching partners or even a coaching firm focused solely on helping non-profits. Additionally, with the Scaling Up and Verne Harnish brands’ reach across the globe, we connect our coaches with organizations seeking coaching for the implementation of the Scaling Up platform.