Why 80% of Businesses Fail
About 80% of businesses fail, and David Guttman will tell you it is almost never the market that killed them, it is leadership.
David has spent a 35 year career building, scaling, and exiting 8 and 9 figure companies. He has bought and sold 15 businesses, raised more than $25 million across fintech, edtech, crypto, and health tech, and worked in more than 45 different industries as an operator, mentor, and consultant. He is a 3x Inc. 500 entrepreneur, a 2x TEDx speaker, and the founder and CEO of Guttman Media, and he mentors CEOs ranging in age from 18 to 47.
In this conversation, David makes the case for servant leadership as the most effective approach available to the rest of us, and then gets specific about what it looks like in practice. He explains the equity mistake almost every growing company makes, which is guarding ownership while the business is worth very little and giving it away once it is worth a lot, and he walks through how phantom equity, four year vesting, and a one year cliff let a CEO share real upside without giving up control or handing the team a tax bill. He explains why a team with ownership roots for an exit instead of working against it, why he tells CEOs to run the business from day one as if they are going to sell it, and why he calls running a company without a budget financial malpractice.
David also shares the two moments that shaped how he leads. At 24 he was misdiagnosed with terminal cancer and told by three doctors that he had six months to live, and years later his chief operating officer told him something after a meeting he handled badly that he describes as a cold bucket of water in the face. What came out of both is the rule he now teaches every CEO he mentors, which is to absorb as much blame as humanly possible and deflect as much credit.
Connect with David Guttman:
Website: https://www.guttmanmedia.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realdaveguttman
Social: @realdaveguttman on every platform
Titan Arc: https://www.titanarc.com
30 Acts of Kindness: https://www.30actsofkindness.org