158: Doug Walner — Scale Efficiently with Align

Scaling Up Business Podcast

As your company gets bigger, business owners discover a tough problem — you become less and less in touch with what your employees are doing and you don’t know if you’re on track with your goals. And if you do regular quarterly meetings, another problem that arises is that your actions are not tightly aligned to your goals between the day-to-day. Today’s guest has some answers on how to become more involved and aware of where your company is going.

Doug Walner is the CEO of Align Technologies Corp, a growth management tool to help develop, track, and measure your progress. He has over 25 years of technology business management and his background includes human capital management, consumer production, aviation, and media.

When Doug was in the process of selling one of his companies, the diligence and amount of paperwork involved to show buyers and investors his company and his staff were on track with their goals were extensive and tedious. When Align came along, things really changed for so many entrepreneurs, especially when it came time to sell.

One of the amazing features about Align is that employees can now see what everyone in the business is in charge of doing, and how they’re doing. It creates transparency and accountability within the company. Due to its interface, buyers and investors can also quickly log into Align and see progress reports, priorities, and have historical data for the business in an instant.

It’s just good business to track as much as you can about the company. This opens you up for so much more when you’re ready to sell or get more financing. When businesses rely on the founder to ‘keep things going,’ it becomes very difficult for an investor to fund you when they cannot realistically see if your business is even scalable.

Interview Links:

Aligntoday.com

Resources:

Scaling Up for Business Growth Workshop: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops.

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube