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The Bizzics Way – a conversation with author Chip Higgins
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Discover how to use the principles of physics to power your small business to maximum momentum
Chip Higgins is lifelong banker. When he heard business owners talk about wanting their business to have some momentum, he wondered why the entrepreneurs had decided to use momentum to describe their business objectives.
Whilst listening to a scientist friend who he had asked to explain the scientific meaning of the word momentum Chip recognised that his legacy would be a book which explained how to apply the scientific principles of momentum to a business environment.
After explaining the way scientists define momentum In this episode of The Independent Minds Chip and host Michael Millward explore momentum as an approach to management and leadership including managing employee energy, change management, culture development and company planning processes.
You will leave this episode inspired to investigate how to apply this innovative approach.
More information about Chip Higgins and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr.
Introducing 'The Independent Minds' Series
00:00:06
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Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:23
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I am your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysida.
Applying Science to Business with Chip Higgins
00:00:28
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In this episode of The Independent Minds, I am going to be finding out How to apply a scientific approach to the world of business from Chip Higgins, the author of The Bizix Way, Powering Your Small Business to Maximum Momentum.
00:00:45
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As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution processes so easy.
Podcasting Tips with Zencastr
00:01:02
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Regardless of whether you are an experienced podcaster or, like me, just starting out, I recommend that you use the link in the description to visit Zencastr.com and take advantage of the built-in discount on subscription fees.
00:01:17
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Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is when making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:29
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and probably good enough to share with friends, family and work colleagues as well. As with every episode of the Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Chip Higgins' Banking Career and Passion for Business
00:01:43
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to- Today's Independent Mind is Chip Higgins. Chip Higgins has 40 years experience in the banking industry, most of it at a very senior level.
00:01:53
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He is also the founder of Bizzix Limited Liability Company, He is an author and speaker with a passion for helping people achieve greater goals through the principles he established at Bizix.
00:02:05
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Chip is based in Franklin, Tennessee in the United States. I have never been to Franklin, Tennessee, but if I do get the opportunity to go, i will make use of my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to make my travel arrangements.
00:02:22
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That is because membership of the Ultimate Travel Club gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
00:02:33
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In the spirit of sharing, I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club and just like me, travel at trade prices.
00:02:44
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Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds. Hello, Chip. Hello, Michael. It's great to be with you today. I'm really pleased that you can be here because I am fascinated by this idea of applying a scientific principle to the world of business. So you've got science and then you've got business, which is a completely different type of areas, I think.
00:03:08
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But before we discuss that, please, could we start with you just telling us a little bit more about your career and how you came to write the book, Bizix? Yes, definitely. I started in the banking industry in 1984. I had a strong desire to become part of the banking industry since I was a teenager. I grew up in a a city that had ah a large banking community and it was a a role in the community that I saw a lot of value in. There's a lot of analytical problem solving, but a lot of human relations and community engagement involved in it as well. So I was really thrilled to start in a training program here. Was actively involved as direct lender to a lot of businesses for about probably 10 years in the last 30 years of my career was really spent strategizing for banks about how how we serve business clients better.
Understanding Business Momentum
00:04:02
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And that experience is where I really started to get the urge to to write this book, The Bizix Way.
00:04:08
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I heard a lot of business owners talking about momentum in their businesses, and it just started to kind of grind at me a little bit about what they really meant, if they really understood it. I felt like if they understood what momentum really was that they, they would have, they would have it.
00:04:23
Speaker
So, uh, I felt like it was kind of ah a buzzword that needed to be explored. And as I, as I got later in my career and realized that I wouldn't be a banker, for the rest of my life, uh, a book seemed appropriate as as a guide. It's something I can leave to people. And, you know, I think along the way, you know, saw a lot of successes and saw a lot of people struggle mightily and lose, ah lose a lot of, you know, assets and relationships and,
00:04:49
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I think that's my my calling in life is that when you're pursuing a dream that is helpful to you in the community, we ought to we ought to do our best to make it work so that it's good for everybody. Yeah, deciding to start a business and running a business or taking over a business from family members all-consuming activity. It's not like having an ordinary job. And we can talk all sorts of buzzwords and things, but we've really got to be an expert in everything and put your heart and soul into it and i totally get this idea that we use buzzwords in all sorts of business functions especially in hr my world sometimes quite often really we use them without really ever understanding them in their true meaning we turn them into buzzwords by giving them our own meaning so what does momentum mean from a scientific perspective I felt encouraged about writing the book, Michael, because it's such a simple formula in physics. You wasn't a great science student in high school, but I remember that it was simply mass times velocity.
00:05:56
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Also in the world of of business, you know, as you said, you have to be an expert in so many things and there's probably 10 or 20,000 business leadership book titles out there that make the world very confusing to people that are trying to to chart
Physics Principles in Business Practice
00:06:09
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away.
00:06:09
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If we had ah a book that could simplify without being simplistic, the the idea of momentum, that it would really be a very useful framework for people. So mass times velocity is the equation. And as i as I started to write the book, I acknowledged my shortcomings and talked to a good friend of mine who's a legitimate physicist, a Caltech trained physicist to make sure that we went through the equation. Good rigor.
00:06:38
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I was looking at it very much from a business perspective and he he he was obviously still in the physical world. That's where his mind lives is in the physical world. I don't know that he saw the connections that I saw, but it became very clear to me that these same principles that we see every day in life, you know, whether you're driving a car or walking a hill or Whatever it is that you're doing, we you know we we sense momentum, which makes it even more powerful as as a business kind of paradigm. That they were they were absolutely true in business from my 40 years of experience of being a leader in large organizations and also watching much smaller organizations try to get toward that goal and the vision that they had for themselves when they started it.
00:07:17
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What sort of connections were you seeing in between the physics as it was being explained to you and the business world? I guess it was as we were starting to talk about velocity, i had ah had a ah big revelation about energy. That that was probably the the first big connection point that I had about just how you really can't talk about the velocity part until you've figured out where the energy is coming from, because they're it's not explicitly stated in the equation, but I mean, that's just a big part of velocity.
00:07:49
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it really drove me to think about where energy comes from in a business and that entrepreneurial energy of you know a vibrational field that is between where you are today and when your vision and solution has taken full root and all the people that you've helped with it.
00:08:06
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think it's fair to say, as you said, you know ah being in business is an obsession. it's It's nonstop. We think about it all the time. It's that kind of energy that fuels a business to get started and definitely is needed to maintain it. But We also got into ideas such as energy distribution and how leaders ah build cultures that are effectively a power grid that ah deliver that energy to you know employees, suppliers, vendors, partners of all kinds, that there has to be a strong field that's carrying your true passion and excitement for where you're going.
00:08:48
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And ultimately, I noticed in my career, so many businesses that had run out of energy, even though they had a still at a balance sheet, they still had some cash in the bank. There was just a problem that the owner didn't have the energy to distribute anymore.
00:09:03
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And it kind of drives you into this really interesting discussion about how we find energy in other people that the owner can't carry
The Fusion Field Concept and Leadership
00:09:13
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it all. and You know, when we're just distributing our own energy, it takes us so far, but when we get into, you know, what I like to call a fusion field where the leader has brought the idea of what they're doing, the passion for serving others and whatever, whatever the product or service is made that alive and real for people. And it, it fuses to another human heart. He's has their own vision of themselves ah in the world and and what they're trying to do for themselves, you know, financially or for their family or education or whatever.
00:09:45
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That when a great leader does that and they find that fusion field with employees, they quickly discover they have all the energy that they need. And I think sometimes we stop short of really recognizing that because we tend to to look at employees as assets or you know just kind of worker bees when they're actually a huge energy source to to carry us forward. So that energy discussion was a very deep one.
00:10:09
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And it it ended talking about this this relationship with speed and energy, that it's a direct relationship, but it's a squared relationship. So that if you want to go twice as fast, you need four times the energy. If you want to go three times as fast, you need nine times the energy and so on down the line. That's ah that's a science principle. And I found that to be anecdotally consistent with my experience in business, whether I was in the organization or working with other companies, that that energy that we often underestimate the energy that we need to to get the velocity that we need in our business to you know go where we want to go. So I think that was the first pass. And I say that on the independent minds, we will not tell you what to think, but we will make you think.
00:10:53
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And you've certainly set off all sorts of different thoughts in my head. Oh, good. When you talk about energy and capturing the energy of a workforce, a group of people, and as a leader, capturing that energy, combining vision and energy to create something that is going to be three or four times greater than what you have at the moment, I'm thinking back to times when I've been working in organisations
00:11:25
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and challenged to assist with change management programs and being able to look at the organization and say those people have bought into what we're trying to do and you can sense the energy that we have but at the same time those people over there are saying that they've got the energy for the change program but in the canteen by the lift of by the the coffee machine everything that they're doing and saying is the completely the wrong type of energy.
00:11:58
Speaker
Previously, you would talk about attitude. Energy seems to be a much crisper, clearer sort of way to describe what is happening within an organization. You need that energy directed in the appropriate way by someone who's got a vision as to how that energy could be used and other people buying into it and saying, yes, we can do that.
00:12:23
Speaker
I mean, that that is, ah I really felt like before we started, Michael, that given the work that you do, that this this would be a resonant topic. It is. I've been in some fairly large organizations myself. i mean, not huge, but, you know, three to 5,000 employees. And I mean, energy is palpable. You know, it's like, you know, you talk about communication and what people say, you know, is seven, 7% of the equation. And,
00:12:50
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You know, 93% of it is tone, body language. i mean, all these other things. And I just don't think that unless you're a really gifted liar that you can kind of belie an energy level, it just kind of seeps out of people. agree with you. And what i what i what I found, and I'd be interested in your take on this too, is that, you know, when i when I think about this whole idea of a culture as an energy grid, how frequently that kind of unenergized portion of the population is the result of leaders who are not carrying out their, their primary responsibility for energy distribution. i think there's something, there's something broken in the grid when you have, you know, significant groups of people that are not bought in.
00:13:35
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know, it takes me back to when I, when I was a kid, one of my first experiences with energy was my model train. I had it set up in the in the cellar, of my my parents' home. And I would just be down there by myself playing with it. And early on when I had it, I would have this problem where the train would be running would running great and then it would just stop. And I'd kind of go through this audit of the power's on the plug is in, and then start examining the track. And you know the track just had these little inch long metal clips that held it together.
00:14:09
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and invariably i would find like one clip that had become disconnected because the train had been running on it so often so long. As soon as soon as I made that one little connection, the train would be back up and running.
00:14:22
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And that's that's what I think a lot about this idea of energy and cultures and the way energy flows is that You know, it takes one even marginal leader that doesn't understand how important that energy flow is to unplug a a group of people that are really important to change management or whatever that you're doing.
00:14:41
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It's a really critical thing. Yeah, I agree with you. Very often there is a perception, a wrong perception that we can say this is our culture and that's the end of it.
00:14:53
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Whereas... If you don't actually actively manage support and encourage the activities and the behaviors that support the culture, the culture will die.
00:15:07
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There is an energy to a culture and you need to exercise the energy in order to make sure that the culture sticks. So you can get to the point where people will be saying, actually, what is happening at the moment doesn't fit with our culture.
00:15:23
Speaker
yeah and there will be something that you don't need to go to a policy document to prove it the energy in the room does not fit with the culture of the organization this is not something we need a document for it is something that we feel yeah because cultures are all about emotion and that's where the energy comes from but i have seen too many cultures projects plans all put asunder by people who didn't have the right type of energy for it. yeah
00:15:58
Speaker
And there are some people who will be cynical about anything, but that's negative energy. So it's cynical because they didn't invent it, it wasn't invented here. I totally get what you mean about energy.
00:16:10
Speaker
thing that I am having a little bit of an issue with is the the mass and the velocity part. of How does yeah to that sort of transfer from the physics into the business world?
Direction and Goals in Business Velocity
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, thank thank you. And but sorry sorry for the detour, but it does underlie everything. The energy thing is really important. So, um you know, what I discovered about velocity is that, you know, i talked to my friend Marcus, the physicist.
00:16:36
Speaker
he made He made a very plain statement to me that, but you know, velocity and physics is ah is a vector. And by definition of vector has to have a a direction, a distance and a speed like a, you know, um, there's, there's a timeframe to it about, you know, a distance, how long it's going to go.
00:16:58
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And so it really took me into my planning world, you know, of of business. And that was one of the easier ones to pick apart as I thought about that. Um,
00:17:10
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You know, as as I've dealt with smaller businesses in particular, the direction is not clearly defined. It is often vague and really represented by a revenue number.
00:17:23
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That's obvious for survival that, you know, we need revenue and cash flow to survive. But I think the businesses that are really successful at you know, building and sustaining momentum have a very clear target and they have a very clear idea of how much of that target segment that they intend to occupy over some period of time.
00:17:46
Speaker
So if you were in the restaurant business and you just thought, well, you know, have all these family recipes that have been passed down through the years and, you know, it looks like we need another restaurant. I'm going to open the restaurant and everybody will discover over time that we're great and that's a very different thing than saying, I'm going I notice in this one geographic area of my city or my state or wherever it is that we have a a high population of family households with four four to five people in the household. My my menu offering is geared toward family style eating, and I'm going to focus on these postal codes.
00:18:26
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And I'm going to, by year three, I'm going to have 15% of those households and those those postal codes would would have had at least one meal with me. It's two very different things.
00:18:40
Speaker
That whole idea of velocity and you know a specific direction, distance, and you know all of that is often way too vague for businesses. they start Even if they start and they have some levels of success, it really kind of filters down into this idea of more, you know that we want more we want more revenue, but from an execution standpoint that very clearly defined vector for your business is essential.
00:19:07
Speaker
And it is also, you know, it's kind of what makes you innovate and do things better, you know, for, for this target segment. What you're talking about, I think is a completely different approach to business planning.
Balancing Passion with Strategic Planning
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think it's, um you know, kind of classically and academically, It's on target for what most people would think about in ah in a business planning sense. I think that most people, you know, in a larger corporate environment, if you, if you couldn't say, this is my, my demographic, my, you know, kind of the key definition of the population I'm after with this product and how I intend to get to X market share over X period of time, you wouldn't have a job. I mean, in big corporate environments now in startups and smaller businesses,
00:19:57
Speaker
I think the zeal for the offering clouds of judgment or makes us jump past that, that it will be kind of self revelatory to people as they start using the product that they're going to love it.
00:20:10
Speaker
And, uh, you know, think, I think that's a consistent problem in entrepreneurship is we fall in love with our products without the testing of where does it even fit into the landscape of this population and the types of things that they're using today.
00:20:23
Speaker
And how how will I angle in for five or 10% of that market? It's not necessarily different from a classic kind of point of view, Michael, but I think it's different for people are at that beginning stage and kind of growing into a you know a five or $10 million dollars or pound or whatever business.
00:20:42
Speaker
That's one of the things I really encourage in the book is you know that this planning is as important, if not more important for younger businesses that it is for an IBM or a you know global brand. i mean, it's it's equally important.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yes, I agree with you. I don't usually say I agree with you as much as I'm saying I agree with you in this episode. So thank you very much for that. i flat I'm flattered by that.
00:21:09
Speaker
When you talk about big organizations, maybe publicly listed organizations, they're very often driven by the quarterly numbers. What do we have to do to have a better quarter this quarter than we had last quarter?
00:21:21
Speaker
It's all driven by things that are external to the organization. What are we going to report to the markets? But when you're talking about a smaller organization, you are talking about something where you very often have one person or a group of people who are, like you say, are very passionate about what it is that they do, who believe in the product or service that they have developed and they are trying to sell. They know how it all works and they can see the gap in the market.
00:21:52
Speaker
They have to convince other people that there is a gap in the market and that they have the right square peg to put in the square hole to make it all work. When we get to the point of business plans, the conventional approach,
00:22:06
Speaker
can seem a bit daunting to many organisations, especially at that start-up stage and small stage and scaling up. It's almost you need a degree in in doing a business plan before you can actually do a business plan in some ways. But they're not overly complicated when you actually start to get into them.
00:22:27
Speaker
But what you've done with this vector idea and this idea of the physics is maybe something that I think that is very practical and easy to understand and easy to apply. This this is a absolutely critical dynamic in leadership that you have you have this vector and vision ah so clearly defined that everybody can understand it. I mean, that that essentially is what creates that vibrational field for everybody that this is where we are and this is where we're going. And these are the things that are going to be happening when we, when we get to this level, not only for our clients, but for us as, you know, kind of stakeholders in the business, this this is what we're going to be celebrating together. And I think when that is mushy, disengagement is almost a certainty that people, if people don't know where they're going and, uh, and what they're going to be celebrating in one to three years, it's going very, very hard to hold their attention and keep them energized. Yes.
00:23:27
Speaker
And so, uh, coming, coming into a you know, into a business and just asking for more, more effort, more, you know, output, whatever, it just doesn't energize, uh, people in the way that a very clear vector, uh, and direction will.
00:23:42
Speaker
And I think that's a very important connection to make.
Employee Contribution to Business Success
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah. It is about the, uh, And so the train track, if one of those little one-inch pegs gets dislodged, then the train won't run. right Yeah, right. When you think about that in terms of the organization, you start to think about the people across the whole of the organization, from the big boss in his corner office with a deep pile carpet down to the person who is going to clean that carpet and clean that office. And every one of us needs to do our job
00:24:17
Speaker
to make our contribution through the work that we do with the right level of energy in order to make sure that the business is successful because it is at the end of the day a team effort. it's It is an eye-opening approach to the challenges that lots of businesses face and perhaps don't have a logical answer to how they're going to address the issue or something that enables them to do something on a human level rather than on a buzzword academic level.
00:24:54
Speaker
You can tell them a bit of a fan, can't you, Chip? You can tell them a bit of a fan. I'm thrilled. but that Yeah, it really it really does. You know, it when when you're in business, as you know, and you're scratching and clawing for the audience and the connection when you're when you're with a a voice that gets it, it means an awful lot, Michael. So thank you for affirming me to today. mean, it really means a lot to me.
00:25:23
Speaker
Thank you very much for your time today. I have really enjoyed it. And as I said earlier on, you've certainly made me think. So thank you very much. do appreciate it. Thank you.
00:25:35
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Chip Higgins, the author of the Bizix way, powering your small business to maximum momentum.
00:25:50
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description. If you have experienced technical challenges whilst listening to the this episode of the Independent Minds, you will want to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:26:07
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:26:22
Speaker
I'm sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of the Independent Minds as much as Chip and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:26:33
Speaker
To make sure that you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. And also please share the link with your friends, family and work colleagues as well. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but just as Chip has done with me today, we do hope to have made you think.
00:26:54
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.