047: Scale to $209M with Viral Core Values - with Darius Mirshahzadeh

Darius Mirshahzadeh is a serial bootstrapper, podcaster, bestselling author, and the Founder of The Real Darius.

While he has started, scaled, and sold multiple 7 and 8-figure businesses, his largest company to date, was as CEO and Co-Founder of The Money Source—a mortgage lending business that he grew from 30 to 1,000 employees and $209M in annual revenue. He exited the company in 2020.

Throughout his years as an entrepreneur, Darius has ranked #9 on Glassdoor's list of Top CEOs of Small and Medium Companies in the US, was named "#3 Best Place to Work" by San Francisco Business Times, and landed #40 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies.

He's the host of The Greatness Machine podcast and author of The Core Value Equation: A Framework to Drive Results, Create Limitless Scale and Win the War for Talent.

In today's episode, Darius shares stories, strategies, and insights from building companies and hiring 5,000+ people over his lifetime as an entrepreneur.

You'll learn how he filters for top talent when hiring, the systems he uses at different stages of company growth, and how he leverages core values to increase ROI and scale 7, 8, and 9-figure businesses.

Key Takeaways from Darius Mirshahzadeh

• Growing from 30 to 1,000 employees and $209M in annual revenue in 3 years.
• Managing the ups and downs of the super volatile mortgage industry and why Darius sees himself as the Lebron James of scale.
• How to build the scaffolding to support different levels of company growth.
• Designing an environment to scale and using systems to measure and manage performance.
• 3 important responsibilities of a high-performing CEO.
• Intentionally filtering for core values when hiring.
• Why "good" is not good enough when hiring for higher level roles.
• Hiring and grooming from within versus hiring externally.
• At what point in your business do you need to build core values?
• Darius's 3-step framework for designing core values that people actually follow.
• Who needs to be part of the process of designing a company's core values? Can the core values change over time?

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