In today’s episode I’m delighted to introduce JT McCormick, President and CEO of Scribe Media (formerly Book in a Box), a publishing company that helps aspiring authors write, publish and market their books. Scribe has worked with more than 1,000 authors and Entrepreneur Magazine recently ranked it as having the Top Company Culture in America.

Previously, JT was the President of Headspring Software, which he helped grow to a multimillion-dollar, 100-plus person company that was repeatedly ranked as one of the best places to work in Texas.

JT is also the author of 'I Got There: How I Overcame Racism, Poverty, and Abuse to Achieve the American Dream.' His book tells the story of how he worked his way out of poverty, starting with his career cleaning toilets and eventually becoming the President of multiple companies.

In addition to his role at Scribe Media, JT has mentored at-risk youth in the juvenile justice system, as well as youth in low economic communities. JT’s work has been featured on CNBC, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc, and many others. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Megan, and their four children.

In today’s episode, JT talks about his unique life experience and how being the son of a pimp and an orphan made him the leader he is today. He also discusses how an organisation’s culture is everyone’s responsibility and more importantly how you should develop it as you scale, the importance of having belief coupled with core values and how he selects the very best people for his organisation by hiring for culture first. Finally, he provides his unique insight into the transparent world of Scribe Media and the importance of vision and execution

Listen out for:
• Vision without execution is worthless. A vision without a plan or execution is a wish.
• It doesn’t matter what you do in your life – be the best at it.
• I don’t like the word ‘unfair’. Nothing is fair. I don’t look at fair, I look at possibility.
• I can’t change what happened in the past, but I figured out that I can change the next hour, the next week and year.
• The one thing that is most important for me is that I am consistent. I was always consistent. I was always willing to do the things that the next person wasn’t willing to do. I was always willing to go the extra mile and willing to be consistent with follow up and follow through.
• At Scribe, we don’t have direct reports, we have direct supports. If you are in a leadership position your role is to serve and support the people you work with. No one works for me, people work with me.
• Our number one value is our people. The number two principle is to do right by people. I truly believe that if you have great people, you can build great processes, you can make great profits and as an added bonus you can do great things for the community you serve – but, it all starts with people.
• The most unpredictable thing in the world is also the most important thing in business – people.
• It is easier to get into an Ivy League school than it is to get into Scribe. Our hiring process, while not perfect has served us very well. It is a process of a series of video interviews, phone interviews, in-person interviews with multiple people from Scribe Media. We hire the very best people, the most qualified and people and those that will serve the culture as well.
• For people to be successful at Scribe Media – perform in your role, drive results and uphold the principles and values.
• We hire for culture first, skillset second.
• We don’t train people. We coach and mentor. We don’t have job descriptions, we have career descriptions.
• A note for HR – Stop using the word retain. Retain means possession. No one wants to be retained.
• No one should be surprised that they are doing a great job. We have 30-day check-ins. We go through what is going great, we review what we need to stop and start doing. I always ask, if you were the CEO tomorrow morning, what would you do?
• Ask questions. My whole career has been built on asking questions.

Timeless Takeaways:
• Celebrate life
• Don’t grumble about work if you are not doing anything to change your circumstances
• Don’t live your life with ‘comparisonitis’ through the lens of social media
• Be consistent
• Replace, hope, wishing and luck with belief, goals, hard work and execution

About the Host
Brendan brings 25 years’ experience of scaling businesses. Most recently, Brendan spent 16 years as a global business leader with CDE, 12 of those as Group MD, steering the company through the global financial crisis to considerable strategic growth success with offices now in 6 continents employing almost 700 people across the world (from 15) and 25X revenue growth.

He currently acts as a Non-Executive Director to CDE Asia (part of the CDE Group), a company he co-promoted in 2006. In 2019, he co-led the successful private equity funding round which secured investment from IIFL, India’s leading integrated financial services group to support the company’s future growth ambitions throughout the Asia region.

In 2016, he was awarded the Institute of Directors UK Young Director of the Year and Overall Director of the Year. An avid sportsman and advocate of self-leadership through good well-being practices, Brendan is also training to become a Wim Hof Method instructor.