People-Powered Growth: No-Fluff Operator Conversations on Culture, Scale, and the Exit

Transcription – People-Powered Growth: No-Fluff Operator Conversations on Culture, Scale, and the Exit

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Welcome to the Proof Point Podcast, where we decode digital success one click at a time. We share key takeaways fueled by data and insights that your team can implement today to drive growth. Now, let’s get started.

(0:21 – 0:38) This is Stacie Porter Bilger, your host for the Proof Point Podcast, where I feature B2B and D2C businesses and thought leaders, sharing marketing, data tactics, sales strategies, and leadership insights that kickstart your growth in this rapidly changing digital space. This episode is brought to you by Proof Digital. Proof Digital is a strategic and creative performance marketing agency.

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We partner with companies to create data-fueled marketing sales funnels and overall growth strategies. Before I get started, I just want to give a big thank you and a shout out to a partner of ours, Donovan CPAs.I’ve been working with Donovan for probably almost a decade, a longtime partner.

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They are a people-first, innovative Indianapolis-based CPA firm, experts at financial guidance for businesses. You can find them at cpa.donovan.com. Our guests today are Carrie Schroeder and Matt Curts. Carrie is an executive coach, sales strategist, and integration expert.

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Carrie is a principal at Polaris Business Consultants, and the firm’s lead executive coach and sales strategist. With over 25 years of global experience in sales and business development and M&A integration, she brings a unique blend of strategic insight and a passion for people, coaching, and training. She believes in intelligence and intuition are both powerful strategic partners, and she uses both to help executives, teams, and commercial and sales leaders to unlock their full potential.

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Matt is an executive coach and cultural strategist, is a principal at Polaris Business Consultants, and the firm’s lead culture and operations strategist. With 25 years of experience across finance, leadership, and consulting, he specializes in culture, diagnostics, operational planning, and leadership transitions. He is known for helping businesses and align purpose with performance, creating healthy and high-performing organizations.

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Matt, Carrie, thank you for joining me. Thank you, Stacie. (2:30) That sounds like a mouthful, doesn’t it? It was.

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Sorry. And you know, I’m human. Thank you for the intros.

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Crazy experience, unbelievable experience, and really a unique experiences, to be truthful. So, Carrie, would you just kind of give us your story a little bit and a little bit of background to your road to your leadership, and then I’ll pass it over to Matt. Absolutely. Sure. So, I’m an Indiana native. I was born and raised in Indiana.

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I spent a fair amount of time making my way across kind of what we’ll call the upper Midwest, some time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, some time in downtown Chicago, but I found myself back in the Indianapolis area about 13 years ago. But I am a recovering food scientist, I like to say. I am a food scientist by education at Purdue.

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Started my career deep in the belly of innovation, kind of innovation teams in global food ingredient production. Yeah, which is, it’s like, how in the hell did I end up here? But here I am, right? It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

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That’s the fun thing about careers. It is. So, spent about 27 plus years in the global food industry, but really, I think the importance there very much operated at enterprise scale, right? I was working for multinationals, companies that were headquartered in other countries, for the most part, operating in North America, had an incredible wealth of experience across innovation, R&D, marketing, product line management, and ultimately ended up kind of my sweet spot being global sales and sales enablement, commercial enablement.

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Had an opportunity about 18 months ago to kind of step away from the wild and wacky world of large kind of private equity backed multinationals. And I’ve taken that time, honestly, to kind of unpack and unwind, right? What 27 years of experience and passion looks like, and in the meantime, have worked one with Matt and a couple other gentlemen to really stand up Polaris Advisors, which has been exciting. I’ve also stood up a second consulting company in partnership with a former colleague called the B2B Builder, which is a women-led, women-owned consulting firm supporting purpose-led organizations in food, beverage, and supplements.

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So I’ve kind of made that transition from being, we’ll call it a W2, to an owner, founder, business owner, do a little bit of work with my sort of life and business partner as well in residential construction. So that’s kind of how I’ve ended up where I am today. Maybe the last thing I would say is to your point, I am, and similar to my colleague Matt here, I’m passionate about people.

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At the end of the day, spreadsheets, businesses, strategies, yada, yada, right? Literally, it comes down to human capacity and human potential. And that’s, if there’s anything that I come back to as it relates to anything that I do from a business or personal perspective, I think that’s probably one of my through lines that you will continue to hear from me. That’s amazing.

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I look forward to digging more into all that because, I mean, there’s a lot of lessons there and a lot of exciting discussions about that. I mean, I think the through line between you and Matt is about the people and the culture. Yeah.

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And you’ll find that from a Polaris perspective, I think that’s very much a through line, which is one of the things that makes us unique. It is. Matt, you want to kind of add to that? Sure.

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Yeah. I mean, I think my background, I grew up in a home of a pioneer entrepreneur who owned an automotive repair shop and, you know, kind of was firsthand witness to what it means to run a small business, all the good and the bad and what goes along with that. And, you know, but unfortunately for my father, I had no technical ability with his hands.

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So, you know, I mean, they’re a power tool, really, if you hear my name and a power tool, you probably want to run. So the rest of my family, full of mechanics and varied traits, oriented individuals, but for me, no. So I was the first to go to college in my family and decided, hey, I’m going to go into business because I’m interested in business.

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Chose accounting because I thought it’s going to make me the most money and I thought the other stuff was fluff and I just wanted to get down to the brass tacks. So I did that, worked for a pioneer entrepreneur during college and really fell in love with his business and what he was doing. But when I got out of school, I realized I needed more experience.

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So I went and worked in public accounting for a while at Arthur Anderson, which is the largest firm in the world at the time until they had some trouble. But you saw a lot. You saw a lot.

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I saw a lot. I tell people I learned more in five years than I did in my entire 30-year career, honestly, at that place. It taught me how business works, a behind-the-scenes peek at it. And I really fell in love with what business was and always had an aspiration to maybe own my own business, but didn’t know how that would occur. So I left there, went back to work for that entrepreneur and we built the company and watched him chase volume, chase the things that he thought would build the company bigger and we ran out of cash. He eventually ran out of cash actually.

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I left a little bit before that. We experienced a lot of highs and lows. The Great Recession was one of those. And so during that time, I just was getting burnt out in the business we were in and then set sail and went somewhere else to just see if I could do it without him because I really consider him as a mentor of mine. And I worked for a company that did extremely well and was built really superbly, honestly. I ended up selling about three and a half times its revenue to a strategic buyer, but also watched the challenges of that, losing relationships, marriages, things of that nature.

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So I was just an observer in the midst of that. And I never really appreciated accounting fully. I’m a recovering accountant too. I was good at it. I did it. I did it to make money, but I always found myself in the seat of, I don’t know, it could be a counselor, it could be a priest, it could be you name it, man, whatever day it was.

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It seemed like I had a revolving door to my office. And so I went into full-time ministry in 2016, left that place, went into full-time ministry for four years and did that for a while. And then my wife and I had an opportunity to buy a business in 2020, and she’s an optometrist.

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And she’d been practicing in a local optometry practice for about 17 years. And we purchased that in 2020, right in the middle of COVID, which was awesome. But we’ve been running it since then together for, gosh, going on seven years now.

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And it’s been great. We’ve multiplied it and grown it by three times. And it’s been an exciting journey for us. But all the while, I kind of knew, hey, I enter things with an exit plan. So it wasn’t for me to work in there. It was for me to develop something and give away the systems and the process to other people to run without me and see if we can go buy more practices.

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So that’s what led me to ultimately consulting in regards to what we do at Polaris and trying to build healthy, wealthy, sellable businesses. Because I watched my dad go through an accidental succession with my brother, truly an accidental one. And then watch somebody chase the wrong things and burn it out and bankrupt it.

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And then I’ll watch somebody else that took it the right way, but also gave up everything they ever had in their life to accomplish that. So through all those learnings, I’ve been able to work on my business in a very different way. And I have a deep desire to help business owners really get to this place where they can transition their business over, leave their legacy behind, and to Carrie’s point, protect their people.

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I think that’s vastly important, especially in today’s market with private equity so rampant. A lot of times there’s a kind of a faceless component to that and a transactional component. And our desire is to, how do we return back to what business is? And that’s everyday people working together towards a common goal and blessing their communities.

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So that’s why we’re together. That’s why we like each other, love working with one another, because we have the same aspirations towards that. I mean, the wealth of experience and knowledge between both of you is, it’s, and speaking of an entrepreneur, myself, I am one.

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I actually am looking for companies to buy myself, and I’ve been part of that culture myself along my journey. And the wealth that you both have is invaluable to these companies who are, I mean, that exist. And we’re going into a time period that, with the baby boomers retiring and the number of companies, from my personal piece, I would like to keep companies as much local as possible to grow companies and help local businesses grow.

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And I think your Polaris is positioned exactly to be that partner. You obviously, you talk about being an operator-led advisors, you are, you’re doing it, and you’ve walked in those shoes. Can you talk a little bit more about that, each of you? I mean, you, your intro, you’ve ran multiple companies, you’ve seen the global, big companies and their mistakes.

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So anything you want to add to that, I mean, that is a clear differentiator. A lot of consultants out there have not done it before. I think, you know, it’s funny, I’ve, I’ll share quickly, I think for me, like my partner of 15 years, he has only been a solopreneur entrepreneur.

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He’s only worked for, you know, fully owned organizations. So I’ve, I’ve, I guess I’ve ridden shotgun to that, right, for quite a while. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve felt it. I’ve, I’ve felt the kind of the ups, the downs, the financial responsibility, the emotional responsibility. You know, and I think I learned as much as I could without actually doing it.

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Right. And like I said, I’ve worked in across large like enterprise scale, and I know at one point in my career, I was working for an organization, there was 100 acquisitions in one year, 100. And watching the attempt, right, to integrate those acquisitions, the people, the operations, the plants, all, I mean, it felt very chaotic.

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So it’s like, I’ve kind of seen a lot of different areas. And I think for me, I have been humbled, humbled in the last 18 months of like, I thought I knew a lot. And I do, but owning it, like literally where every mistake, you pay for every mistake, you pay for every win, you pay, like literally, it’s so, the accountability is so real and so tangible.

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And it is emotional. I think about all the times that I’ve received advice or heard advice from individuals consulting business owners who’ve maybe never done it, where on paper, that sounds great. This spreadsheet is killer.

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That’s perfect. But when it literally comes down to it, it may not make any sense at all. And I think I now have a much deeper appreciation for that, that I wouldn’t have had, right, had I not been willing to kind of step out of that world. So I think the, to your point, the fact that we’re living it, we’re breathing it, we understand it, we’re in the middle of it, literally. Now, sure, you can get great advice from people that may not have walked in your shoes. It’s not to discount that.

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But when it really comes down to where the rubber hits the road, there’s such an incredible opportunity for trust and rapport that I think we’re so well positioned and we’re passionate about it. Like that’s what we actually want. You know, we do want to bring that to the table.

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So that that’s my perspective. And I know Matt has a perspective on it as well. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, it is, there is something it’s hard to put to words sometimes of what it means to be an owner of something.

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And I do think a lot of consultants come at it, they have a, an expertise, or, you know, something that they can, can share, and it can be transactional, because they’re very focused on one thing, and it’s this thing’s going to gain you whatever, like the case, it’s kind of an expert thing. And experts are needed. You know, I’ve got AI experts coming into my business to help us because I don’t understand the technology behind it, but I do understand what it can do to our business.

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So that’s, that’s helpful. I think sometimes people want to go on and be a pair of hands, you know, and say, hey, we’ll come into your business and we’ll figure it out as we go. But yet, you don’t know where their bias towards finance or sales or whatever the case may be.

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I think for us, we’re more of a kind of people that can empower people. And because we do understand what it means to be in that seat, you know, I think entrepreneurs are lions. They’re lonely, they’re isolated, they’re overwhelmed, they don’t know what to do next.

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And we understand that, we feel it, to Carrie’s point. And I think that there’s something, you know, even in our training, in our current company right now, is we’re trying to do development of people, because we have an exit plan within maybe seven years, depends on how long my wife can last in that dark room, right? But it’s all about, hey, how do we develop our people so this thing can carry on when in our absence? And it’s been very hard to put the words, you know, hey, what is it we’re trying to actually teach these future owners? And I think what we’ve come around to recently is that I think we understand the resiliency that it takes to be an owner. We understand that you’re kind of like a shock absorber, and how well you receive stress, how well you take on determines how that gets spread across your place.

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So how do we work with individuals, talk about who they are and how they handle those things? How do they become kind of the calmest person in the room, you know, and that takes a lot.  It’s also kind of working when things come and talking through those things so that they can become, I guess, stronger in them. It’s like a muscle that you build, right? It’s a muscle that’s being built.

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It has to be worked out. I think the other thing, and Carrie kind of mentioned it, it’s like resourceful. You know, a lot of times, well, I understand business owners, you might have 50% of the information, you got to make a decision.

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And so how do we make sure it’s the best 50% that you can have? Because that’s just the truth of it. The other thing too, I think that we do really well, and especially with our team, and around resourcefulness is that we’re so multidisciplined. We can pull from so many different disciplines, first principles and things of that nature, that usually we can enter into a situation and we’re probably thinking about things that owners never thought about, just because of that vast experience that we have.

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I think lastly, too, is just realism. You got to be realistic about things, you know, I don’t think we’re going in and overselling anybody. You know, I like to say, there are such things as ugly babies.

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And I think that’s the challenge of it. Everybody thinks that their baby’s beautiful, and I get it. And that’s the biggest challenge you find in business a lot of times is something that somebody’s personally invested in, it becomes kind of like their baby. And it’s very hard to let go or hear different things about that. So I appreciate that, I can understand that. We’ve ran our own cultural assessments in our business, I’m telling you, it hurts when it comes through.

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And you’re like, Oh my gosh, you know, we really need to improve this. But once you start to realize, and be realistic that nothing’s perfect, all things are kind of there’s there’s something in every place that needs to be worked on. I think it gives us the spirit to be able to enter people’s spaces and say, Hey, we know you, we understand you.

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And I’m not here to tell you how to run your business. I’m just here to help you. No, that is amazing. I mean, there’s some, I mean, entrepreneurs themselves sometimes don’t have realistic expectations, whether it’s talking about where they are, or what can actually happen. I mean, can you double in a business in a few weeks really can’t, not a good idea. I mean, lots of things that they want to do, or don’t see.

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I also like what you’re talking about from a calm standpoint, what are some tactics that you talked about there? Because to be perfect, I could use some expertise and insights on, on just, you know, how to go about the challenges in front of you and just, you know, with with a straight, you know, a straight head, you know, or, you know, calmness. Yeah, I think, you know, it’s funny, I actually had, I witnessed this firsthand, with with Matt and his business that he’s speaking to the business that he and his wife own, I had the luxury of being able to join for a day, right, as they were walking through kind of part of this comprehensive culture journey that they’re that they’re on, right, they’ve identified some opportunities to work on, sat down with literally the entire team, the entire team to unpack some of that opportunity. 

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And I had an opportunity to kind of bear witness to that, if you will, and participate as a listener and as a facilitator. And I think one of the most important, I think, opportunities is giving people a safe space, right, to get to know each other, right, like that, to get to know, like, how they work. And there’s all kinds of diagnostic tools you can if you want the help in doing that. Working genius is one of those.

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It’s incredible, right? That just gives people a view of like, how, what motivates you, right? How do you like to work? What makes you tick? What drives you bananas, right? What is your spiritual sandpaper, so to speak? And figuring that out about the people that you work with. And then you’re like, oh, that’s why they seem so prickly when I say things this way or just I mean, it humanizes the experience. Right.

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And so if you can create that safe space of like, look, we’re all different. We’re all bringing our the analogy I love is imagine like a jigsaw puzzle, right? Every single piece of the jigsaw puzzle is different. We’ve all got these interesting, weird little angles. Right. And if you show up as your most authentic self, the piece that you’re supposed to be, it’s all going to fit together perfectly. But if you try and be someone else, it’s never actually going to fit together.

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And allowing people to just bring that and understand that and appreciate that. I think that’s kind of the first step in developing that common area, that common knowledge of, OK, this is who we’re working with. This is who we are.

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Principles, not personalities, folks. And allow that to be the sort of the grounding force, at least from a kind of a beginning standpoint, because if there’s safety, emotional safety, psychological safety and clarity, it’s it’s freaking incredible what can actually happen. Right. Because I’ve seen it go the opposite way. I’ve been in situations where it is 100 percent not the case. And performance.

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I mean, everything, everything suffers. It may not be immediate, but it’s it’s not going to be pretty down the road. And I think, you know, one of my I have, you know, personally, I’ve been on those amazing teams and I’ve been on those amazing teams that were not. And when you when you have all those people who have different skill sets, who come from different walks of life, who can come together and make magic happen. I mean, the acceleration and and just the joy that comes out of working in those environments, it’s just incredible. Yeah, it’s harder.

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It’s a little more time and you’ve got to have a little more patience because you are dealing with a more dynamic landscape, if you will. It is to a certain extent harder. But at the same time, if you you know, if you sit with it and you invest in it, what you get on the other side of that and the journey along the way can be can be absolutely incredible.

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Would you say, you know, Matt, that that when you go into some of these companies, actually the lack of focus on culture, on people development is one of the biggest mistakes founders have or companies have? I mean, do they not spend a lot of time on that? But I don’t think they spend any time on it. And I don’t think it’s a matter of will, it might actually be skill. I think that’s getting in the way.

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I think that in most businesses, you kind of have two operating systems. You have an enterprise operating system. You know, how do we execute? How do we strategize? How do we move towards a common goal? But then there’s kind of a relational operating system that sits underneath that.

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And I don’t think people give much investment to it or much time to it. And they don’t realize that’s actually what what drags. There’s a relational drag that comes into to play. That is it’s it’s invisible, right? It doesn’t show up on your income statement or balance sheet, but everybody knows it’s there. And you can see it through things like, you know, like for the visible part is, you know, somebody loses a loved one. We know that’s going to affect their performance.

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Somebody is ill. We know that’s going to affect their performance. But what we don’t pay attention to is that there’s a work underneath the work. There’s this lack of confidence in self, these differences in personalities and team dynamics that slows things down, decision making slows. People tend to then not show up 100 percent of themselves. And so, you know, Gallup even does studies on this recently where they say 35 percent of your employees are actually engaged, 65 percent are disengaged.

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We’re actually at our highest rate that’s ever been inside of the workplace, you know, since they’ve been studying these things. And so that’s a significant amount. If those people are only showing up 80 percent of themselves, the amount multiplied times the number of hours and all that is massing the cultural impact that sits invisibly between those lines and holds people back is something that I think people need to start paying attention to in very broad ways.

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So that’s what we kind of do as we go in and we try to find out what are those things that are actually detracting you from being able to hit the goals or go after the things that you want and then to create conversations around those. You know, and I think that’s what most people are missing. They don’t know how to have those conversations with one another.

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What Carrie said, they don’t know how to create the safe spaces for people to actually be vulnerable and to open themselves up. And once you do that, it’s not that it solves it immediately. What you have to do is, again, kind of put an operating system. And now that becomes this restoration loop, you know, where it’s constantly and I’m showing you how to make peace as we go, because peace doesn’t just arrive and then stay forever. It kind of goes each and every day. But yet there’s ways that we have to deal with that.

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So that’s what we’d like to show people how to do. Yeah. And I think, too, if somebody is like a you know, if you’re if you’re into like metrics. Right. So if you’re a business owner, whether you formalize them or don’t formalize them, KPIs, whatever you want to call them, right, pick your acronym. The interesting thing about this, about this relational operating system, if you assign metrics, which you can, they’re going to be lagging, right? They’re going to be lagging metrics, so they’re not going to show up.

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If you think about sales, right, you get a sale, you see the revenue, everybody wins, right? There’s things that are that are that are real time sort of metrics that you see and you recognize. And it’s great to celebrate those things or something could be on the downside, too. But these relational components that we’re talking about, they’re lagging metrics, so they don’t show up really brightly.

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They don’t show up right away. But to Matt’s point, over time. They can degrade, they can degrade the organization, they can degrade the culture. It’s it’s detracting and it’s frustrating at the individual human level. So to make I mean, effectively, we make the invisible visible. Right.

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We want to surface what’s not being said, what’s not being seen, what’s not being felt and find a way to not only track it, but to talk about it. Because tracking I mean, at the end of the day, that’s that’s only half the story. But to talk about it and then find a way that we can monitor that, you know, whether you know, it’s like I don’t like to use the words like people and tracking in the same sentence. It just makes me feel icky. But right. But at the same time.

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But you can do it in a really beautiful, pragmatic way that is actually useful for the organization and the people in it. So I think that’s where there’s to Matt’s point, there’s so much there’s so much opportunity and to quantify and just to help organizations and founders like quantify what it’s actually costing them. This drag, right, where individuals are like, you know, apathy, I think, is the worst when you show up and you’re just like, meh, I mean, apathy is the worst.

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How do you quantify that? Right. Kind of the lost opportunity within an organization. And that’s what we really want to be able to surface and then address, obviously not just find the ugly baby and leave it sitting there. We want to address it. Right. Behind behind me, you see a few of them on the wall, but their values.

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Right. However, a lot of companies will, you know, spend a retreat and put those values on a piece of paper. Nobody remembers them and nobody talks about them. You have to, with intent on a weekly, daily basis, reinforce them, you know, and sometimes some people might not think, you know, should you actually have those on? We do have them written, but we actually, you know, it’s it’s it’s a ongoing. Skill that I personally have to continue to work on about having conversations with employees, spending time with them, seem back to I mean, do they have a mother who’s ill? I mean, all those things to to ignore that. Is, you know, you’re you’re that they’re going to come up there, 100 percent is not that is not a realistic expectation and magic can happen.

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I mean, I’m last last week, my team were just working nonstop even before because of their care for the client and their and then they need a break this week. So those are type of things that you just have to. Pay attention to, and I know and helping companies bring attention and in doing so is probably it’s a hard thing for owners to know how to do.

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Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s and it takes and, you know, the like I use an analogy, like you have a starfish stuck to your face, right? Well, literally, if you’re too close to it, you can’t you can’t see it. And that’s the beauty of just advisors or consultants, just generally speaking, when you have the willingness and the kind of the willingness and the open mindedness to be a little bit vulnerable and to allow someone else in.

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Right. That’s not part of your day to day operations. Right. That may not know you and your business very well. Just to bring that outside perspective, because they’re going to see things and hear things that you or someone in your organization, because you’re down in the weeds, so to speak, that’s not going to be readily visible. And so that that in itself is like the most beautiful.

(29:46 – 30:22) 

That’s what makes the jumping off point so fun. And then from there, from there, the opportunities are endless. What are some other I mean, this is an apparent founder mistake. What are some other ones that you see when you’re when you start jumping into these companies that they’re not doing? Maybe I’ll just say, well, I said, Matt, you I’ll go quick. I think the one thing that that I am super sensitive to is and I mean, obviously we all are to a certain extent. I think the the the the amount that the business relies on the founder for day to day, like day to day.

(30:26 – 30:48) 

Right. It’s decoupling their identity from the operations of the business. And if the founder is the one, if growth means that they’re working more. Right. That’s a job that’s not an asset. So I think when it’s we we can generally see that relatively quickly and because there’s a there’s a belief that if I’m being productive, I’m adding value, if I’m being productive, I’m adding value.

(30:52 – 31:06) 

And in fact, as the owner, as the founder, the more you’re doing. Is arguably detracting from the value of the organization. So that’s one that I know that that I think I’ve seen and I’m like seeing it everywhere now.

(31:08 – 31:26) 

So once you see it, you can’t unsee it anywhere. Yep, I bet you that’s the number one thing that you see. Yeah, I’m guilty of it, actually. So absolutely, absolutely. I think to, you know, just, you know, sidle up what she was saying. That’s exactly one of the things that we’re we’re paying attention to.

(31:28 – 32:03) 

I think it comes through some questions of, you know, hey, if you walked away for 30 days, what would happen to your business? And if it would collapse and we got a problem, you know, because I think that’s the point is there’s just not transferability and and buyers are not looking to buy someone. They’re looking to buy something. And so how do you you know, how do you create we maybe use technical accounting terms, move something from personal goodwill to enterprise goodwill? So I’m looking for what are the systems in the business? What are the things that are detached from someone or anyone? Actually, it’s not even just the owner.

(32:05 – 32:22) 

It’s also their managers or these things can be able to go, you know, no matter what, are we too reliant on any individual at root? And I think Carrie’s point is to kind of launch off of that. I think the biggest problem is there’s just a lack of leadership development. And I don’t think it’s a entrepreneurs, you know, for trying it out.

(32:26 – 32:44) 

I mean, we start businesses and then we we grow with them. So it’s not like anybody’s there teaching us. We’re learning through the hardships, right? We’re learning through the things.

(32:34 – 32:44) 

But I do think one of the you know, we look at kind of leadership development through kind of three lenses. It’s one is what are the skills that are needed? And those can be trained. Those are those are things that people develop along the way.

(32:47 – 33:00) 

Second, what are the time horizons of somebody? So how far am I thinking ahead in my business? Right. If somebody’s time horizons are very short, then there’s probably a lot of personal goodwill that they’re holding on to. And then lastly, is what are their working values? And I don’t mean like the values on your wall back there from a global standpoint.

(33:04 – 33:17) 

I’m talking about how she says it’s very important. How do you value work? See, if a lot of times when I when I’m managing self, people who start at the lowest, you know, they value work psychologically by saying, well, here’s what I did. And people tell me how great I am or I got a raise.

(33:21 – 33:31) 

And so that sticks, unfortunately, with people for a very long time. So when they go start leading others, they continue to do what? Do the work and they get people being developed. Right.

(33:34 – 34:02)

Instead of shifting psychologically to this place of, hey, actually, the value I should one now is my people doing the work really well. And then as you move up and you get all the way to an enterprise leader for crying out loud, if there’s anything of you needing something psychologically for you doing something, you got a problem on your hands. And so what we see is, you know, a lot of times what needs to be increased as people go in leadership is their relationship skills, their ability to develop people, their ability to see whole systems and appreciate everything about a system.

(34:07 – 34:16) 

And then usually your technical skills will plateau and they won’t anymore. And I think, well, a lot of times people have a hard time breaking through that ceiling. And so they’ve never been taught that that way.

(34:18 – 34:32) 

They’ve never been talked to about it. And I think a lot of things that we’re saying is, you know, what’s what probably is needed most in businesses is common language. I think that’s what you find and why people aren’t calm and why people don’t know what to do is because there’s not a common language to be spoken amongst the group.

(34:37 – 34:54) 

And so it turns out like, you know, I have four kids and when they’re young, they threw fits, right? They throw tantrums. You’re OK. Use your words. You know, they don’t have words. They don’t know the words. Right. So that’s why they’re throwing it. And so how do we start to create those things within people to say, this is how you’re developed. This is the things we’re working on.

(34:55 – 35:18) 

These are the the things that you’re short in. Right. I think a lot of times people are very receptive to those things as long as they have something that they can hold on to. And Carrie’s point, that’s the that’s why advisors and consultants can come in and look at it because they aren’t the starfish. They can come at it from a completely different perspective and get you to see things differently, because I’ll tell you, right. I’m the same thing.

(35:20 – 35:40)

I’m stuck in my business. I know I am. There’s no doubt in my mind. Now, I had the advantage when we bought the business. I was never in optometry. So I had a ton of it, right? Yeah. And necessity because of covid. Those are the two greatest things that actually a business can be afforded. Ignorance, you know, because if you don’t know something, it allows you to go seek out what what is possible.

(35:43 – 36:04) 

And you also don’t get biased in your opinions. You know, well, this is the way we’ve always run there. This is how the industry does it. And then, too, I think necessity. That’s but that’s the mother of all invention, isn’t it? Yeah, I think stuff that gets you to lock in and really say, man, OK, we’ve got opportunities here. I always tell my team, you know, every solution, every problem we have sits inside this room.

(36:06 – 36:22) 

The problem is you you just don’t believe in that yet, whether it’s in yourself or you’re not looking out to other other things that are outside or considering, hey, you know, just because we have this software system. Well, what if you got rid of it? So I want to give them the ability to think about it. They can rip it apart and destroy it and pick it apart.

(36:25 – 36:47) 

Now, that’s my working genius. Wonder, you know, just her persona. Right. But I do think that that that stuff is where we’ve seen our business grow the most is when we’ve had ignorance. Right. And necessity. It always just takes off from there. And so a lot of times we’ll shriek from it, but I’m starting to welcome it. Actually.

(36:48 – 37:08)

Yeah. Well, you know, and to maybe to add, to build on to that, a really important point that you made, Matt. And it’s I would say it’s one of the most foundational. I guess one of the most foundational nuggets in my when I think about my role as an executive coach or just a coach or an advisor. Right. And sometimes the word executive gets people a little wound up, like you don’t have to have a C in front of your title to to benefit from coaching.

(37:12 – 37:34) 

But what I inherently believe is that individuals, whether you’re leading the company, whether you’re a line manager or whatever that is, they know the answers. Right. Like my role is to literally hold up a mirror.

(37:26 – 37:40) 

Right. Because you probably have you and your colleagues can come up with the best solution for an issue, for an opportunity. That’s probably better. Like if I were to come in as a consultant, as an advisor and be like, well, here you go. Here’s a plan. Here’s a here’s a PowerPoint deck.

(37:41 – 38:11) 

This seems like this kind of fits this framework. I’ve seen this before. Here’s a plan as opposed to creating the space for individuals to think, holding up the mirror and allowing that kind of those ideas to come up. They’re going to come up with anything better than I would. Right. And that’s that’s and to be able to do that across a number of people, like if you can coach an entire team or the leadership team and to be able to give them the place and the space to like surface those what they inherently literally already know.

(38:13 – 38:36) 

Like that’s where I have seen the most incredible, not only sort of team performance and business performance, but also from a individual perspective, their confidence in leadership or their ability to kind of coach others in their team, right, where they pay that forward. And I think that’s to me, again, that’s deeply personal. But it’s also I’ve seen it directly tied to performance, which is something that we’re all, again, very passionate about as well.

(38:41 – 38:56) 

You know, I was in a meeting last week and and this kind of this this discussion kind of triggered that discussion with another company that she basically said, you know, I don’t have anybody who can fill. You know, I don’t have a person on my team who can take my my role. Right.

(39:01 – 39:16) 

Now, whether that’s true or not. Right. I don’t know if that’s true or not. The story that they’re telling themselves. Right. Is it the story or what would you I mean, back to Matt, your point on leadership development. What are some things that you need? Because I’ve hired various people. I’m a technician. I was.

(39:17 – 39:47) 

But now I’m doing better. And, you know, but went to the therapy of not being that tactician anymore. Well, occasionally I pop my head in, but I’m trying to, you know, not. But but that leadership development piece. How do you work with companies and leaders to start that process versus, you know, because I don’t think I’ve seen people try to hire it in and doesn’t necessarily work, because back to your original. Sometimes what happens to people on the existing team get not taken care of with that.

(39:50 – 40:09) 

So what are some leadership suggestions or what do you company like? I just mentioned who said I don’t have somebody on my team who can take that role. What’s your what’s your thought process with somebody like that? Yeah, I mean, first, you have to understand what do you think your role is? I think that’s a great clarity around what you believe that you do and what you bring in value. Right.

(40:13 – 40:22) 

And then assess that with everybody else. I think a lot of times people think too much in the way of transaction and what they’re producing. And yeah, a lot around the kind of leadership of the space.

(40:27 – 40:46) 

And it’s funny because I have a actually I should say, I guess I should say it’s fine. I have an employee who I love her to death. And she is a great tactician or she’s just really good at doing the work. And she has a lot of working value in that. She likes to do that so she can be recognized for it. She recently started her own little business off to the side, which is really cool.

(40:47 – 40:58) 

And it’s just been fun to kind of been able to sit in that space with her because I think she started to recognize the emotional piece of it. All the three hours that we talk about, like, my goodness, this is work. Yeah, it’s work doing the thing, you know.

(41:00 – 41:21) 

And so you’d have to define what the role is. I think the other thing is you have to maybe assess where you actually are in your leadership. And so we kind of like try to do an assessment on, you know, are you leading self? Are you leading others? Are you leading leaders? Are you leading a function? Are you leading an enterprise? And there’s there’s those three things of skill and time horizon and working values go throughout all those.

(41:23 – 41:41) 

And we kind of do self-assessment and 360 assessments to say, where do we think we actually are and where we’re short? Because then we can start to name what needs to be developed, right? A lot of times, I think with owners, it’s it’s not so much maybe the skill, maybe even the time horizon. It’s more about working value. It’s it’s who am I if I don’t do these things? And we’ve got to we got to work through those things.

(41:46 – 42:08) 

That’s the that’s the biggest kind of one that’s always in the way, honestly, is the logical piece. And it’s it’s moving from, you know, I think what you just said, Stacy, like this idea of when you kind of grow up through something, you know, especially C-level and above, maybe Kerosene or whatever. I remember getting to a place where as a recovery accountant, you know, like everything balances, you close.

(42:12 – 42:27) 

Yeah, perfect. Fits in the box. My targets, all that stuff. But when you move up through executive leadership, you realize there’s so much ambiguity. Nothing ever closes. It’s just a constant loop. And you have to become OK with that. Yeah, you’re navigating in a lot of gray and comfortable in the gray. I appreciate this.

(42:33 – 42:46) 

There is a very much. I think it’s the muscle that it’s, you know, when I remember doing CrossFit years ago and I remember like when I first started, I’m like, oh, gosh, gosh, this sucks. You know, and I told a guy who was like a lot stronger than me, like five years.

(42:50 – 43:07) 

I said, man, I can’t wait till I maybe do as long as you and it won’t hurt as bad. And he says, no, man. He goes, it always sucks. He says, you just look more away. He said, so you got to learn to embrace the suck. And I think that’s part of it, too, is that that’s that resiliency, you know, that we’ve got to build up and people.

(43:09 – 43:25) 

But a lot of times maybe and maybe I will say lastly, the states, maybe there isn’t the right person and that is possible. Maybe they don’t have the right people. But, you know, that takes an investment, too, that a lot of owners are thinking about, you know, they’re not thinking about, hey, I need to continue to invest in my business all the way up to the end.

(43:29 – 43:39) 

Because if not, I’m kind of becoming, I don’t know if it’s greedy, but I’m being I’m being skittish in what I want to do. And then I all of a sudden I get to the cell and I think it’s worth this much. It’s like your house.

(43:40 – 43:58) 

You know, I have this nice house and the market says it’ll suffer this. But I never wanted to remodel my bathroom because I thought I was going to move. Right. So somebody’s coming in and they got to remodel my house because it’s so let’s say 1970s or something. Yeah, they’re going to it’s going to decrease the value of your your home. Well, it’s the same thing.

(44:01 – 44:09)

It’s the same thing in business. You always got to be investing in it. So if you need to hire somebody from the outside to replace you, good. But we need to understand what what you need to be replaced for. That’s that’s key. Yeah.

(44:12 – 44:28)  

Yeah. Yeah. I think that maybe just the one thing that I because I agree with everything Matt shared, I think that as you see leaders, especially individuals who’ve come up to your point, Stacie, that are either they’re technical experts, they’re tacticians, right? Their performance is what got them promoted.

(44:30 – 44:50) 

But it’s it’s this mindset shift. It’s not just a physical shift. It’s a mindset shift of like going from activity to impact. And when you think about leadership, when I think about leadership, impact is the word that comes to mind because you want you want to have an impact on your team. You want to have an impact on the business. You want to have an impact on the market in which you operate.

(44:52 – 45:26) 

You want to impact the value of your organization. Right. And activity does not equal impact. So. How do we help you sort of decouple those things and what needs to happen, who needs to be doing that activity in order for you to drive the impact? And I think that’s. Easier said than done, right? But but if we if we but if we keep it in really simple terms, right, I think for me, that’s kind of where the greatest opportunity is for for a lot of for a lot of owners or founders, right? Not everybody.

(45:26 – 45:35) 

Some can inherently kind of walk into that space and intuitively. But so much of it is coachable and trainable, which is what we love about it, because we love the opportunity to work with individuals who want to embrace this. Right.

(45:39 – 46:06) 

The leader and the teams that that leader is supporting. Yeah, I want to switch just a little bit before we kind of before we end from a standpoint of more of the some of the tactical things from a marketing trends. And and what are some things that you’re also seeing outside of out there? I mean, I think there’s a lot of shifts coming in business and being that lion and being OK with the gray.

(46:11 – 46:19) 

Yes. Resiliency is going to be really, really important. But anything you’re seeing out there or is it still the I mean, I mean, the people piece has been from the, you know, dawn of business.

(46:23 – 46:54)

The ones that have that have figured that out are successful. But anything else? I think one thing we’ve got our eye on and Matt can speak a little bit more in detail to it, but maybe I’ll tee it up if he wants to jump on and follow on, is that as we are seeing, you know, that we know that there are a lot of businesses, but I think it’s like 10,000 in the state of Indiana alone that are to the place where they are ready to transition into new ownership, whether that means retirement, what have you. And the pool, if you will, of interested buyers is much smaller than the pool.

(46:56 – 47:12)

That’s right. So what does succession look like? What does that mean? Well, this whole kind of entrepreneurship through acquisition. Let’s just we can buy a company. Right. And that’s like that’s kind of PE at a much smaller scale. Yeah. But. Understanding, like, are you buying a job? Are you buying an asset? Right. Exactly right.

(47:15 – 47:33) 

I don’t want to buy. And that’s an area where that’s that is a that is a hot topic of conversation, Matt and one of our other principals, Jeff Donovan, spoke at that recently at a talk at Butler University. But I think when we look across that landscape, there’s so many jumping off points as an advisor to kind of support both on the buying side and on the selling side.

(47:35 – 48:18) 

So I think that’s one thing that we’re really leaning into with a lot of interest and sensitivity, because if not executed well or with kind of full knowledge of what someone is getting into or what they’re selling, what they’re buying on either side of that coin, we believe that there’s a lot of value that can be created in the entire process, right, from the due diligence all the way to the sale and or the buy. Maybe, Matt, turn it over to you to allow you to kind of expound or maybe there’s something else that on your heart. No, I think that’s that’s it, if we’re looking at market trends, I think there’s a high demand and there’s actually interesting a matching supply, but it’s it’s like stuck at the docks, like it’s stuck.

(48:21 – 48:34) 

That’s a good way to say it. And I think they’re out on the barge floating. That’s it. They can’t make it straight up or moves right now. Basically, the oil, it’s since it’s sitting out there. And I think what we’re seeing is we see a huge readiness for people to buy businesses.

(48:37 – 48:54) 

I would I would caution their readiness, though, with who that buyer really is, because I think a lot of disconnect when it comes to people who are retiring and they have some money and they want to go buy something. And I think that, you know, you’ve got people like Cody Sanchez, a Main Street billionaire out there. She’s like the Steph Curry of buying business.

(48:56 – 49:02) 

So she makes it look easy. And it’s not. And I think that a lot of people kind of buy into that, just like our kids do.

(49:03 – 49:16) 

And I think they can shoot three pointers like stuff and it doesn’t work. And so I think that, you know, that’s a cautionary tale on that side, that they need to be more educated and brought along. And it’s not so much even in it’s funny in the business side is this transaction deals and all that.

(49:18 – 49:27) 

Yeah, there’s a different ways to support. And I think one of the things that we see is like, I mean, with guys that are Oh, what do you do? I’m an IT. I want to buy a business.

(49:28 – 49:50) 

OK, what kind of business you want to buy? Well, anything. Oh, so you want to buy an automotive repair shop? Well, sure. Oh, do you speak blue collar? You know, it’s like, come on, man. You’ve never been a blue collar your entire life. I mean, how are you going to create credibility and lead people that you’ve never been around? You know, so creating a realism around the buyer is going to be needed. I think that the biggest thing, though, that we’re struggling with and this is our whole business structure around it.

(49:53 – 50:04) 

But the state of Indiana struggle with this. This is their biggest concern. They’re called the silver tsunami, right? And in 10 years, if we don’t get this licked, then we’re going to see small towns start to dissipate because these businesses are going to close their door or the large corporations.

(50:08 – 50:31)

Right. And so I think the seller needs to get on it. They need to speed up and get themselves organized, because I think sellers are too ignorant to the to the what what actually takes to sell a business. Only 20 percent of businesses. So and I think that should be vastly improved and way higher. And it’s really because of a few things.

(50:32 – 51:00)

They’re not getting they’re not getting enough time or runway to prep. Right. So I’m going to sell it in six months from there. They think they’re going to sell it. Right. So that’s a it’s an unrealistic expectation that they have to. They haven’t put their things in order in order to transition that company, because, again, too much is dependent upon them. And then I think that the last piece really comes down to they don’t know what it’s worth. And they overvalue it all the time in most places.

(51:05 – 51:28) 

Right. So then they come to a table and they get disappointed. So I think engaging people like us is really important because we’re trying to get into those businesses. They’re maybe 10 years out. That’d be our ideal, because then we can start to work and develop this plan for you that gets you to a place where when you sit at the table, you’re ready to have the conversation. You’re realistic about what your value is, and it’s going to go smoother for you even after you leave, because there’s other questions.

(51:31 – 51:47) 

You know, what are you going to do with yourself to leave this business? And a lot of people aren’t answering that. So I think getting with them is really key. And I think that, you know, helping people to maybe sometimes get to the table a little bit earlier, sometimes going to the table teaches you more than you would anticipate.

(51:50 – 52:02) 

Even if you don’t necessarily fully intend to sell yet. Correct. Like we were with a guy, an owner the other day who had been to the table a couple of years ago with a PE firm, and he learned a ton.

(52:04 – 52:15) 

And so everything he’s doing is actually some things that we we kind of encourage people to do. And so we were like, say, man, you’re doing a great job in this. He said, well, I learned because here’s what I was told. I didn’t have enough recurring revenue. I didn’t have this. I didn’t have X or I didn’t have somebody replace me.

(52:19 – 52:38) 

He hired a COO. And so he started putting the things in gear to get himself ready for the next time he sat at the table. So I think that’s that’s key. And a lot of I think here’s where it’s getting in the way. Those sellers are skittish because they believe if I go out and I look for this, then my competitors are going to learn that I am right. And then they’re going to start saying stuff about me.

(52:41 – 52:57) 

If I go out and say this, my employees are going to find out. They’re going to start jumping ship. Oh, yeah. So it’s a lot about you. I think there’s a lot of fear that’s driving it right now. And we got to figure out a way to uncork that and get people to a trust and kind of this abundant mentality, because I don’t think they really understand how much demand sitting on the other side, how many buyers are out there ready.

(53:01 – 53:11) 

So that’s that’s what we I can encourage sellers enough to say, get on it, get on it now. Talk to a trusted advisor. We would love to help you, because I think preparing is never going to hurt you.

(53:13 – 53:26) 

Positioning yourself in the right spots is never going to hurt you. Yeah. Right. Just normalize that behavior. Normalize the like what this actually looks like and the importance of it. It’s just like the best time to interview for jobs. If you’re looking for a job is when you don’t need a job. Right. Right.

(53:28 – 53:58)

Go get some muscle. Go get some practice. That’s right. Get some feedback. It’s it’s no I mean, you know, at a real simple level, it’s not fundamentally or principally based. It’s not that different. Yeah. I mean, both of you mean some important points when it comes to. It’s not easy. Like you said, Matt, and in and. A lot of that is is discussed transactional. And the first point that you met was I mean, we talked about for the first 50 minutes was people and people are the heart of every company.

(54:00 – 54:15) 

And so whether you’re talking about developing leadership or building a culture, all those things. And so there is some magical time that that can happen here in the future. If we can get everybody think 10 years ahead and also to, you know, to connect all those dots that need to be made.

(54:19 – 54:54) 

There is a huge opportunity. And I think that’s will be hard. Those small towns in Indianapolis or or wherever. And we the more owners we have, the better in my mind. But but it’s not easy. It’s not easy. And you need people like you, both of you to help along the way. Any other tactical takeaway? You know. So to say if you in the next 12 months or two years or five years, what are the first three moves or you think that these companies should be should be.

(54:58 – 55:15)

Yeah, doing work in the muscle. Yeah, work in the muscle. I think it is never, ever too early to think about selling. Right. Just because you’re thinking about it is not that you’re not putting anything negative out into the universe. You’re not putting anything that it is never. It is. I mean, from the day you buy it or the day you found it, that is the day that you need to begin selling it. Right.

(55:19 – 55:41) 

Because because if you approach it with that mindset, then you will inherently you will be thinking about things like de-risking the revenue. Right. Not all your revenue is tied to one customer. You will be thinking about how do I remove my physical self from the day to day operations? You will thinking about how to codify the business. Right. How do we have processes and procedures? So it’s never too early.

(55:42 – 55:57) 

And we don’t want people to panic. And it’s not too late. You can you can reach out if you find yourself in a pinch and you think, oh, my God, I should have started this five years ago. Yeah, probably. But hey, we we can still jump in. We can still meet you where you are.

(55:58 – 56:21) 

I think that to me, that’s the piece as at least as it relates to sale. But that also applies to scale. Right. If you want to grow your business, you’re going to do fundamentally a lot of very similar things that you would do if you’re preparing for sale in terms of formalizing processes, procedures, de-risking revenue, all those things. It’s never it’s never too early. So I think that would maybe be a kind of a parting thought of mine.

(56:28 – 56:53) 

Yeah, yeah, I’d agree with that wholly. I think that maybe there’s one other thing that’s getting in the way of not just fear. I think it’s sometimes it’s guilt. And it sounds weird for people, I think, that build organizations that do care about the people that work for them. I think there’s something in them, too, that believes, hey, you know, is it fair for me to walk away when I’ve asked these people to give so much to me? I think it’s being more realistic about that. And I think what Carrie’s saying is if you start planning and doing that, you can consider that inside of your plan.

(56:55 – 57:08) 

You know, I’ll tell you right now that I will not sell to a corporate private equity firm for our eye care practice. We’ve seen it destroy our industry. I’m not saying that regionals don’t work on smaller ones or whatever, but it has to fit my people, has to take care of my people.

(57:12 – 57:19) 

You know, that’s the legacy that we want to leave. We care more about that than we do the actual number  that’s on the end of the day. So but we’re planning, right? We have an actual pathway to sell the company to private.

(57:24 – 57:36) 

And so that’s the stuff I’d say is also and also getting our employees understand, they understand the risks that we’ve taken. I understand what’s in that. Right. And we talk about that openly. I think that’s another people don’t know how to talk about openly. You know, things they get weird and they wipe it on a table and they avoid it.

(57:40 – 57:50) 

And then the last is, I think, that people have to learn to make the pie bigger. It is a different environment than it ever has been before. There’s a lot of organizations, especially we we kind of say people own jobs.

(57:53 – 58:01) 

They really do in a lot of ways. I have very close friends in the trades and electrical contracting companies, automotive repair companies, things like that. And the reality is that they walked away for 30 days.

(58:03 – 58:34) 

They wouldn’t make any money. So what is it, though, that’s happening around you? Is there other plays that might be able to happen? You know, we got small towns where the electrician, the plumber and the HVAC guys all sitting in there and they’re well known and they’re constantly called. And if if something doesn’t happen or maybe they look and say, what if we came together and maybe sold as a package? I don’t know, because, you know, otherwise your corporate big corporate ones are going to come in there and there’s going to be a faceless presence inside of people’s homes where they’re used to having that local person in there.

(58:37 – 58:46) 

Same thing on the dental, same thing on the optometry. There’s got to be different ways in which people are going to think about this, because the game has changed. And so I think being open to that and just being ready to go.

(58:51 – 59:03) 

That’s it. You know, and to Carrie’s point that I was dead on is never too early. I, you know, I encourage people, if somebody wants to have a conversation with you, have the conversation for crying out loud.

(59:05 – 59:14) 

Conversations are worth gold. You never know what you’re going to learn. You don’t have to say yes to anybody. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to your point, Stacie, to kind of tie that all together, that the earlier you have that in your frame of mind, right, scaling or selling.

(59:20 – 59:43) 

What you’re going to do as a result of that, you are likely inherently going to involve your people, your leadership pipeline, because if you give a poop about your folks, right, they’re going to be part of the leadership pipeline. You’re going to be thinking, oh, you know, this individual has expressed an interest in leading a team. This individual has expressed an interest, you know, in terms of being being in sales and being more commercial or client facing.

(59:47 – 1:00:04) 

Right. So if you’re thinking if you’ve got the end game in mind or at least vaguely, right, then you, I believe, at least demonstrated I’ve seen, you’re likely to pull in the individuals that you have and bring those right people on board, which is going to empower and accelerate, you know, that that runway. So it inherently is a it’s a it’s a beautiful opportunity.

(1:00:07 – 1:00:27)

Right. It’s not just about the sale. It’s the all the activity that gets you to the point that allows you the most advantageous off like offer or opportunity to do that. Right. And you and you’ve been done it so diligently and so and I guess intentionally is probably the word I’m looking for. Now, that’s that’s awesome.

(1:00:28 – 1:00:47) 

That’s those final points by by by both of you have just really kind of hit the nail on the whole message we discussed today. So, one, I really appreciate both of you giving your time to me this morning and sharing some insights. We have been talking to Carrie Schroeder and Matt Curtz with Polaris.

(1:00:53 – 1:01:01)

Thank you for being on The Proof Point Podcast. Thanks for listening to The Proof Point Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.