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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Scale to sale, friends and family trap, deal-ready business, succession planning , leadership continuity, tribal knowledge, growth levers, process independence, financials, A players, business transformation, founder journey, shared services model, governance board, executive leadership.
SPEAKERS
Georgi Feidler, Damon Pistulka
Damon Pistulka 00:07
Alright, everyone Welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistolka, and I am so excited to be talking with Georgie. Georgie feidler, today, from hire train Inspire. Georgie, thanks for being here today.
Georgi Feidler 00:27
Thank you, Damon. I’m so excited to be here. Yes,
Damon Pistulka 00:30
we’re going to be talking today about from scale to sale. I gotta be able to say it escape the friends and family trap to build a deal ready business. Oh, this is a topic that I’ve seen before, and I love it that we’re talking about today.
Georgi Feidler 00:50
Georgie same, I think it’s really, really, it’s really so relevant. So as you mentioned, I’m the founder of hire, train, inspire, and we’re like a GPS for small to mid sized businesses, and we work predominantly with founders and business owners to get them out of the grind, place a players in key seats and help them scale, sell or prepare for what’s next. So I love talking about this. I could talk about this all day long, but I didn’t start out in consulting. I started out inside the chaos, which is a great way to describe it. I started out in healthcare. I was part of a company that grew from 4800 to 6800 employees in just three years, mainly through acquisition. Learned a lot about that. Typically, healthcare is very red tape and corporate, but apparently, when it’s going through acquisitions, not so much. So that was a lot of fun to bring that go to market strategy and bring competitors together under under the same roof. And then a few years later, I moved into SAS software as a service, and we went through two capital raises over 105 million with both Bain and Goldman Sachs. And that taught me a lot as well. Sometimes when we get money, we don’t necessarily act in the smartest ways with it, but what I learned there is that growth and deals aren’t the end of the of the deal. They’re just really the beginning. And the real test is whether the business can thrive without being dependent on one person, which is typically the founder.
Damon Pistulka 02:24
So this is great because you’ve been through the acquisition process, you’ve seen the integration of companies and also the raising of money, so in the acquisition process. So now I’m going to step back a little bit, because I think it’s great when you talk about deal ready business and looking at the acquisitions that that you were a part of before, how has that really helped you, from that buyer’s perspective, help your clients today?
Georgi Feidler 02:56
Yeah, so all of that is really what led me to launch HTI today, we work with two main kinds of clients. We work with the baby boomer founders who are planning for succession and want to protect their legacy, and then we work with those founder entrepreneurs that are navigating that friends and family trap that really blocks their ability to scale and step back. So my passion really came through being kind of forged in all of those different fires, and I really want to come alongside the founder and help them preserve what they built. I think entrepreneurs are really the lifeblood of innovation. I used to call myself an accidental entrepreneur, but I’ve been doing this for a decade on my own, so I can’t really call myself accidental anymore. But I think, you know, they have the the ability to change families and communities and futures, and so I think, you know, one of the things that’s very present for me is with the great Boomer exit underway, it feels really critical to make sure that those businesses don’t just survive the transition, but they thrive long into the future. And I’m really passionate about being a steward to help them preserve their legacy and leave it to that next generation. So that’s a lot of what I’ve been focused on recently.
Damon Pistulka 04:07
Yeah, and it is really too bad when you see these long term businesses, some of them small community, real, niche, small community businesses that have been there for 50 years or whatever, or even larger businesses that you see that they’re there one day and the next day, you know, the the 100 employees and everything is gone, and it’s just because they were not really thinking about, what is this succession plan? How are we going to transition? What are going to well, you know, what is the next phase for for our business beyond us.
Georgi Feidler 04:41
Absolutely they were. They were busy working right, making things happen. Yeah, so 50% of us, privately held businesses are Boomer owned. Most you know, a lot of people know that 10,000 of them are retiring every day, and of those 10,060% of them don’t have a succession plan at all. And you’re absolutely right, by the time they get to the finish the. I’m like, they’re exhausted. They’re just like, Okay, I’m ready to be done. But the macro view of that is, like, that’s $10 trillion in enterprise value. That’s that could transfer hands in the next decade, but much of it is at risk, right? Because we’re not being intentional about stewarding that transition.
Damon Pistulka 05:16
Yeah, yeah. And that’s, it really is cool to see that you’re helping people doing this. I’ve got a passion for it, because there are just literally so many of these businesses, you know, on the end of when you look at low, lower, lower, mid market businesses under 5 million or so on revenue, I mean, the chances of selling them are like 20% or something like that, without really preparation, preparing, you know, so that that alone is a huge indicator of how many of these businesses are just there today and gone tomorrow because of that. And that affects the community. It affects those families involved with that business and and certainly affects the founders. Yeah, I
Georgi Feidler 06:01
always say succession isn’t a transaction, it’s a transformation, and it’s the founder’s last act of leadership.
Damon Pistulka 06:08
Founder’s last act of leadership. That’s awesome,
Georgi Feidler 06:11
yep, so they should do it well,
Damon Pistulka 06:13
yes, yes. So Georgie, as you got into your career, what really drew you into this part of helping founders, or early stage founders, or these later stage founders, what really drew you into wanting to choose that as a path for your company?
Georgi Feidler 06:34
Yeah, so I think when, when you get beyond probably the 75 million 200 million in revenue mark. Things at least should be pretty developed, right? That you should have, you know, everything rolling right? And yes, you’re still pulling growth levers, and yes, you’re still, you know, doing strategy and all of that. But it should be much more defined, right? You’ve kind of figured out, if you’ve gotten to that, that size and that scale, you figured out the the formula for success. I think, when you are smaller than that, you know, typically right around the four or 5 million mark, all the way up to 30, 40 million. A lot of at least the founders that I work with, they’re, they’re faced with what I call the friends and family conundrum, or the friends and family trap. The problem is that they built loyalty based early teams, and that’s what we all do. Like we all just when you’re when you’re growing, you’re like, Hey Bob, come on over and help me out with sales. Hey, Sue. Do you want to do some accounting for me? Right? You just you go to No. And that actually works great at the early stage, because it’s built on loyalty and trust, which is really two great things for survival, right? Yes. The problem is that at scale, they become bottlenecks. The same loyalty becomes the blocker, right? So it works at first, because instead of titles, you have trust, instead of systems, you have hustle, and everyone’s a hero, and that works awesome, spouses, siblings, best friends, right? Everybody can step in. And loyalty is the currency. That’s the most important thing. But why it breaks later is as you scale right, and your circle of influence is not one to five, it becomes like one to 10 and one to 15 and 25 all of that creates this net, this net of confusion and roles being unclear is now a problem. No SOPs is now a problem. Emotions, instead of accountability, is now a problem. And because they’re so used to being the hero, there is just this natural, built in resistance to outside hires, structure, accountability. You know, all of the things that we know are kind of the DNA for scale. And what happens is founders get trapped in the middle, right? They’re the CEO, Chief, everything officer,
Damon Pistulka 08:57
yeah, and it is, it is interesting how you find that, because a lot of it really causes businesses to plateau if they don’t break through
Georgi Feidler 09:05
that absolutely, absolutely, 72% of SMBs operate without documented SOPs, and founder led businesses are two times more likely to fail the sales process due to tribal Knowledge dependence.
Damon Pistulka 09:18
Love that. I love that. So as you’re talking to people, they’re going, Hey, what? How really would you help me? What are some of the common things that they’re saying, some common phrases that you hear?
Georgi Feidler 09:37
Yeah, so 60% of small business owners will say things like, delegation is their number one growth obstacle. Or, I, you know, they can’t even, oftentimes, put any, any words to it, other than, Oh, things are slowing down, or things feel difficult. Things are I’m struggling. It feels like I’m walking through sludge, right? It’s just, it’s, it’s things like that. That because the people who helped you build it right there, they’re, they’re not the ones who you want to look to as the problem, right? And the reality of it is, even though they helped you build it, they’re not always the ones who can help you scale it. And so there’s such an emotional piece there, right? There’s there’s the business piece, there’s the growth piece, but there’s an emotional piece there too. It can feel like betrayal. And so so much of what we do at HCI, in our role is is help the founder kind of walk that, walk that journey, and understand that’s not betrayal, right? That’s growth, that’s clarity. And we can reposition people with honor and clarity and not betrayal. So we really look at, like four different pillars. When we’re we’re looking at a business and it’s, it’s, it’s the financials process, independence, identifiable upside, which is kind of the right, the growth lever, is it clear, and then leadership, continuity. And so typically, there are multitude of problems across those four pillars that we start to point out, right? And that gives them some words and language to explain more of what they’re what they’re feeling and what’s actually happening, rather than, Oh, it’s so hard, it’s just gotten hard, so hard, right?
Damon Pistulka 11:16
Yeah, yeah. Because that that hard is often, like you said, it’s when, when I hired this person, you know could be sometimes a decade ago, they were doing really good at the beginning, because they just took care of it and fixed things, and we didn’t needed it. Now that they’ve got six people in that that area now and, and we’re trying to do things there aren’t processes and procedures. They their tribal knowledge training everyone and, and they may have one or two of those people that are doing really good, but there’s a lot of them that don’t, because they don’t have that structure in that system, and it really begins to hurt you, because the the person that you hired at that time, great person really helped you do that a long time, and then you have that emotional connection. But they may be the person too that will never be able to lead those people and develop, help you develop those systems and will, will fight against it,
Georgi Feidler 12:18
right? Yeah, right? Because it’s just not native to them, right? They they have, they have everything in their head and to them, because they have been there since the beginning. You know, they know, just like founder, where all the bodies are buried, and how, you know how everything works, it’s just, well, it’s easy, right? It’s easy. And they’re not thinking in a systems or process mindset. So it makes it really hard when you’re trying to grow, and it’s, it becomes something that you, you end up fighting against,
Damon Pistulka 12:44
yeah, yeah. So how do you break out of that?
Georgi Feidler 12:49
Yeah, great question. So I posted something on on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago, and it’s like, okay, so what do you what do you do with these, with these people, and you kind of have, you kind of three, three choices, right? You have the, this is the exception to the rule, and not the rule. The people who they can grow with you, right? They just needed some clarity, and they needed, you know you, to define their role and and what they’re accountable for, and they’re, they’re good to go. Now I say that again, that’s an exception to the rule, not the rule. It’s really important to understand, and we all want, we all want our people to be the exception, but it’s just, it’s not. You can reposition them, right? You can say, okay, you know, maybe you’re not the the CMO, right, but you’re a strong marketer, and you have all of this tribal knowledge, and that will really help us here in our copy, or whatever, right? You can reposition them, or you can release them, and as hard as that is, right, there is a loving way to do that. And it’s actually, I always say clear as kind, right? It’s not, it’s not clear, or it’s not kind not to be clear about what your goals are and and make sure that that they they have those same goals. You know, so much of the work that we’ve done with a lot of our companies is just helping them articulate what their vision is, right? Because it comes as news to a lot of their their people that are there. Oh, they want to scale this. They want to scale this to scale this to 100 million. They want to scale this to 50 million or 60 million, right? Yeah. And once you make it really clear, like, Hey, this is the vision of the company, this is the mission. These are our values. This is what we’re going after, right? A lot of them will self select out. They’re like, Oh, that doesn’t sound fun. I don’t, I don’t want that, right? So that that’s a lot of what it is that we’re doing is just walking through that. And it requires, you know, it requires a combination of both, like, the honoring of the relationship and the person, and then walking through that with people so they can come to those same conclusions, right? Because you don’t want to burn bridges like, you know, you should be a. Eternally grateful, as the founder, that they were here and they you couldn’t have gotten where you’re at without them. So saying goodbye is often really, really difficult to do, but yeah, there’s there’s the personal part of it, and then, like I said, there’s our framework around those four pillars, and we really can identify and give language to those gaps through those four pillars, right? And every, every problem is either a people process or systems problem. And because process and systems are are created, instituted, you know, led by people, it ultimately is a people problem.
Damon Pistulka 15:36
Yeah, yeah. Well, and you said one thing a moment ago, which I think a lot of founders just assume people understand, is that’s vision, the vision for where they want to go. And it’s it is so important to articulate that vision to your entire organization. But I think you said something that was really important there to those long term people that were there when in the beginning, taking the time to sit down and articulating that vision and how it affects them, and early in the process, right? Because I’ve seen it where, where you you may do it, you may not do it completely, but if you do it completely, like you said, and someone goes, I am just I’m not someone that wants to be supervising a lot of people or doing this kind of work that we’re moving into, or whatever it is. They can self select on their own terms. And that’s a great thing. Because, like you said, I think if that is the the way you can do it, or the reposition. I really think that that’s awesome, too. When you see that and you go, you know, Damon, you’re really technical and, you know, all this stuff this, why don’t you do this? This is really good. You don’t have to be the person that leads everyone, because I know that’s what you don’t really enjoy. Get them back into what they enjoy, and allow them to continue on there. I think those two are, they’re awesome. And then go ahead the
Georgi Feidler 17:09
I would also add, you know, that is the ideal. The only way that that works, and works really well is if there is a willingness to have, have trust and really, really honest conversation, yeah, right. And there can’t be an attachment of, like, I should, right? We, we can’t, there can’t be an attachment, because a lot of times, even if you, you know, reposition somebody, it typically means, okay, we’re, we’re demoting you. And I used to be this, and I used to beat that, right? And so there’s just a lot of head trash that comes along with it on all the sides, like from, from the the teammate, as well as the founder. And so I’m, I’m one for just really calling that out and getting that on the table, because pretending like it’s not there is just going to muck things up later, right? So we just need to say, hey, no, we get it like this is going to be hard. There’s pride here, like it’s, you know, a lot to swallow, but you always have a choice, and the goal is for you to know where everything is, for you to know the same information that I know, so that you can make the best decision for you, and we can make sure that that it’s aligned with the company
Damon Pistulka 18:20
I love that. I love that because that that is there is that head trash that you’re going to have to deal with, and they’re going to have to deal with, and even if they do decide that, I think if you’re open and honest about it and what you just said, that encourage them to make the decision that’s best for them in the long term, they might, they might love it and continue on. They might self select out and decide to do something different. So that’s that’s a great way,
Georgi Feidler 18:44
or more often than not, they might also temporarily say yes, and then once they’re actually in it and being held accountable to it, then they realize, Oh no, yeah. So sometimes that happens as well, oh
Damon Pistulka 18:57
yes, yes, yeah. That’s a great point. And I think the most common is, and I believe, and I don’t know you can, I want you to weigh in this, obviously, is you do end up releasing a lot of those people that you started out with?
Georgi Feidler 19:11
You do? Yeah, I would also say, you know, sometimes there is this once, at least in my experience, in working with the founders, once they have this epiphany, right? There is this desire to, like, want to rush through it and just rip off the band aid, which creates chaos in the Orca, yeah, I also, like, I also don’t recommend that right, change needs to be intentional. We need to allow for change management. We need to allow for people to kind of steady and so, you know, I don’t recommend once you have that epiphany, you know, like getting rid of your entire, you know, leadership team, everybody reports to you in just one fell swoop, right? That wouldn’t be a really good yes, a good response to that. And I know that that seems like, Oh no, duh, obvious, but seriously, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I only say that because I’ve had people like. They want to do that. It’s like, because it’s painful for them and it’s uncomfortable for them, so it’s like, let’s just get it over with. But you know that that’s just also can put your your organization in chaos. So yeah, do that.
Damon Pistulka 20:10
And you know, from the compassionate side of of helping someone decide that they need to do something else, or or letting them go, it’s like, you don’t want to put somebody in that position that you know they’re hating every single day, because you ultimately, the goal is we have to do this. It’s not not kind of kind of want to do it. It’s we have to do this if you’re going to go down a certain path. And if they’re in that and doing that every day is driving them crazy, they’re not performing well, and you continue to have to have those conversations, it’s not a good situation for anyone,
Georgi Feidler 20:47
right, right? And what I’ve also found a lot is, you know when, when founders are walking the path of scale, unless they’re, unless they’re, you know, a second, third, fourth time founder, it’s usually their first time, right? Like, the size that they are is the biggest they’ve ever been. Right with 5 million is the biggest I’ve ever been. 10 million is the biggest I’ve ever been. And so because you don’t have that that you know prior knowledge, and you’ve not walked the path before, you don’t automatically know where all of those potholes are. And so walking that path with a team who also hasn’t walked it before. Can be really, really painful, because no one is there pointing out the hole in the road or that big, huge landmine, right? And so I always say, like in a in a leadership team, especially, right? We can, we can, if the founder is the first time founder walking the path. We can afford to maybe have like one other person, but there needs to be, you know, people around, around that founder, that are pointing out those landmines. Otherwise it’s going to be a very, very like, it’s growing pains anyways, right? They call them growing pains because it’s, it’s painful, it’s uncomfortable, it’s growth but it will be really miserable if there’s not a group of people who have been there before that can point out some things.
Damon Pistulka 22:05
Yes, and it’s funny, because I was just talking with a founder last weekend about this very thing, and they were saying how they’ve gotten to, and it’s 10s of millions they’ve gotten to in their business. And they said, you know, we’re I didn’t realize this, but we need a whole different level of a person with experience to go to double that again and where they want to go. And we had a long conversation about it, because it’s, it’s the difference between in in a smaller business, you might be able to have a really good accountant slash bookkeeper that does everything. But when you’re talking about our business is making 10s of millions of dollars every year, you have to have somebody that understands what are we doing with our money. How are we managing our our you know, not to pay as much in taxes and investing in different things and all this other kind of stuff that that person is just overwhelmed, because they were good at doing the books really well, making sure the bank statements are done. And then we have great financial reports, or financial reporting, it’s a whole nother level of experience that they need on top of where they’re at to do that scale. And as you said, that founder has never been there, which is such a big deal.
Georgi Feidler 23:22
Yeah, that’s why clean financials are one of our pillars. Because investors and buyers don’t trust what you can’t prove. Right? You have, yeah, you have all the words in the world, but they don’t trust what you can’t prove. And so I think you know the way that that looks you’re right in the early days, like we just need accountants. We need you to accounting people, right? Bookkeeping, looking back, looking back in the past, that what happened. And then you reach a certain threshold where you need FPA looking forward, right? Like you need that Strategic Finance, one example. So we brought in, we work with different fractional as well. So we had a client who brought in a fractional CFO, moved them out of of messy, QuickBooks and things like that. Got actual Strategic Finance dashboards that the CFO built a model, an actual model, and we uncovered a 500k margin upside, right? That, if that wasn’t done, would have, you know, would have never been discovered. So I think, I think you’re absolutely spot on there,
Damon Pistulka 24:19
yeah, yeah, yeah, and that, and that kind of thing too. As you, as you move from that into as you go, there’s, there’s different levels, because sometimes that first person can help you a bit more, but there’s just that point to where, where, when you’re financial people, and you look at the financials at the end of the month, or hopefully, you’re measuring a lot more than that, but when you get there and you go, Okay, this is what it’s really telling us, and these are the opportunities we have within the numbers, from my point of view, and then working with the overall organization, that’s where, as you said, you’re going to find those opportunities to go, Okay, here’s a lot of money we’re leaving on the table because of this. Yes or that, and it, and it really, that’s what you miss when you and it’s great that you a if you’re getting good financials, you’re you’re you’re moving, you’re well ahead of a lot of people, because a lot of people run the checkbook. And exactly yes, I could go up a couple of stories about that. But the but the real, the real thing is cool is when you get that financials to actually help you run the business better, and yes, and then, and then it’s investing your money and making more money as you get to the next size above that. But it’s so cool.
Georgi Feidler 25:34
And, you know, a lot of people get nervous too, oh, I can’t afford a full time CFO. You may not need one. Like, you may not need a full time CFO, right? Like we, we outlined a specific project, like we know we knew what we needed, and and they came and delivered, right? And so it’s not like you have them on your payroll forever. So I’m a big fan of that too. Is is understanding, okay, here’s, here’s what we need to get. Let’s match somebody, let’s put them on a project. Let’s get that right. And then, and then, oftentimes, like your, your, you know, bookkeeper, or your, your controller, or something like that. They can maintain it once
Damon Pistulka 26:05
it’s built, yes, yes. Or we’ve even used, like you said, with the fractional people, and that’s that’s something that’s really cool. Over the last five to seven years, of fractional resources that we have available now, we even have them that that will come in and go, Okay, they’re helping us to analyze the end of month, and really talk through the management review of the financials on a monthly or quarterly basis, because it can help so much just doing that piece of it, like you said, certain project pieces of it. And then as we find projects outside that, it’s so nice to be able to have that resource when you need it. 100% good stuff. So as you’re, as you’re moving along, get helping, helping these people really understand and get their businesses, you know, breaking out of this friends and family trap, getting the right a team in place. What are some of the things that they’re they’re talking about and you’re hearing coming out of those founders mouths at that point?
Georgi Feidler 27:04
Yeah, I think when we, when we put an A player in a key seat, there’s, I call it like push versus pull. A lot of times with with a founder, when you have somebody who you know isn’t keeping up with the velocity of their seat, that’s, that’s how I describe it right? When you’re trying to scale or grow, there’s this idea that you’re going like this, right? Well, whoever’s in that seat also has to go like that, too, unless they’ve already been here, right? And oftentimes they might be going like this, right? They might be going like this, and it’s like this, right? So the gap gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It feels to them that they’re constantly having to push right, push to get this done, push to get that done. When you when you place an A player in a key seat, it starts to be pull. They’re pulling you along. They’re saying, Hey, come on. What about that? Like they’re pulling you with them. Right? All the boats start to start to rise. So I think that that’s one of the the key things we talked about clean financials. I want to go to process independence briefly as well. This is something most founders will say that they want, but in practice, they actually don’t like it at all, because they’re visionaries, and this is not sexy at all, right, like doing processes and SOPs, that’s that’s just there’s there’s there. That’s just not attractive, yeah, however, at scale, we know that businesses have to run on systems and processes, and not the founders head, or not whatever’s in the legacy team’s head, right? And so we had a distribution company, and as we were working on the succession plan, right, one of the things we realized is that the founder was very much a key component of the of the sales process, with the with the accounts and with the customers, and that became like a really mission critical piece to get covered, right? Like we had to put somebody in there as good or better, and we had to take the time to document those relationships and document the SOPs and the approach, right, and making sure that that that was unified. Otherwise we would have had a had a loss, right? We would have had a gap. So again, while it’s not sexy or fun or exciting, it is necessary, because you can’t scale what’s in your head. It just, it doesn’t it has to get out of there some way, right? Whether that’s through your voice or through your fingertips, or turning on a video and just recording yourself and putting it in AI, right? We have that now too, and we do do that, still has to get out of your head so that it can get into other people’s
Damon Pistulka 29:38
Yes, yes. And you make some great points, because the the tools we have available to us now are so much better than they were a few years ago, not just AI, but I mean, even just the point, I am amazed at how much I get videos. I use video anymore to explain a process to somebody so that. They can do it. It’s really crazy. So you’re getting these A players in the key seats. You’re helping them get going. What are? What are? What are the next roles? And we’re talking about people and process and getting that so you can get those people in the seats and get them going. Yeah.
Georgi Feidler 30:17
So I would say the the next side is for them to understand the growth levers. Oftentimes, the growth strategy also lives in the founders head, right? It was their idea. They baked this thing up, but it hasn’t been, you know, codified with the rest of the team. May not understand what, what’s the true growth, growth levers here? What do we pull to make more happen, right? Hopes, not a strategy. If you’re, if you’re, if your sales, you know strategy, or your growth strategy, is, we’re just going to keep doing more. You know, that’s no bueno, right? So I think that’s an important part as well, especially in the readiness and deal readiness, because your buyers are paying for tomorrow, not yesterday. So even though you might have the clean financials and you might have the process, they want to see the future, and it’s up to you, right? Even though you’re not part of the future because, because you’re selling it, but it’s up to you to create that for them, to share that, right? So we had a SAS client, and they were stuck in very reactive pivots. They were very focused on, like the product and engineering. That’s, that’s who they were in, the seat that they sat in. And this, this concept of, like a road map, saying what you’re going to do, not just for the next, you know, quarter, but for the next year, and actually tying that to revenue levers like, what? What does that? What’s the point in us doing this right or building this, if we haven’t identified that it’s, you know, position for a four time, Arr, growth, right, or something like that, right? What is it tied to? And so starting to help. You know, people think that way. Founder first and then, and then. You know, whoever your, your growth or sales leader is, but they but, but you can’t be the only one in your business that knows what the growth levers are. Other people have to know them too. Yeah, sorry. I mean you need to know them first, yeah. But then your other people have to know them as well.
Damon Pistulka 32:15
And that’s a great point, because, as you said a few times now, when that lives in the founders head, and you bring a players on, they really need to be part of that, because they can do some of the polling where you were pushing before. And that’s a that’s a big transition to go through. Because if I’m sitting here as a founder today, and I’ve always, you know, I’m stuck in that friends and family mode, and I’ve always got to be hey, I need to go talk to Steven, because I know he’s having, you know we got or Dave or Steve or Susan, or whoever it is, what we’re talking with. I have to do that, whereas when you get those A players, it’s more as I’m sharing the vision of where we want to go, and I want to empower you to get help us get there. Do your part and get there. Because, as you said a while ago, it’s like they’re getting on the other hand with the friends and family. The friends and family could be getting farther and farther from where you want to go, but those A players are really leading and pulling you there,
Georgi Feidler 33:22
yes, yes. And I think one important caveat to that, I see a lot of founders who live way up in the clouds and then way down into the dirt, and they forget that in between. And that’s super, super critical. So if you’re going to mobilize and delegate and empower other people, right to go and do whatever. Right? We’re talking about growth here in this situation, but whatever it could be, whatever you have to give them that in between and that for whatever reason, it can be really challenging, and I think it’s because it’s their baby, and they’ve created it, and they’re visionaries. And so they have the pie in the sky, big, you know, up in the clouds dream, but they know all the little pieces of everything. And so it’s really that they tend to go between way up here and way way down in the weeds. And what most especially a players need is they need that concept. They need that thread from the very, very big to the very, very detailed in order for them to act in a more powerful way. And sometimes that’s really hard for a founder to like articulate and like verbalize in words, right? Because it’s all in their head, and it just ends up oftentimes, coming out as this, like, very detailed, and it’s hard for people to follow, and they’re like, are you speaking another language? I’m not sure. Like, what are you trying to say? And so, so that’s a real that’s a real struggle, like, and I think anybody who’s ever had. Own business, and tried to scale it like they can. They can relate to that, because you step outside yourself and you really think about that, you should be able to relate to that. And it’s way easier said than done, like that’s challenging to do,
Damon Pistulka 35:12
yes, yes. And I think it, you know, it is, it is a process like any other, as there’s little steps that you can take along there, and there’s going to be steps backwards without even realizing it, and and going through so what is the what is the thing that you really enjoy about what you do the most?
Georgi Feidler 35:34
I think it’s probably like the founder journey can be a really lonely one, and you can kind of feel like everyone is looking to you for answers. And the truth of the matter is sometimes you have no freaking clue, like you just don’t know, but then you can’t say that, right? Like you can’t say that to the people who are looking to you for answers. And so I love coming alongside founders, like you can say that to me, like I’m not going to judge you, like you can say that to me. And then I just, I love when, when there’s that aha moment, right? There’s like, this progress, there’s this thing that that that was realized, or that happened, you know, from, from all of this. And so I think that that’s really what I what I like the most about it. One of my so I have, I have had two clients. They were actually siblings, and they were in the manufacturing, distribution kind of, kind of industry. They were second gen business owners. So their dad started the business, and then he retired and split the two. Sister got one, brother got another. So they were separated for 30 plus years, right? Both of them are boomers coming to retirement, and they both built their parts of their businesses very differently. One of them through kind of acquisition and a strong structure. The other one, it was just like, you know, crazy heroics, and we’re, you know, in it every single day, with huge profitability, right? Because it was a small but mighty team, and both founders wanted to step back, but classic conundrum, right? Like the tribal knowledge rested with them. So what we were able to do was get a successor in place. So I think that that’s, that’s really, really important, is leadership continuity. That’s, that’s the fourth pillar, however, that plays across, right, whether that is, you know, for for scaling, or whether that’s for stepping back, or whether that’s, you know, as a baby boomer, succession, leadership continuity is, is critical, right? You have to have, you can’t be the only one at the table. You have to have a leadership team. So we got a successor in place, and started, started working on that the sister saw what was going on. He she starts to see that her brother is going on vacations and he is, you know, not in, you know, work, not in the office a couple of days a week, you know, he’s starting to do these things right that are part of our part of stepping back. She’s like, Oh, man, I want a piece of that. So we actually put a shared services model in place for them, because she didn’t have the structure he did. And so put a shared services model in place, which allowed her to start stepping back much sooner. We didn’t have to hire a whole team and train everybody, right? We identified somebody internal to be her successor, and we started working on that. And it’s just extremely rewarding, like, now that we’re on the other side of it, right, like, we’re post system integration. We’re post like they’re not in the business anymore. They’re, you know, we put, we created a governance board and a unified executive leadership structure. So now, you know, what we do is just monthly sessions with the successor and the founder. I think that’s also really critical. I think it’s really impossible to give 3040, years of knowledge in in a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months. Yeah, right. And so we do monthly meetings for, you know, the next 18 months, where we’re really focused on that. But I love kind of asking the question like, Okay, how many, how many emails are you are you getting now per month? Like, we track it every single month, right? And seeing it go down, how many, you know, how many meetings are you in per week now? And we see it going down, you know, to see him at his beach house and, like, living his best life. And, you know, where, where three years ago, he was like, he couldn’t even commit. He’s like, maybe in the next five years, I might start to step back, like, that was his, yeah, that was his hope, you know, and now he’s in this situation. So it was just, it was that’s just so rewarding to see. And then we ended up doing with them a Popeye plan, which is similar to an employee stock ownership program, a little bit different. And just to see that, you know, the people, the very people who helped build those businesses over the last 20 years are now. Owners in that, yeah, right. Like, that’s just so, like, that’s so rewarding, and that that’s what I mean by that, like, stewarding that next generation, right? Their families are now changed because of that. Their future is now changed because of that. So I just, I love that.
Damon Pistulka 40:13
Yeah, I agree. That’s such a such a great thing, and it’s awesome what you’re doing to help people. So Georgie, if someone wants to get a hold of you and talk about, you know, hire, train, inspire what you do, or just, just chat with you. What’s the best way to do that?
Georgi Feidler 40:30
Yeah, so if you’re wondering whether your business could scale sale or run without you, we’ve built a free HTI readiness assessment so it benchmarks those four pillars that I was talking about, and it benchmarks your company against those. So you can go to either our website, hiretraininspire.com the Contact Us and type in HDI readiness assessment to request that, or you can find us on LinkedIn as
Damon Pistulka 40:53
well. Awesome, awesome. Well, it’s great to have you here today. And again, we had Georgie Fidler with hire train, inspire, talking about from scale to sale, escaping the friends and family trap to build a deal ready business. Thank you so much for being here today.
Georgi Feidler 41:12
It was my pleasure. So enjoyed it. Damon, awesome, awesome.
Damon Pistulka 41:15
I wanted to say thank you first once and before we get off. Ronald, thanks for dropping the comment in today. Love to have you in here. He said they need to be so talented and skilled. He dropped that we were talking about the A players. And I agree. All right, everyone, if you got into this late, you need to go back to the beginning and listen to Georgie from there on out, because if you are a founder that is sitting there wondering how the heck do I get to the next level? You may want to be talking with her. Thanks everyone, and we’ll be back again next week, George, you hang out and we will finish offline. You.
