“These business owners, they just have a lot of grit.” – Joe Gerber, CEO at Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., who has over two decades of C-suite experience and over a decade of buy- and sell-side M&A investment banking and private equity group experience. In this episode, Joe offers his expertise in bringing high-level strategy and operational experience to building, restructuring, and scaling businesses, providing them with strategies and initiatives that drive company growth with proven results.
Joe discusses the path that led him to his current role as a sort of “CEO for hire.” He details some of the lessons he’s learned from working with business owners, including the grit and willpower that it often takes to move the needle and get things done. He says that he quickly discovered issues constantly arise in a business and he needed to step back and create a process that could continually assess and improve the business.
Joe dives into an overview of his process, mainly focusing on the first one hundred days. He likes to start by organizing issues into bucket lists, and then force ranking each bucket for what needs to happen, who needs to work on it, and what the timing is on a solution. He then follows this up with weekly meetings where he can assess each department and keep them on track.
Joe goes deeper into the importance of creating an action plan for those first one hundred days. He likes to interview the board, senior management, etc., upon his arrival to truly find out what is and is not working and follow that up with a solid plan. He says that if a reset of the management team is necessary, it will happen within the first one hundred days.
Joe discusses how he builds trust with a business owner from the start when coming in to a new company. He knows that handing over the reins of a company can be a huge step for an owner, so he likes to include them in his first one hundred days process as much as possible[BY1] . Joe likes to remind owners that change is a constant. He is coming into a business because something wasn’t working or the owner wanted certain things to change from the start.
Joe shares what he looks for when hiring a CEO. Beyond experience, Joe likes to look at personality, cultural fit, adaptability, how goal-oriented the person is, and the balance between the industry knowledge and the financial knowledge. He stresses the importance of considering what you as the owner want to accomplish by hiring a CEO and deciding which of the above characteristics will help you achieve those goals.
Lastly, he shares two action items for owners:
1. Using a process like this allows an owner to be objective about what's working and what's not with the company and to figure that out well in advance of the five-year last growth period before selling a business.
2. Augment the management team and get the floor laid out properly, really getting the company buffed and polished well in advance of a sale or exit.
Disclosure: Information presented herein is for discussion and illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the speakers are as of the date of the recording and are subject to change. These views are not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities, and should not be relied on as financial, tax or legal advice. You should consult with your attorney, finance professional or accountant before implementing any transactions and/or strategies concerning your finances.
“These business owners, they just have a lot of grit.” – Joe Gerber, CEO at Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., who has over two decades of C-suite experience and over a decade of buy- and sell-side M&A investment banking and private equity group experience. In this episode, Joe offers his expertise in bringing high-level strategy and operational experience to building, restructuring, and scaling businesses, providing them with strategies and initiatives that drive company growth with proven results.
Joe discusses the path that led him to his current role as a sort of “CEO for hire.” He details some of the lessons he’s learned from working with business owners, including the grit and willpower that it often takes to move the needle and get things done. He says that he quickly discovered issues constantly arise in a business and he needed to step back and create a process that could continually assess and improve the business.
Joe dives into an overview of his process, mainly focusing on the first one hundred days. He likes to start by organizing issues into bucket lists, and then force ranking each bucket for what needs to happen, who needs to work on it, and what the timing is on a solution. He then follows this up with weekly meetings where he can assess each department and keep them on track.
Joe goes deeper into the importance of creating an action plan for those first one hundred days. He likes to interview the board, senior management, etc., upon his arrival to truly find out what is and is not working and follow that up with a solid plan. He says that if a reset of the management team is necessary, it will happen within the first one hundred days.
Joe discusses how he builds trust with a business owner from the start when coming in to a new company. He knows that handing over the reins of a company can be a huge step for an owner, so he likes to include them in his first one hundred days process as much as possible[BY1] . Joe likes to remind owners that change is a constant. He is coming into a business because something wasn’t working or the owner wanted certain things to change from the start.
Joe shares what he looks for when hiring a CEO. Beyond experience, Joe likes to look at personality, cultural fit, adaptability, how goal-oriented the person is, and the balance between the industry knowledge and the financial knowledge. He stresses the importance of considering what you as the owner want to accomplish by hiring a CEO and deciding which of the above characteristics will help you achieve those goals.
Lastly, he shares two action items for owners:
1. Using a process like this allows an owner to be objective about what's working and what's not with the company and to figure that out well in advance of the five-year last growth period before selling a business.
2. Augment the management team and get the floor laid out properly, really getting the company buffed and polished well in advance of a sale or exit.
Disclosure: Information presented herein is for discussion and illustrative purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by the speakers are as of the date of the recording and are subject to change. These views are not intended as a recommendation to buy or sell any securities, and should not be relied on as financial, tax or legal advice. You should consult with your attorney, finance professional or accountant before implementing any transactions and/or strategies concerning your finances.
00:00:00:14 - 00:00:24:15
Joe Seetoo
Welcome to The Ripcord Moment. I'm your host, Joe Seetoo. Today, we're joined by Joe Gerber. Joe's got two plus decades of experience at different executive leadership levels in the C-suite. His career focuses traditionally on growth and organizational transformation, and the industries he's had a variety of experience in over the many decades have been in aerospace, health care, and a variety of other industries.
00:00:24:24 - 00:00:59:02
Joe Seetoo
His experience includes private equity, working in turnaround situations, over 70 deals completed on the buy side and sell side, whether they're mergers, acquisitions, recaps, etc. Joe, I'm really excited for our discussion today. And you've really cultivated this role as a CEO for hire, where you go into these different companies and you're able to really help work with founders and then take those businesses really to the next level and institutionalize sort of the mom and pop businesses and take them on to the next level.
00:00:59:12 - 00:01:14:13
Joe Seetoo
And also, one of the things we're going to get into today is you've crafted this very thoughtful process on how to think through, how an owner can think through actually interviewing who is the right CEO to help take the company to the next level. So Joe, excited for our discussion today.
00:01:15:05 - 00:01:19:02
Joe Gerber
Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.
00:01:19:15 - 00:01:27:15
Joe Seetoo
You know, give us just a little bit of your background. You've got obviously a tremendous amount of experience and sort of what's brought you to where you are at this point in your career today.
00:01:28:18 - 00:01:58:22
Joe Gerber
So I spent about 12 years in investment banking doing, as you said, buy side and sell side work. And I had an opportunity to hop the fence and move into a leadership role, president role at a manufacturer and spent nine years there growing the company and eventually acting as the banker to sell it. And I had such a good time on the sell side, actually, on the operator side that I stuck with it.
00:01:58:22 - 00:02:09:29
Joe Gerber
So here I am, six companies later. And you know, besides running those six companies, I've helped people interview and hire CEOs and also coach them.
00:02:10:14 - 00:02:29:08
Joe Seetoo
Yeah, it's interesting. Your path almost seems perhaps maybe a bit reverse where I would imagine a lot of people get experience running businesses, you know, coming out of business school and then they realize, gosh, this is a lot of work. You know, I want to have more fun after going through the transaction. I've been through a sale, you know, a merger, whatever it is a recap.
00:02:29:17 - 00:02:37:17
Joe Seetoo
And I want to take that experience and go, maybe into investment banking or consulting. Yeah, it seems like your experience was a little bit more the opposite.
00:02:38:09 - 00:03:00:29
Joe Gerber
Well, I, you know, I found myself in banking and doing so many deals, I wondered I would go in and meet with either boards or the current ownership, the company, and I'd tell them what they need to do to buff and polish the company, get it ready for sale. And oftentimes they'd look at me with this blank stare like, What are you talking about?
00:03:00:29 - 00:03:43:06
Joe Gerber
You know how much work that takes, right? And I was the banker. I didn't understand what it took. And so when I hopped the fence, I quickly learned how difficult it is to really move the needle and do it continuously over the years. And the experience in banking gave me I gave me a just a realization that that, you know, these business owners, they just had a lot of grit and a lot of the you know, a lot of the movement they made was just because they had the grit and they stuck with it.
00:03:43:26 - 00:03:45:26
Joe Seetoo
Sort of that willpower to push that rock up that hill.
00:03:46:16 - 00:04:05:17
Joe Gerber
Right. Right. But when I asked them why, why are you selling? They would always tell me very much the same thing. You know, it's just like I got into it because I was an engineer. I loved doing the design. I'm tired of dealing with the people issues or the work comp issues or the tax issues, you know, dealing with the ups and downs.
00:04:05:17 - 00:04:28:16
Joe Gerber
I just I want to get back to do what I fell in love with at the beginning, which was the engineering or the sales or the finance part of it. And so when I came into the operator role, I'm, you know, I'm pretty disciplined and I began to run the first company. And I found that, you know, I hit this issue.
00:04:28:21 - 00:04:39:09
Joe Gerber
And the first issue I hit was a work comp issue, right? So I was pretty creative and tried to resolve the issue creatively. And I did that and I was excited and I'm like, okay, you know.
00:04:39:12 - 00:04:40:00
Joe Seetoo
You had that big win, right.
00:04:40:00 - 00:05:02:28
Joe Gerber
You're ready grow, right? And then bam, next issue. And so, you know, I figured out over the first nine years that I needed to step back from the business and create a process where I can just continually improve the business. I can continually assess the people and the talent, assess the new business coming in and the growth.
00:05:03:06 - 00:05:31:17
Joe Gerber
And that actually made me feel a lot more comfortable about running the company because I was doing it more from an ambition point of view. I was taking that time to step back and that over the years, over the six companies that I've run, really was a perfected model for how I step into a company for the first hundred days and then for that process until the company sold or I exit.
00:05:32:09 - 00:05:55:04
Joe Seetoo
So maybe you can give us kind of a high level overview of what your overall process is. And then I heard you mentioned the first hundred days, which I'm imagining is sort of this really in-depth analysis evaluation period, observation period. But can you maybe give us an overarching sense of your process, or walk us through the overall process and then more specifically, some of the details along the way.
00:05:56:03 - 00:06:28:13
Joe Gerber
So the overall process is really about capturing issues in the form of buckets. And so a bucket might be talent, a bucket might be production, a bucket might be engineering, a bucket might be marketing. Right. And what I would do is throughout the days and the weeks and months, I would come upon an issue and it would go on the bucket list in the appropriate area.
00:06:28:13 - 00:07:05:10
Joe Gerber
And then each week I would evaluate that bucket list and force rank each bucket for what needs to happen, who needs to work on it, and what's the timing of it's solution. Okay. And so for me, it's a continuous improvements process for the company, but it allows me to give equal weight to all issues. And by doing that, I'm taking that a bit from Covey's First Things First book because it's first things first, you know, in a very simplified way is take all aspects of your life and set it equal and then set the goals to accomplish those things.
00:07:05:10 - 00:07:26:20
Joe Gerber
And then that goes up into these micro things you can do to accomplish the goals. And so if I take that into the business environment and say, okay, a company has, let's say, ten different buckets, right? And if there's a safety issue or I'm having some talent issues or whatever, all those things go on the bucket list. They get force ranked based on sort of the need to complete right away.
00:07:26:20 - 00:07:51:27
Joe Gerber
And then I can assign those out. And then in my weekly meetings, I can then I can ask each department about what they're doing to advance those areas and keep them on track. And then I can manage the company basically on a, you know, what's working and what's not. Are we on track or off track? And then allow the ownership issues to be at the level it needs to be.
00:07:52:14 - 00:08:17:12
Joe Gerber
So I'm a big, big fan of each department is a functional area and there's functions and accountability, right? So if I step back from that look at, you know, what are the functional areas? Are they working, are they not? Who's responsible? Are they keeping it on track, off track and so forth? Right. But when I step into a business, no matter how large I do an assessment.
00:08:17:12 - 00:08:39:23
Joe Gerber
And this is taken from sort of Roosevelt's famous 1933 speech where he you know, he talked about the first hundred days. And so CEOs are measured by 100 days. Presidents are measured by 100 days. So what I do is I measure myself by the first 100 days, and it helps me set expectations with the board or with the folks that I'm working for.
00:08:40:06 - 00:09:06:20
Joe Gerber
I come in and through the first 100 days, I assess the company in a lot of different areas. And then pull that information together and force rank it into an action plan for the first 100 days so that I'm getting all the information I need from all perspectives. I may interview the board, I may interview senior management, distill down what's working and what's not working, and then lay out that plan.
00:09:06:20 - 00:09:19:25
Joe Gerber
And within the first 100 days, I'll have a reset of the management team in case there needs to be any change manager there. And I'll have a basically a large force rank list of issues and then I'll, yeah.
00:09:20:10 - 00:09:41:11
Joe Seetoo
Well, I would imagine through this sort of process that you're going through, you're obviously fleshing out what critical issues there are. You're coming up with this action plan. Do you find that that helps to build the trust with the owner? Because I have to imagine that that's one of the most critical issues that you deal with when you're dealing with, especially a founder.
00:09:41:12 - 00:10:00:26
Joe Seetoo
Right. You know, entrepreneur that started this business. This is a huge leap to actually hand over the reins to somebody else who in many ways, I would imagine is somewhat of a stranger. Right. Maybe you've had some relationship with them where you're being referred in. And so this building of trust, I have to imagine is critical.
00:10:01:06 - 00:10:23:08
Joe Gerber
It's huge. So I do that in a couple of ways. The first is I interview the owner and I interview the owner the same way I interview the management team about what's working and what's not working. All of the information gets distilled down and shared back with the owner. Okay. So basically he's seeing everything or she's seeing everything that I'm seeing.
00:10:23:12 - 00:10:43:11
Joe Gerber
Right. And then the second way I build the trust is I do what I say I'm going to do. So I go in. And to the extent that there's things that need to get changed, I've already shared that back with the owner and had the feedback on that. Joe, you have no idea what you're talking about. I tried that 20 years ago.
00:10:43:17 - 00:10:43:29
Joe Seetoo
Right.
00:10:44:11 - 00:11:02:08
Joe Gerber
Or it's like, okay, they really said that. Oh, that's really an issue. Right. So we can have that conversation and then I can lay out an extended plan to accomplish these things. But within the early part of the 100 day plan, I'm getting early wins.
00:11:02:22 - 00:11:03:01
Joe Seetoo
Okay.
00:11:03:15 - 00:11:14:29
Joe Gerber
Okay. I'm making some changes that either the owner thought was really important or that we agreed would be something that would move the needle pretty early on. And that tends to help out quite a bit.
00:11:15:03 - 00:11:29:13
Joe Seetoo
And are these like small, I mean, like little small ways just so that you're not disrupting the culture, you're not coming in like saying, hey, this is because change is not comfortable for most organizations. Right?
00:11:29:14 - 00:11:50:23
Joe Gerber
Right. So there's a couple of analogies, right? Who moved my cheese is a perfect example. That's just right. People absolutely don't like to change. But I remind the owner or the board that I'm there because and not to their fault, but whatever was going on before wasn't working.
00:11:50:27 - 00:11:51:24
Joe Seetoo
Just wasn't working.
00:11:51:29 - 00:12:13:22
Joe Gerber
It just wasn't working. I'm there because things need to change. I talk to people about change and we talk about how change is going to be a constant. But if you're okay with participating in the decisions, then it's not that bad. Right. And the other thing you mentioned is like coming in like a bull in a china shop.
00:12:13:25 - 00:12:34:21
Joe Gerber
Right? That's something that I don't do. And I don't recommend to anybody. And by the way, the Mythbusters on Discovery Center actually put a bull in a china shop and the bull walked delicately either in or around the china, they added more bulls and all the bulls walked delicately in and around the china. So I use the term bull in the china shop because people understand what it is.
00:12:34:21 - 00:12:58:12
Joe Gerber
But I have to mention that actually the opposite occurs. I come in and I actually present myself as the village idiot when I walk into the room. I'm not, look, I'm not in engineering. I haven't been part of the company. I ask a lot of questions. I'm very interested in what's happening. Why do we do it like this?
00:12:58:13 - 00:13:27:17
Joe Gerber
Why is this not working? And by asking the questions, I'm feeling for two things. One is for sensitivities around issues. Right. And maybe a bit more is sometimes people or departments are so defensive of the way they do things because they're so afraid of change that I know I can't hit that one head on. I have to actually bring them into the solution and get them to the solution on their own.
00:13:27:24 - 00:13:30:09
Joe Gerber
And then it's their solution.
00:13:30:09 - 00:13:48:00
Joe Seetoo
And it works. Yeah. Got it. All right. So this is kind of you walked us through the first 100 days. You've done your evaluation, you've knocked out some small wins. Yeah. And so at the end of the 100 days, is that when, I'm imagining, that's when you're presenting your findings to the CEO or before that?
00:13:48:00 - 00:14:12:26
Joe Gerber
There's typically a, you know, if it's a CEO or chairman, it's typically a weekly check in for the first 100 days. Okay. It just keeps them sort of in the process. But usually at about 60 days, I've changed out the 60 to 75 days I've changed out the management team. If that's what is required.
00:14:12:26 - 00:14:31:23
Joe Gerber
So the evaluations very early, you know, I conduct a search. Mm hmm. That search is going on in parallel. I've looked at sort of major issues, and. And in the back half of the 90 days, I'm hitting my stride.
00:14:32:02 - 00:14:32:16
Joe Seetoo
Okay?
00:14:32:16 - 00:14:53:21
Joe Gerber
And that's where the owner is basically seeing or the board is basically seeing that we're accomplishing some critical things. The momentum is there. And the reason why it's about 100 days is because it's the first quarter. So typically we're not going into a company, right, 30 days after the end of the quarter. I have a board meeting.
00:14:54:01 - 00:15:14:22
Joe Gerber
Yeah, right. And the question at every board meeting is, what have you done for me lately? So that's the marker for me as a CEO to walk in there and say, this is where you were, this is where you are today. And this is what I plan on accomplishing over the next three quarters.
00:15:15:02 - 00:15:40:22
Joe Seetoo
Yeah. So let's maybe we could pivot the conversation, you've given us kind of an outline of what you do. Well, one last question, actually, on your process. What is your I guess, your sort of system that you use or do you have one in terms of tracking these various initiatives that you want to accomplish? Are you doing this in a, you know, a certain type of software, Excel?
00:15:40:23 - 00:15:45:29
Joe Seetoo
I mean, a good old notepad. What, you know, what's the Joe Gerber method of staying organized?
00:15:46:12 - 00:16:05:23
Joe Gerber
So I don't buy a cantelope without spreadsheeting it. So I spreadsheet everything. So basically I have one workbook. I have tabs in the workbook. I have that bucket list, right? The 10 or 15 different areas that's on tab 1. Let's say the 100 day plan is on tab 2 any issues or contacts that I need are in tab 3.
00:16:05:23 - 00:16:28:02
Joe Gerber
I just run this workbook so that it's virtual. It's wherever I am. I tend to walk around with a printed bucket sheet in my back pocket when I'm walking around. I can't sit in my office during this process. Yeah, I'm almost 90% in the company, in the field, meeting customers, trade shows, wherever. So I need to be on the fly.
00:16:28:17 - 00:16:36:10
Joe Seetoo
So you've created this sort of a system that ties sort of business plan, it sounds like, that you use for every time you go into a company.
00:16:36:21 - 00:16:36:27
Joe Gerber
Yeah.
00:16:37:11 - 00:16:52:15
Joe Seetoo
Okay. That's helpful. So now let's kind of pivot the conversation to your process that you coach people through if they're thinking about hiring a CEO for hire, kind of like you. What does that look like? What are sort of your critical interview questions and the how? Yeah, walk us through that.
00:16:53:00 - 00:17:18:21
Joe Gerber
Okay. So there's a handful of things that I found useful in looking to hire a CEO and the least useful really is, you know, experience. And I say that because, you know, experience is pretty easy to figure out either by sort of resume background checks, checking the person out within the industry and so forth.
00:17:18:21 - 00:17:56:02
Joe Gerber
You know, what's the person done? The more important issue for me is always and this is sort of a one third, two thirds thing is sort of personality, cultural fit, adaptability, how goal oriented is the person and the balance between really the industry knowledge and the financial knowledge. So I say that because when I've coached people or helped people hire CEOs, I look at, people fall into really three and a half types.
00:17:57:01 - 00:18:22:20
Joe Gerber
And I'll go with a half a type first. A half a type is the child or the child of a family business. Right. Or maybe that child doesn't have the personality or the skills or the drive or whatever other sort of features that the former or the parent has. And so that's the half.
00:18:22:20 - 00:18:47:09
Joe Gerber
And that's not really a hiring situation. But sometimes that CEO was in that family business and then exited. And so their CEO experience doesn't come from a traditional CEO experience, which is the other three categories. And the other three categories are basically the engineer, scientist, tech type. Right. The financial type. Right.
00:18:47:18 - 00:18:51:11
Joe Seetoo
Or a CEO for hire background or accounting background.
00:18:51:19 - 00:19:06:12
Joe Gerber
Right, or the sales type. Right. And so you have to look at the culture and you have to look at what you want to accomplish to determine sort of which type you're really wanting to hire. So you have a lot of engineer types that may not have an MBA.
00:19:06:12 - 00:19:28:15
Joe Gerber
And, you know, the plus with them is that let's say your company is a very sort of engineering based company then great. They're a great fit. They'll understand the business really well. Maybe they're a great cultural fit, but they're always going to be, their weakness is going to be tying the business itself and the operations to the financial performance.
00:19:28:15 - 00:19:49:29
Joe Gerber
And how do I grow a company? Because growing a company has great working capital demands and you sort of have to understand that on the fly. So the weakness of an engineer science type that doesn't have an MBA, let's say, is that they may have a sort of a that weakness in finance.
00:19:50:21 - 00:20:16:07
Joe Seetoo
Let's talk real quick because I think there's one interesting point I want to try and flesh out here and that is identifying the type of individual but also the lifecycle of the business. Right. Because you mentioned the word growth and the working capital need. And so I would imagine that if a business that was more in steady state, not in growth mode, if you had more of an engineer type, perhaps they might be more appropriate for a business at a different life cycle.
00:20:16:19 - 00:20:47:15
Joe Gerber
Correct. Correct. So I one of the six companies I've run, I was hired to do thoughtful growth, maintained steady state. The issue there is that our customers wanted us to grow. And so then we began to grow and we were growing very quickly. And the owner and the board didn't really grasp like why we should grow. And I said, well, you know, the customer basically said, it's either you or somebody else, so it's got to be us.
00:20:47:27 - 00:21:14:06
Joe Gerber
And so the thing is that we grew very quickly that year, but we had to plan the working capital so that all our money wasn't tied up in inventory. It was actually flushed through into product. So that's super important. And oftentimes companies want to grow before they sell. So CEOs are brought in to basically, you know, five year growth to sell the company and an exit.
00:21:14:06 - 00:21:38:17
Joe Gerber
So financial types. So financial types. Right. They'll come in and sometimes the board or the CEO or the board or the chairman will bring in an ex-CFO to run the company. The challenge there is that, and if they want the company to grow, the typically the CFO won't be growth oriented. They'll be sort of cash focused.
00:21:38:17 - 00:22:09:09
Joe Gerber
Right. And they'll end up constraining the business in terms of its flexibility. And so that's typically a challenge. But look, you know, personalities weigh in here as well. And there's been a lot of great financial types that have grown companies. The sales types are sort of like the engineer scientist types. And they are very much sort of growth driven.
00:22:09:09 - 00:22:31:28
Joe Gerber
And they'll come in and they'll talk about, hey, I grew this, I grew this, I grew this. I could grow your thing. And, you know, they may even have a bit of an engineering background, which is really great. So you'll get that growth. The thing to look out for, though, is that oftentimes they can be outside the company selling and not looking at or not focused on
00:22:32:19 - 00:22:48:27
Joe Gerber
the production, the design, the quality, some of these factors along with the financial piece. So what I try to do when I interview is I figure out who I'm interviewing and then I'm asking questions about the other areas. Yeah.
00:22:49:18 - 00:22:50:22
Joe Seetoo
That need fleshing out.
00:22:51:15 - 00:23:21:17
Joe Gerber
Right. So simple questions, you know, around their understanding of working capital. If it's a manufacturing business, you know, you want to understand do they really understand how cash flows through a manufacturing business? And if you increase the demands on basically the growth, the sales, right, what does that do to inventory and what does that do to cash and what's their capabilities in terms of that understanding?
00:23:22:20 - 00:23:44:25
Joe Gerber
Look, I don't have an engineering degree, but I spent a couple of years in engineering and an MBA and then in the financial world. And so I do think that if you bring somebody in as a CEO and they have a bit of experience in a couple of areas, it's really worthwhile for the company.
00:23:45:02 - 00:24:15:27
Joe Gerber
But I would say that personality and cultural fit, adaptability is really, really critical. Yeah, really critical because, you know, they, you know, losing somebody. You know, for me, the biggest challenge I have in being a CEO and I know this is my challenge, I learned this a long time ago, is basically seeing issues as just issues more like speed bumps than walls.
00:24:15:27 - 00:24:16:07
Joe Gerber
Right.
00:24:16:21 - 00:24:19:04
Joe Seetoo
I love that analogy, that's a good analogy. Yeah.
00:24:19:13 - 00:24:45:19
Joe Gerber
Right. Because for a CEO is faced with an issue. Right. They can be paralyzed on that issue for and lose a lot of ground. Right. And the just the management, the oversight goes away. Yeah. So if all the issues just hit the bucket list, somebody is in charge of, you know, somebody owns the issue and you're monitoring it seems to work really well.
00:24:45:27 - 00:25:12:00
Joe Seetoo
Empowering your team to help be part of the solution. Yeah, well, these are great concepts, Joe. You know, we could spend a whole day talking about your process, but, you know, this idea of the cultural fit, identifying the type, focusing in the interview around their strengths and weaknesses, I think lining up the personality type with the right sort of stage of the company, and that first 100 day onboarding process you have really hammered through.
00:25:13:09 - 00:25:29:03
Joe Seetoo
What would you say, you know, as we kind of wind up our discussion today, I always like to ask our guests for what we call two action items for when we call it the ripcord moment, when an owner actually goes to sell the business. Right. It's my belief that they have to have their parachute, that ripcord can't fail.
00:25:29:09 - 00:25:45:02
Joe Seetoo
And so it's better to be prepared ahead of time. What are two action items that owners should consider sooner than later if they're thinking about this sort of transition to institutionalizing their business, bringing in outside professional advisors like yourself, what are some of those things they should do?
00:25:46:08 - 00:26:11:15
Joe Gerber
Well, I think that if they're looking to sell a company in five years or so and they're at the point where they want to bring in a CEO to just sort of drive the business through its last growth cycle. Yeah. It'll allow them to step back a bit and be a true chairman or be a true sort of coach to that CEO.
00:26:12:16 - 00:26:37:23
Joe Gerber
But this process, I would say sort of two action items are, you know, using a process like this allows that owner to be a bit objective about what's working and what's not with the company and getting that all fixed and trued up and figure it out well in advance, well in advance of that five year sort of last growth period.
00:26:38:10 - 00:27:11:11
Joe Gerber
Super, super key. And then look, you know, the buyers are really smart and they go in and you don't really want to do anything that's going to disrupt the business or cause the business to go off course or the five year period prior to the sale. But it's a great opportunity to augment the management team and get the floor laid out properly, really get the company buffed and polished well in advance.
00:27:11:23 - 00:27:23:12
Joe Gerber
And that way they'll look back, you know, the buyer's looking back a few years and goes, wow, this is a really well-run, great management team going off. Yeah, it's all set.
00:27:24:00 - 00:27:36:13
Joe Seetoo
Wonderful. Well, Joe, that's you know, I really appreciate you taking the time today to share with us your experience and pearls of wisdom, some of your processes. If anyone in our audience would like to get a hold of you, how might they reach you?
00:27:37:03 - 00:27:41:22
Joe Gerber
My LinkedIn profile. I'm easily able to be contacted through that.
00:27:41:25 - 00:27:48:19
Joe Seetoo
Joe, thanks again for your time. We're going to go ahead and wrap it up. And this is Joe Seetoo signing off from The Ripcord Moment. And we'll see you next time.