Latest / Did I Write That?! / "The $50M Consulting Firm": About the Book
Transcript
- Adina Samuels: You're listening to Did I Write That? Featuring conversations with authors published under Entre Shah Press. They share the behind the scenes of the actual writing of the book, the things they wish they'd known, and what you need to know about the book that will soon be in your hands. I'm Adina Samuels, founder of Entre Sha Press, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to our newest author. Let's get to it. Mark, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Please introduce yourself to our listeners. Hi, I'm Mark Ortung. I'm CEO at Project Works. And before that, I was CEO of a company called Nexiant. And a lot of the content on the book is about Nexiant. And in addition to being CEO of a number of companies, you're also published author now. Yes. Thank you. So congratulations on that one. Thanks. Mark, tell me a little about the book in your words. What's it about? Who's it for? Yeah, it's about ⁓ starting and growing a consulting firm. And ⁓ I went through a process, I took over a consulting firm and had all kinds of challenges before we figured out how to grow it. And ⁓ I learned a lot and it the book helped me kind of unpack what had happened and what were some of the walls we hit and I wanted to share that with the world, with others that were doing that. Yeah, so you start the book with was saying that this is the book that we wish we had had. What specific mistake or moment ⁓ made you realize you you really could have used this book ⁓ while you were kind of in the trenches of growing your own firm? Yeah, I took over a firm that had gone from zero to thirty-nine million ⁓ pretty quickly, five years. And then I As a new CEO and new to running a services firm took it from thirty nine million to thirty-four million. ⁓ which was so that was pretty painful. In retrospect, what I learned is that we were going through a a transformation where the founder had done everything before me and we hit this growth wall. And I had to learn how to change the organization into a much more decentralized organization to get past that wall. I didn't really understand that until a few years later, but I wish I had known that at the time. Yeah, you use these walls as sections of your book, basically, the roadblocks that founders face as they grow from one phase of the business to another. So how would you articulate that wall? What was getting in the way then and what needed to be true to take it to the next step? Yeah, I think there's two major walls you hit. The first one, and actually it's kind of contradictory advice. In the beginning, we tell you the founder should do pretty much everything. Like sell the work, work with the clients, sell more work, make sure they're happy. The first wall is the founder runs out of time and just becomes the bottleneck for everything. And we had passed that. Generally, you hire a staff and bring them in and they help extend the founder's time. And ⁓ we had done that, but then again. They extend the founder's time, but the founder still runs out of time again. And so I when I came in, everything went through the founder. So everyone came to me with everything from can you check my proposal for its fonts? to like every like every decision in the company came through me. And I was like, this is crazy. I can't I can't keep up with it. So I kind of naturally moved away from that. I later learned that's a very typical wall. And most founders don't get past it. They don't break through and become decentralized in how they set up the the management. Yeah. I ⁓ when I when I first read your manuscript, I I felt like you were talking right to me. And I w felt so exposed as a small business owner, I was like, ⁓ I guess well, on the one hand it's not only me. Which is good, but on the other hand, you've just named my problem and told me exactly how to fix it. So what am I waiting for? Yeah. So I yeah. It is challenging to fix, in my opinion. ⁓ and I think I got lucky that I was not the founder. So I came in and I hadn't had these five years of habits. I was just trying to figure out how to make the company keep growing. So I don't know. Like I talked to a lot of founders who hit thirty five, forty million and bounce back. And do that two or three times and never get through the wall. And I think that they are not moving to a leadership team that can really begin to run parts of the business and really take over. I ultimately ended up with five people who ran geographic regions. We called them general managers. And they basically were running their own little companies. And so I kind of felt like we took our wall and multiplied it by five. Like we could now, they could each go for quite a while before they hit a wall. ⁓ those kind of I'm just curious, Mark. This this isn't in the book, but ⁓ how did you manage to stay on as CEO while losing five million dollars for the company? It was actually really close. There was a board meeting where ⁓ they were debating whether to fire me, I'm pretty sure. And so I actually opened it by saying, I'm pretty sure you're you're gonna talk about whether to fire me, and here's how I see the pros and the cons, and you guys can go talk about it. Which I think w we did not have a board that liked conflict. So I think that was kinda like a you know, like ⁓ wha what? You know, but that was what they were gonna talk about and it was close. I think they ultimately they told me later, they decided that the disruption of trying to find a new CEO would have been really bad, so they gave me more time. And luckily that was the bottom and we kinda turned it around. ⁓ and and then we began growing quite quickly. So ⁓ yeah, just you got lucky. I guess it's another piece of advice, like address the elephant in the room if you know everyone's thinking about it. So I'll ⁓ I'll take that one too. Yeah. Tons of nuggets in your book. I wanna talk a little bit about the writing experience. So you co-wrote this book ⁓ with Doug. ⁓ tell me a little bit about how that actually worked. Like you two have very different backgrounds. You can speak a little bit to what Doug does, but how did you A decide to write this book together and then B actually go about writing it? Yeah, Doug and I are pretty different. And I wanted to work with him because he had started Provoke. So he went he did the journey from zero to ⁓ yeah, it was about a couple hundred people at its peak. And so ⁓ we wanted to kind of marry the zero to two hundred people and then the two hundred people to eleven hundred people kind of part of the journey. We also ⁓ he's very much a numbers guy and he doesn't really like to write. I'm a numbers guy, but I also like to write. So that was kind of an interesting dynamic. Like he would rather just like talk to somebody and have them help capture it. And I would actually rather like to write write it myself. I'm kind of particular about the wording and all that. So That was different. And then he's from New Zealand. And he has these great, we call them Dugisms. He just has even, you know, he just has these great expressions that to me are completely new and I love them. So I was trying to have the two voices come through in the book because I just felt like his voice was awesome and we just needed to capture the way he thinks about the world and what he's learned. Yeah, totally. And I think what you've managed to do is share your different expertise. your different fields of expertise, but together in a very cohesive way. Like you ultimately ended up agreeing on the points of ⁓ advice that you could give your readers because both of your names are on the book. So somehow you managed to to work together on that. I can't imagine it being easy. No, but it was fun. Yeah. Great. I I wanna ask a little bit about the goals of writing this book. Like what made you two write it at all? It's good question. ⁓ I think well, it started from me. One of our marketing people said, Can you write a blog that explains what you did at Nexian? And I thought about that and I was like, I don't think so. I think it was like seven years of my life. I think it would take me longer than one, you know, one blog. So I ⁓ I started writing it by doing it was about thirty five blogs that were just little snippets. And ⁓ Just doing that a little bit at a time. And then once I had all that, I was like, we should somebody came and said we should really stitch this together and make it a book. ⁓ and I want and then I wanted to get Doug involved to get the zero to to thirty kind of piece of it as well. So it kind of came together over time in pieces. Interesting. Did you ever think about writing a book? Was that something that you wanted to do, you know, at some point in your career? I don't know that I'd ever had time. I generally busy with the my so I it's n I hadn't really thought about it to be honest. ⁓ yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool though. Like I think the article turned book is a is a growing path for like building your book. I think a lot of executives realize like personal branding is super important, thought leadership is super important. The idea of building an entire book feels maybe too much to to chew at one point, but an article once a week or so is enough to, you know, you you can commit to that. And then all of a sudden, what, one year later you have 52 articles and a 52,000 word book or something like that. So ⁓ I like that approach a lot. I think that's very clever. ⁓ in your mind, once we release this book and it's out in the world, how will you define this project as successful? It's really it's kind of a book that I think will hopefully help a lot of people in consulting firms specifically. But people with small businesses generally I think it's a similar set of challenges. So yeah, so for me it's really about ⁓ people getting to read it and coming back and saying, Yeah, that really helped me think about where I am with my business and what I want to do and and ⁓ really grow their companies. So people can use what's in the book to grow their company or to get past some of these walls, that'd be a success. Yeah. So when I get to fifty million, Mark, ⁓ what do I do? What do I do after that? Yeah, I so we got it we actually got an executive to 130 million and we were about to break. ⁓ we sold the company. I think we had these five people that ran their own businesses and they were each hitting their twenty-five, thirty million dollar wall. So one debate I w we were kind of having this, how are we gonna fix this? One is get two or three more of them and sort of split up the business a little bit more and maybe you can get it to two hundred million. And the other then I was after that, I was like, I don't know. I don't know. There is probably something well established for two hundred plus million, but yeah, I don't know what it is. I haven't gotten that far yet. ⁓ yeah, it's an unfathomable number for me. But I think the one thing that I've learned in business, ⁓ Also in book writing it's the same thing. It's it really starts with your mindset, which sounds so wishy washy and kind of like, you know, woo-woo, but ⁓ from the best business books that I've read have all centered on this idea that you have to believe you can and then and then you can. I is that part of your philosophy and journey as well? Yeah, there's a book called Mindset that I make everybody read, actually. So a hundred percent. ⁓ and it's all about failing and learning from it and just continuing on and ⁓ having a growth mindset. Yeah, Carol's weck is a a classic and I I I expect your book to be sitting ⁓ on the same shelves as hers very soon. That would be Well, Mark, thank you so much for sitting down with me and chatting a little bit about the book. ⁓ I'm excited for our readers to get their hands on it and we'll share the links ⁓ as soon as they're available. Sounds good. Thank you. Okay, absolutely. That wraps up another episode of Did I Write That? featuring the outstanding authors published under Antrasha Press. If you want to learn more, check out our website, Antrasha Press.com. Follow me on LinkedIn and Let's make sure to get the stories that the world needs to hear out into the world.