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Building Flexible Tech Solutions: The Elevate Digital Story with Adam Morgan | Staffing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:17
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:20
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:23
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:25
My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Adam Morgan, Co
0:29
Founder and CEO of Elevate Digital.
0:32
They ensure that you have access to the right technical talent in
0:35
a flexible delivery model. They don't pin their clients
0:38
down to a specific model, but rather give them a range of
0:41
flexible engagement options including consulting, training
0:45
and a variety of staffing options.
0:47
They fill the space between in house talent and a traditional
0:50
consultancy and have experiences across a wide range of
0:54
platforms. They've been recognized on Inc
0:56
5000's list of fastest growing private companies in America for
1:00
the fourth year in a row and honor that only a fraction of 1%
1:03
of companies can claim. You'll recognize the names of
1:06
many of their clients including Lowe's, United Healthcare, Exxon
1:09
Mobil and Coca-Cola. Adam himself is an accomplished
1:13
leader in several start-ups, public companies and private
1:16
organizations, having been a part of the leadership team that
1:19
made Sitecore the first Unicorn exit in the web content
1:22
management space and was part of Session M, which was sold to
1:26
MasterCard. Now before we get into all that
1:28
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1:31
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Add Back benefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today,
1:58
founder and CEO of Elevate Digital, Adam Morgan.
2:01
I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
2:05
Anthony, I appreciate the opportunity to be on.
2:07
So Adam, let's talk a little bit about those experiences at
2:11
Sitecore and Session M before we dive into Elevate Digital.
2:15
So maybe start with Sitecore. What did this company do that
2:19
was so special that it was acquired by a large PE firm?
2:24
Yeah, great question. And and maybe it helps to to
2:27
take one quick step back from there, which was I had worked at
2:30
Microsoft for eight years prior to Sitecore.
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And and one of the things that we did it at Microsoft was we
2:36
acquired a company in 2008 called Fast Search out of Oslo,
2:39
Norway. And at the time it was
2:40
relatively large acquisition for Microsoft at about $1.2 billion.
2:45
And we took that acquisition and built ultimately what Microsoft
2:47
would call their digital marketing platform group.
2:50
And so at, at the time that felt reasonably forward-looking to,
2:54
to look at a macro level and say, OK, customer experience,
2:58
digital marketing, this is a trend that that like
3:00
cybersecurity had some legs to it and, and looked like it had a
3:03
fairly long runway. And, and Microsoft really
3:06
started to kind of waver in its commitment to the space at the
3:08
time. And so I, I almost conveniently
3:11
at the time, met the founders of Sitecore who were kind of an up
3:15
and Comer in the web content management space.
3:18
So, so think of the, the software that people would use
3:20
to power their, their web and mobile experiences as a content
3:24
platform. And Sitecore had a ton of
3:27
momentum in market, was growing quickly and was really looking
3:30
to build out their leadership team to scale up and, and become
3:33
kind of a global player as a web content SAS platform.
3:37
And so we, we jumped in. I actually moved over there with
3:40
a friend at the time from Microsoft.
3:42
We, we made the move together, join the leadership team to grow
3:46
the, the sales and, and partner channel at Sitecore and, and it,
3:49
it quickly took off. It was, it's actually a rocket
3:54
ship of a ride. It was a ton of fun and and we
3:56
grew over the course of four years actually more than 6 or
4:00
700% in terms of scaling up ultimately getting to about I
4:05
think a little over 270 million in revenue.
4:08
When we finally sold to EQT, which is a Swedish private
4:11
equity firm. So it on a valuation basis, it
4:14
became the first Unicorn. So just over a billion dollars
4:17
in valuation, first player in the space to achieve that
4:20
valuation status. It was actually the the kind of
4:25
beginning point, the inspiration for what would ultimately
4:27
become. Elevate Digital.
4:29
So what was it that you guys were doing there that was so
4:32
special that led to such this astronomical growth?
4:36
Yeah, great question. There was, there was a couple
4:39
things that strategically really kind of to gave the business
4:43
beyond being a good software solution, right?
4:45
It always starts with good technology, right?
4:47
If you're going to be a, a software company and, and kind
4:50
of get the momentum that Cycor had.
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But there were a couple things that were really kind of
4:53
foundational that really spurred growth.
4:56
One, Cycor invested heavily in the developer community.
5:00
One of the really intelligent moves done early on was to train
5:03
as many developers as possible, right?
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And, and the thought process was the more people who are familiar
5:08
with the technology, the more people want to use it.
5:11
And so they invested heavily and, and really kind of fostered
5:14
and, and incubated the developer community around the Sitecore
5:18
platform. The other thing we did was we
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focused heavily on partner channel.
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As you know, in, in the software world, you know, there's
5:26
companies that build the software and then the companies
5:28
who install and deploy and configure the software.
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And Sitecore made the decision very early on to not get into
5:36
the business of implementing the software lean on partners,
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right, whether it's an Accenture or Deloitte down to smaller kind
5:42
of mom and pop agencies. The decision was made to invest
5:46
in a partner ecosystem that actually ironically ends up
5:49
being the part of the business that I ran for the CEO was
5:52
running the global partner channel.
5:53
But, but what we did was we frankly recruited and developed
5:58
thousands of partners, well 1200 partners globally across the the
6:01
kind of three global time zones to deploy our software and
6:05
promote it and and and configure it for our customers.
6:09
You had a built in sales force then right away.
6:12
I'm sorry. You had a built in sales force
6:14
right away. It was unbelievable when I when
6:16
I left and was responsible for the partner channel, roughly 52
6:20
to 53% of our EBITDA was partner initiated.
6:25
That's substantial. It's unbelievable.
6:27
It's it's and I'm by the way, I'm in no way, shape or form
6:30
taking credit for this. We had a world class team and an
6:33
amazingly passionate group of people across the globe who were
6:36
responsible for managing that partner ecosystem.
6:39
But they were it. It was without question of
6:41
strength and it and it continues to be 1 for them today, many
6:45
years after I've left the company.
6:47
Now I want to hear about Session M, but you said that a lot of
6:50
the work that you were doing there at Sitecore was actually
6:53
kind of the inspiration for starting Elevate Digital.
6:56
How so? Yeah.
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So like a lot of things, business ideas come out of pain
7:02
points, right or or a solution that somebody desires.
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And and so while we were this kind of rocket ship at Sitecore,
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you know, shooting towards 276 million in revenue, my team
7:14
globally kept coming back and saying, hey, we've got these
7:16
partners we work with everyday and they're global systems
7:19
integrators and they're global agencies and they're calling us
7:22
every week going, hey, we need, we are looking for somebody who
7:25
knows Sitecore and you know, Adobe Analytics or Sitecore and
7:29
Salesforce Sales Cloud pick your marketing technology solution.
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And they were constantly coming back to us looking for good
7:36
people who knew specific marketing technologies and had
7:39
specific experience. And out of 1200 partners
7:42
globally that we were managing, we didn't have a single one in
7:44
the staffing space that we felt like was the answer there that
7:47
could provide a compelling solution when we'd go with a
7:50
really niche skill set that we needed to go to that partner
7:53
with. And so ironically, I, I knew my
7:56
now Co founder through the gym. We were, we were workout buddies
8:00
in the morning talking and, and he had built and sold a
8:02
recruiting company previously. And I came up to him one day in
8:05
the gym and I was like. Hey I.
8:07
Got an idea? Can I just pick your brain for a
8:10
bit? And, and we ended up, I don't
8:12
know, 5 or 6 coffee meetings at Starbucks.
8:14
Later, I started pitching him on why he wanted to start a
8:17
staffing business in marketing technology.
8:20
And there it goes. And so there it goes.
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And and before we get a little bit deeper into Elevate Digital
8:25
and what you guys do, let's hear about Session M and the exit to
8:29
MasterCard. What were you guys doing there?
8:32
Yeah, so, and this ties a little bit into the founding of Elevate
8:35
Digital. But you know, like a lot of
8:37
people, when when Rich and I first started Elevate Digital,
8:39
it was a side hustle for both of us.
8:41
It was like, here's an idea. You know what's, you know, see
8:44
if this thing has legs and, and we both started kind of as a
8:47
side hustle, me really as a board member, because I had a
8:49
pretty demanding job. And, and right as we were
8:52
spinning up the idea and getting it going, EQT had come in and,
8:56
and bought Sitecore for that, you know, Unicorn valuation.
8:59
And so I decided to, to do my earn out and then leave Sitecore
9:04
at the time and, and go do something else.
9:05
I didn't kind of want to stay on and, and work through the PE
9:07
side. And so while Rich and I were
9:10
still working on and getting Elevate Digital going, I met the
9:14
the founders of Session and out of Boston and through through an
9:18
acquaintance of mine on the executive recruiting side and he
9:21
connected me through went and met with them and they were a
9:24
loyalty SAS play. So they had built a software
9:26
solution really focused on customer loyalty and I met the
9:30
founders. Originally it was just supposed
9:32
to be a lunch meeting about talking about what Sitecore had
9:35
done and lessons learned. And they just kind of wanted to
9:37
pick my brain about building out the sales and partner channel.
9:41
So I flew to Boston and had lunch with the founders and then
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ended up on the way to Logan getting a phone call that they
9:46
asked if they could hire me and which was an amazing honor.
9:50
And so while Rich and I were, were building Elevate Digital
9:54
and again, still side hustle, I needed a day job or wanted a day
9:57
job. And so join them at Session M
10:00
and we, we built that for 3 1/2 years, ultimately selling it to
10:04
MasterCard in October of 2019. And and that was when I left and
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and came over to be CEO of Elevate full time.
10:11
And so having gone through those two substantial exits, is the
10:14
process exciting, exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating?
10:18
How would you describe it? Oh, that's a great question.
10:22
Can I say all of those at once? It no, it is, it's in, in for
10:28
anybody. And I know there's a lot of us
10:29
out there who've worked in kind of the PE and VC ecosystem.
10:32
It, it can be very tiring because you find yourself both
10:35
managing the business as your day job, right?
10:37
You got to run a business and grow it and usually grow it at a
10:40
pretty substantial clip, but then also managing other
10:42
stakeholders who have their own needs and agenda in terms of
10:45
what they're looking for as a financial investment.
10:49
And so it became a process. It's certainly educational.
10:53
Ultimately, you know, it's, it's exciting in that I'm not one who
10:57
tends to be at least personally driven by money as much as the
11:00
outcome for the people involved, right?
11:02
Like how does this become an opportunity for everybody,
11:04
whether it's a growth opportunity, a skill development
11:08
in terms of the process or ultimately what is that bigger
11:12
company that you become a part of?
11:14
Does it create new careers, new expansion plans, new acquisition
11:17
opportunities? What does it enable the team to
11:19
do that maybe we couldn't do before when we were a standalone
11:22
entity without that investment? And so all of it is exciting,
11:26
challenging, stressful. I forgot all the adjectives you
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threw out, but I think they all apply in some way.
11:30
It's a real emotional soup, huh? It's unbelievable.
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And it's it's like it's a great growth opportunity.
11:36
It's been educational for five lifetimes, so.
11:39
OK, so let's dive a little bit more into Elevate Digital.
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So obviously I gave the intro at the beginning of the interview
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that sort of gives a high level, but let me hear it from you, the
11:50
founder, the CEO, Co founder, CEO.
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What is it you guys do? What's the pain point that
11:56
you're solving? Yeah, it's the pain point we
12:03
really focus on solving is that companies have business problems
12:07
that can be either solved or or or enabled through technology.
12:11
And and we genuinely believe that the solution to that
12:14
technology problem is usually the right person or the right
12:17
group of people. And what we've worked really
12:20
hard over time to do is say we know the answer is the right
12:23
person, but we don't want to force you to commercialize it
12:26
how we want you to. We're not a a hammer looking at
12:28
everything like a nail. And so we've tried to take this
12:31
people first, but commercially agnostic approach to the market
12:34
of we want to solve technology problems, we want to solve it
12:37
with the right people, great people, but we want to do so in
12:41
a way that flexes to how your business needs to do it.
12:44
So we talked a lot about being commercially agnostic, meaning
12:47
you may have a problem to solve where you want to grow your own
12:50
team. And so we want to help you build
12:51
that team with the right people. You may have a great team in
12:55
place, but they're lacking specific skills and just need a
12:58
Smee or a group of SMEs to come in and help them resolve that
13:02
issue or solve that technology problem for a short period of
13:05
time. So there's staffing solutions
13:07
for that. But we also see clients want to
13:09
be able to hand us and take on a level of ownership off their
13:13
plate where we can come in, bring in a team of talented
13:16
individuals and, and solve the problem for them holistically.
13:20
And, and that's where our consulting and managed services
13:22
function plays in. But but the difference is we we
13:26
don't come in with the notion of how we're going to solve it.
13:29
We try to take a strategy and solution LED approach in terms
13:32
of how we've built the company out so that we can be very
13:35
problem solution oriented and then again be agnostic to how we
13:38
commercialize it on the back end.
13:41
I can see why this would all be very attractive to the customer.
13:45
Kind of a one stop shop for a lot of different technology
13:47
needs flexible sort of staffing model.
13:53
But on your side it seems like it is very complicated and
13:58
difficult to be to house so many skill sets and expertise under
14:04
one roof as well as I mean, we're kind of talking about even
14:07
different business models here. In terms of I'm going to, I've
14:10
got a consultant I can place with you for a little bit.
14:12
I can, you know, find somebody to place with you full time.
14:15
Like how do you guys wrap your head around all those different
14:18
things? You are spot on, Anthony.
14:23
It's we try to wrap our heads around it every single day.
14:26
And I guess the fun part is we never stop learning or testing
14:29
new ways to figure it out. But you are right, it is not
14:33
easy. And frankly it requires a pretty
14:35
substantial investment upfront in talented senior people who
14:39
can diagnose and solution correctly, right, Because
14:42
there's got to be a business acumen there.
14:44
There's got to be a technical understanding.
14:46
We try to stay really focused in terms of which technologies we
14:49
feel well suited to solve for, right.
14:51
It's one thing to staff anything across the kaleidoscope of
14:54
technology, but it's another thing to go implement something
14:57
and own it right. And so we try to stay really
14:59
focused on the consulting side and where we can be good.
15:02
But we have had to invest heavily upfront in a very senior
15:06
staff that that can check the strategy and solution box.
15:10
But there's also a ton of value add.
15:12
And I, I think it's why, or at least I hope it's why we have a
15:15
high client retention rate. It is because they see that
15:18
investment upfront and they know we're committed to solving it
15:22
the way they want to solve it, not the way we want to solve it.
15:26
Talk to me about business development.
15:27
You don't get to the Inc 5000 list four years in a row without
15:34
a pretty smart strategy on that side.
15:36
What are you guys doing? Yeah, that's a good one.
15:43
Love to tip the hat to strategy, but I'd back up one step and say
15:47
we have a world class team. They're phenomenal.
15:49
Love them. We, you know, we have a, we have
15:51
a hiring philosophy on our team, which is if it's not a hell yes,
15:53
it's a no. And we buy into that heavily.
15:56
And when I look around the team, it's just loaded with talented
15:59
people you really enjoy, people enjoy working with.
16:04
And so I actually think it starts with the right culture
16:07
because, you know, I, it's so cliche, right?
16:10
The Clayton Christiansen culture eats strategy for breakfast.
16:13
But, but it's true. And, and I think people feel our
16:16
culture and they see there's an inherent interest in that.
16:18
We're not going to be perfect. We're going to make mistakes,
16:20
but we will, we will keep clawing through until we solve
16:23
it. And so it it, it starts and ends
16:25
there. But our strategy for business
16:27
development has been to invest in sales.
16:29
We have a sales driven culture. You've got a leadership team
16:33
between Rich, myself and a number of others that come from
16:36
sales backgrounds. And so there's always kind of
16:39
this mindset of solving a problem is the best sales tool
16:43
we have. And so, you know, client growth,
16:46
client retention because of that commercial portfolio mix you and
16:50
I just talked about, we look at success as a client who wants to
16:54
work with us across the range of services.
16:56
You know, are they doing consulting projects and staffing
16:59
with us? Well, that's a that's are they
17:01
also doing managed services? Well, that's a great indicator
17:03
of a healthy client relationship, right.
17:05
And when I look at our our biggest and best clients, it is
17:09
a hybrid of those different revenue streams and those
17:11
different service engagement types and that that's a great
17:14
business development tool, right?
17:15
It's go do a great job. What does future growth look
17:19
like? Yeah.
17:21
We we'd like to continue to invest in, in expanding a couple
17:25
key service areas that we feel like our clients have needs
17:28
around it. It is historically been very
17:31
client driven to say we want to expand our services portfolio in
17:34
a way that we can offer them more compelling solutions.
17:37
Some of that much to our point about the beginning of the
17:40
company. We we do a disproportionate
17:43
amount in customer experience, right.
17:44
And if if you look across kind of that spectrum of customer
17:47
experience, we want to continue to expand web commerce, CRM,
17:53
customer data platforms, marketing automation, data and
17:56
analytics. We want to continue to build out
17:58
and expand those investments, broader team, deeper in
18:02
strategy, be able to help recruit more effectively.
18:06
Sometimes what we're doing is we're delivering consulting
18:08
engagements with, with contractors embedded in so that
18:11
the client can hire them out alongside from alongside our
18:14
team training and, and enabling them into the client.
18:17
So continuing to invest in those deployment models and then a big
18:21
investment in machine learning and AI.
18:23
And I know that sounds cliche to say, but you can't be in tech
18:25
and not have a strategy for both how you use AI for your your own
18:30
internal delivery and then how we use AI as a a customer,
18:33
customer enabling technology. And so we've got investments
18:37
we're making there, we've got acquisitions we're targeting
18:39
there and we want to continue to invest.
18:42
What can you say more about AI and the way that you're using it
18:45
or hope to use it? Well, the, the politically
18:50
incorrect answer I'd say first would be that if we played a
18:52
drinking game on AI, you and I probably wouldn't make it very
18:55
far on, you know, how abused it gets whether you're at a
18:57
conference or, or some other technology event, right with
19:01
the, with the AI terminology. But when we, we have key
19:04
technology partnerships with Adobe, with Microsoft, with
19:08
Salesforce today. And when you look at those
19:11
partnerships and the projects we do around them, as an example,
19:15
these are the 800 LB gorillas in tech, right?
19:17
They all have their own AI strategy.
19:19
And so we find ourselves not only having to understand their
19:22
AI strategy and how it gets embedded into our offerings, but
19:25
how we leverage it ourselves, right, internally to drive
19:28
solution and to drive enablement, etcetera.
19:31
So we're getting our arms around it like everybody else.
19:35
It's really hard to separate the noise from the reality and so we
19:40
find ourselves spending a lot of time right now trying to focus
19:43
on what's real and and helping our clients discern what's real.
19:48
Talk to me a little bit more about your team.
19:51
You mentioned a couple of times you've got a world class team.
19:54
Describe them. Where are they?
19:55
What are they doing? How do they all kind of fit
19:58
together? Yeah, gosh, they're outstanding.
20:03
And it's, it's, it's a motley crew of personalities.
20:08
If you know, if I think about our head of product versus our
20:11
head of consulting or head of sales or head of recruiting,
20:13
everybody's got a really diverse set of backgrounds, ironically
20:16
more than you probably think. But, but they all have a number
20:20
of common factors, which is they've got great personalities.
20:24
They're all great human beings. And that's a key piece for us
20:27
because I'll go back to culture. You can get people to train into
20:30
roles, but the culture is king. And so you've got the team is
20:35
from all over. There's only a handful of us
20:37
that are actually in the same city when you look at the
20:38
leadership team. But then even broader when you
20:40
our, our team is spread out. Most of it is concentrated in
20:44
North America. We've got some, some
20:45
international folks and and other markets depending on the
20:47
technology set. But it's, it's an ambitious crew
20:53
and they are heavily motivated by by bluntly succeed, helping
20:59
each other succeed. We just did an exercise not long
21:02
ago and it was kind of driven by a blurb we heard from, from a
21:06
podcast interview, which you'll appreciate.
21:08
But we went through the exercise first with the leadership team
21:11
and then we broadened it and we said, you know, why did you come
21:13
to Elevate to start? Like what's, what was the reason
21:16
reasoning you came here and then why are you still here, right?
21:20
What keeps you here for the forward, you know, for the
21:22
foreseeable future? Why are you staying at Elevate?
21:25
And universally everybody on the leadership team and what we call
21:29
the extended leadership team said the team they work with is
21:31
why they stay here and why they what's keeping them here for the
21:33
future. And that says a lot, right?
21:35
Because because commitment to your team mates and commitment
21:38
to each other and what success looks like will will carry a
21:41
long way and help you tolerate a lot, a lot of things while we're
21:43
figuring stuff out. Yeah, I've talked with a number
21:47
of folks in the staffing space or HR space.
21:50
And you know, I like to ask the question, what's what's the
21:52
biggest reason that you think people switch jobs?
21:56
And they say the biggest thing that they find is that it's who
22:01
they they work with. They don't like the manager that
22:04
they report to. And on the flip side, you're
22:07
saying people stay there for the opposite reason, because they
22:10
really enjoy who they report to, they really enjoy who they're
22:12
working with. So I'm kind of curious, you guys
22:16
have this distributed team. You talk a lot about culture.
22:20
It seems like it would be difficult.
22:21
It would be a challenge to kind of build and establish culture
22:25
without people being physically together.
22:27
How do you guys approach that boy?
22:31
That's a big question, Anthony, right?
22:33
And, and you know this, right, because since since COVID came
22:36
about, everybody's been grappling, right?
22:37
When you when you entered this world of remote work, right,
22:40
when it became the reality that became everybody's challenge was
22:43
how do you build it, right? And I'd say we're no different.
22:46
And we're, we're a, we're a team that prides ourselves on getting
22:50
together and having a good time. And I, and I don't know if
22:53
swearing is, is inappropriate on a, on your podcast or not.
22:56
I I certainly don't want to offend you, but.
22:58
Come as you are. We we, we have a poster
23:01
internally and it's, it's these five people lined up with party
23:03
hats and it says fun. We take that shit seriously and,
23:06
and we do. And it's, it's hard because
23:08
we've, we've all been remote. We we've tried to actually
23:11
allocate a very dedicated budget to getting everybody together
23:15
and and because we're headquartered in the Carolinas,
23:16
historically, we used to be really good and, and want to get
23:19
back to this of getting everybody in getting them to the
23:22
mountains. We love going either Carolina
23:24
mountains or the beaches, which are epic on both sides and
23:27
within a couple hours of us each way.
23:30
And God bless the Carolina mountains.
23:31
We've jumped in from a trying to contribute there lately with
23:34
everything that's happened, but but that stuff's near and dear
23:37
to our heart. We love being outdoors.
23:38
We we do take funds seriously and it's just gotten way more
23:42
expensive as the team's gotten bigger to get us all together.
23:45
But that is something we we were working very deliberately on
23:49
club trips. We took everybody in the company
23:51
in a + 1 to the Dominican Republic and that was amazing.
23:56
We, we had five employees will never forget who had never left,
24:00
not only never left the country, but never left the state.
24:04
And that blew my mind. And so the idea what?
24:06
An opportunity for them, right? And so that type of stuff, when
24:10
the spouse is coming up to you and talking about how epically
24:12
cool the trip was or you're talking about it year round,
24:15
it's, you cannot put a price on that.
24:19
And I, you know, again, my hope is that we can afford to do that
24:22
every year because it has a profound impact.
24:27
In fact, if you don't mind me telling this quick story because
24:29
it, it was so the president of Sitecore.
24:31
When I was at Sitecore, we used to do a company trip every year
24:33
and you got to bring a plus one. And one year it was Napa and one
24:37
year it was Cabo. But, but everybody went and I'll
24:40
never forget. We were sitting at Cabo in a
24:42
resort one year and the, the president of the company was my
24:45
boss at the time. He and I both were early risers
24:49
and it was like 5:00 AM, whatever.
24:51
We, we're both down at the restaurant having breakfast and,
24:55
and we're looking out at the Pacific Ocean.
24:57
And he looked at me and he said, you know, Adam, I could give
25:00
everybody, every employee in the company, you know, $5000 and
25:04
they'd go buy a new washer dryer or a new fridge or whatever.
25:07
And, and they just, that would be an annual bonus and they'd do
25:10
something with it. He goes, but we do this trip for
25:12
the same amount of money and everybody talks about it year
25:15
round and it's a profound culture builder.
25:18
And that was a real North star. And I remember when rich and I
25:21
first founded Elevate, we, we had a discussion and I said,
25:24
this is as we talk about whatever the future looks like,
25:27
this is important to me. Whatever, like whether it's the
25:30
mountains, whether it's Dominican Republic, whatever,
25:33
getting everybody together to break bread, to be together, to
25:37
be people and not employees and, and spouses or whatever that
25:41
that's a, that's a big deal. And selfishly, I I hope we can
25:43
do it for forever. You know, I think those kinds of
25:46
trips are important even in environments where everybody,
25:49
you know, is in the same office and gets to see each other on a
25:52
regular basis because you're so busy and you're passing by.
25:54
And maybe you don't know Susie, in accounting or, you know, in a
25:58
different delivery area. And so now you get to see
26:01
somebody in a social situation, like you said, you get to sit
26:03
down to break bread, share a glass of wine.
26:06
You have some laughs. Like I had no idea I had so much
26:09
in common with that person. And you know, it just it, it
26:12
forges a bond and it makes you appreciate that work experience
26:15
a little bit more. 100% and, and it also, you know, for, for
26:20
spouses plus ones, whatever they hear these names year round, but
26:23
don't get to put a face with it. So for them to, to meet people
26:27
to be there, it, it, it makes them human too, right?
26:30
Because all of a sudden that name they hear all the time on
26:32
the phone or these days see on teams or hear on teams, all of a
26:36
sudden they, they get a chance to, to meet them.
26:38
And that that was, that was really cool.
26:40
That's neat. I want to shift gears a little
26:42
bit here. You know, as CEO, somebody
26:45
who's, you know, running a decent sized company, obviously
26:47
been involved with really big ones before, you know, not
26:51
running charities, got to have a company that's profitable, got
26:54
to always keep the eye on the bottom line.
26:56
And you know, sort of I think about that.
26:59
Two big levers that we can pull, you know, 1 is how do we raise
27:03
sales and the other one is how do we, you know, decrease
27:05
expenses? As you think about all the
27:08
different roles and businesses that you've been involved in,
27:11
any particular creative levers there for either one of those
27:14
that you want to give voice to? Sorry, you just reminded me.
27:19
There's a running joke and metaphor that that with our CFO
27:23
Chris that that I'm the gas pedal and he's the brake.
27:26
And so I'm always trying to hit the gas pedal on why we should
27:29
grow fast. So you're, you're pushing the
27:31
growth lever, he's got the expense lever over here.
27:35
Yeah, feel bad for him 'cause he's, I mean, I get, I don't
27:37
know, one tells me no in this world more than Chris, but he
27:40
is. He's definitely the brake pedal
27:41
constantly kind of challenging me.
27:43
But, but honestly, there's that. It is such a good thing 'cause
27:46
that sanity check needs to happen or we've been out of
27:49
business 8 times already. But but yeah, 'cause I I am
27:52
always thinking grow hire, who else can we bring onto the team
27:55
And he's sanity checks and it's like, that's great.
27:58
But let's talk about a 0 based budgeting approach or
28:01
incremental revenue for this head.
28:03
He is a really good it's yeah, there's a linear great things I
28:08
could say about him and, and my by the way, my Co founder Rich
28:10
is also very sales oriented. So, and he may be more of a gas
28:14
pedal than me, but but Chris and I have a good balance there.
28:17
And yeah, and, and you know how this is and a services firm, you
28:21
know, salary expense people are, you know, 8085% of your, your
28:25
total cost. So the hiring lever is the one
28:28
we've got more than anything, right, Travel expense, all that
28:31
other stuff is, is a rounding error compared to what people
28:33
cost. And so, and the good news is, is
28:37
we got a good gas pedal, brake pedal situation within Chris and
28:40
I. And So what are some of the more
28:42
effective strategies you found to recruit and retain good
28:46
folks? We've talked a little bit about
28:48
retention, building that culture.
28:50
How about getting in them in the door in the first place?
28:53
Yeah, we've gotten far more rigorous about that than we than
28:57
we did in the past. Frankly, if you know, if we were
29:01
to sit here and talk about the mistakes in the company in the
29:03
last nine years. So we're we're coming up in
29:05
December on our 9th anniversary technically since we
29:07
incorporated and without question bad hires have been
29:11
lessons learned. So, so one of the things we've
29:13
done is and if this sounds cliche for a recruiting company
29:17
to say, but focusing within our networks first people we've
29:20
who've worked with us in the past and, and want to work with
29:22
us again. But then we've also, what's been
29:24
great is we've used that to train our own recruiting team on
29:27
what we're looking for and how to evaluate people better.
29:30
And then we've gotten really rigorous in our own hiring
29:32
process, particularly because, and you know, this, I know I'm,
29:36
I'm preaching to the converted, but at our size, right, when
29:38
you're, when you're 102 hundred people, one bad hire has a
29:42
ripple effect, right? You can at a 10,000 person
29:44
company, you can, you don't always feel a bad hire unless
29:47
it's at the very top. But but at our size company, a
29:49
bad hire is felt. And so we've really tried to vet
29:53
and be really deliberate about when are we vetting people for
29:56
technical acumen versus culture fit versus people skills and,
30:01
and being really specific also. And, and I think this applies
30:05
across the board about what success looks like in that role.
30:08
We see this with clients and you know, you interview people who,
30:11
who own and run staffing companies all the time.
30:14
But but it's unbelievable how often people are hiring without
30:17
a clear understanding of exactly what's expected and what and
30:21
what good looks like, particularly once they get
30:24
going. And so we challenge a lot of
30:25
people, clients included, to think 90, a hundred, 83160 days
30:30
out. What does good look like, right?
30:32
How are you going to know if this person is winning, if
30:34
they're delivering? And if you can't quantify that
30:38
there's a challenge there, right?
30:39
Because it's important. Do you find do you find that you
30:44
can easily quantify that for most roles?
30:47
We're getting better at it. Yeah, we've, we have tried to,
30:50
you know, some that are a little more nebulous like HR and so on,
30:53
right. There's, there's certain roles,
30:54
accounting and finance where it gets a little more difficult.
30:58
But, but, but we're getting better at it every day.
31:02
And we're, I mean, there's, there's a cultural mindset here
31:05
of constantly trying to learn and get better.
31:07
We've got it as an example, we've got a, a process
31:10
improvement initiative going on right now.
31:11
We literally buy, buy team documented every core process
31:15
that that team operates on from employee onboarding to
31:18
offboarding to promotions, to reviews like like pick the
31:22
process we're going through and, and documenting it and then
31:26
saying, OK, who owns this process?
31:28
There's got to be a functional owner.
31:29
Is it documented? And if it is, is it scalable and
31:32
then how do we automate it? And just stuff like that that
31:35
helps us really look and understand what really comprises
31:38
our business so that it's built for scale and then measure
31:41
people on their ability to to analyze and improve it.
31:45
You know, you mentioned some different areas that you're
31:48
trying to be more deliberate about in assessing people before
31:51
you bring them on board. I would think that technical
31:55
skills would probably be one of the more easy ones to evaluate.
31:59
You can look at work that they've done, you can hire them
32:02
to do a test task and get a sense of their the quality of
32:06
their work. My sense is that do they have
32:09
people skills and are they a good culture fit are probably
32:12
the more difficult ones to ascertain upfront and my right
32:16
or wrong. Boy, that.
32:19
That could be a long debate. I, I think you are right in that
32:22
people's skills and, and culture fit are, are definitely, well,
32:26
they're critically important and, and you know, they can be
32:28
hard to ascertain. That being said, and the irony
32:31
again, that we do this for a living is it is amazing
32:34
sometimes how challenging it is to assess technical skills, cuz,
32:38
cuz, cuz you do, I mean, and we all run into this, right?
32:40
You can look at somebody'd resume and you go, they've done
32:43
everything, they've worked on every technology.
32:45
They got front end experience, back end experience and run down
32:48
the list, but then you get in and you go, OK, well, the resume
32:52
looks good, but they haven't actually done the work or the
32:55
difference between I sit in a ten person technical team versus
32:58
100 person technical organization.
32:59
And did I just do this small part or did I actually work the,
33:04
you know, the complete stack there in, in terms of what I'm
33:07
saying I can do? So I think it's difficult to
33:09
assess all of them and, and maybe that's a good thing or
33:12
else would maybe we wouldn't be in business if it wasn't.
33:14
But, but it is a, all those things are important and, and
33:19
you know, because you can get the technically brilliant person
33:21
who has the social skills of a snow pee and then get the person
33:25
that you love and you, you know, want to go out and break bread
33:27
with. But then like, yeah, they just,
33:29
they can't deliver. Every time you put their feet to
33:30
the fire, they fold. So I don't know, I, I think
33:34
they're all difficult for, for different reasons.
33:36
And again may be grateful for that or or we would be out of
33:39
business. How do you go about the
33:42
assessing the people's skills and the the culture fit?
33:45
How can you run some sort of a litmus test upfront?
33:51
Yeah. I mean, are are you asking in
33:53
context of how we do that for a recruiting client or more for us
33:55
internally? Oh, I guess both.
33:59
Oh, all right. That's a tough question,
34:01
Anthony. Pick one.
34:03
Pick one that's easier to answer then.
34:06
No, like they're, yeah, they're both tough for a reason.
34:09
I wish there were a silver bullet on culture fit.
34:12
We, we try to, we try to really explore how they explain their
34:16
background. And, and as you know, there's,
34:19
there's a lot of telling signs sometimes whether somebody says
34:22
I or we a lot when they talk about wins, do they, do they
34:25
credit themselves or do they credit the team?
34:27
Do they talk about the people they work with or, or solely in
34:30
context of what they did and, and so on.
34:33
And, and, and I don't know, a lot can be said by asking we, we
34:37
take a very Socratic method, right?
34:39
Ask a ton of questions and, and the nature of the answers is, is
34:44
really indicative of us of whether they're A-Team player or
34:46
not, right? And, and how they talk about
34:49
their effort relative to their team, the skill sets relative to
34:52
their team, their contribution. When they talk about the culture
34:56
of the places they worked in the past and why they left, you can
35:00
glean a lot, right? I'd love to tell you we were the
35:04
best in the business at it. I think we're very good at it,
35:06
but but we are always learning new ways to improve.
35:08
And, and to your point, it makes it really difficult when you've
35:11
never met somebody in person, right?
35:13
It's, it's one thing to hire over a Teams meeting or pick
35:16
whatever, you know, zoom or whatever.
35:18
It's another thing to sit across the table from somebody, right
35:21
and, and read their eyes and look at their eyes and, and how
35:23
they engage you directly. And so for us internally, we try
35:27
as much as possible to bring people in in person or go meet
35:30
them. I've flown to meet people in
35:32
person as well as the members of the leadership team.
35:35
But but yeah, it's a task. Adam, let's talk about a
35:41
personal or professional challenge or maybe one of each
35:44
that you've overcome, kind of what you did to get through it
35:48
and some lessons you learned coming out the other side.
35:54
There's been about a million of each.
35:55
I'm trying to think of what would be.
35:57
Let's start with professional and, and there's been hundreds
36:01
of both mistakes we've made and, and lessons learned.
36:06
And, and the two biggest would be either bad hiring or, or bad
36:11
hiring decisions, particularly on the leadership team or, or,
36:14
or bad financial decisions. And it's funny, I've been asked
36:17
this repeatedly and but that my Co founder Rich would agree with
36:21
me, which is if I could go back and and do anything over again,
36:25
I would have hired our CFO five years earlier or four years
36:28
earlier. Because if we had had AC, I'm a
36:32
technologist by trade. Rich is a people person and a
36:34
sales guy. And if we had had ACFO Chris,
36:38
who's amazing, if we had had him four or five years ago, we
36:41
probably could have avoided 80 of the other bad decisions we
36:44
made, or 80%, I should say, of the other bad decisions we've
36:48
made, because so many of them were based out of a poor
36:52
understanding of where we were financially or exact impact of a
36:55
decision on our financials. And it's for a long time, like a
37:00
lot of small businesses, we did bookkeepers and, and, you know,
37:02
and, and staff accountants and so on.
37:04
And, and having a strategic financial partner probably could
37:07
have avoided a litany of, of bad decisions made.
37:10
So that was definitely a lesson learned.
37:12
And, you know, God forbid I go do this thing again.
37:15
No would do that. The other second is, is
37:21
certainly more personal or other maybe learning experience or or
37:24
challenge is is far more personal, which was I mentioned
37:29
touched on this a little bit earlier, but up until 2019, I
37:32
was working at another company while also helping build
37:34
elevate. So, so there was a couple years
37:37
span and I hate to talk about myself, but we're talking about
37:39
personal challenges. And, but there was a couple
37:42
years span where I was both helping build session M, which
37:45
was a very demanding VC and PE backed company ultimately that
37:49
write the MasterCard plot. But the building that, which
37:52
was, you know, running a very dispersed sales team and partner
37:56
channel team. And at the same time trying to
37:58
help rich build elevate and, and running those two things meant I
38:02
was working basically non-stop, except when you know, what
38:06
family time was allowed or otherwise.
38:09
And it took a toll on my health, where I had health issues from
38:12
it. It took a toll in my family life
38:14
and had a serious impact there. And I'm not saying it wasn't
38:19
worth it, but it, it forced a big reset from a prioritization
38:22
standpoint, from a lifestyle perspective.
38:26
And the real question mark of, you know, maybe, maybe this
38:30
isn't the case, but, you know, thinking we're all superhuman
38:32
and kind of a reset reality check of, Hey, you're not
38:35
superhuman. In fact, quite the opposite.
38:37
You're very human and, and you can't do all this.
38:40
It's unreasonable. And, and the people you care
38:43
most about are paying the real price from it.
38:46
And that is a, you know, missing moments with kids traveling
38:50
globally, you know, doing that stuff it those are all really
38:54
hard reality checks. And I'm glad it happened because
38:57
it becomes cathartic, right? You learn from it.
38:59
Was there a point in that process that there was sort of a
39:03
light bulb moment where you were like, yeah, I am just a human, I
39:08
have to change something? Or was it more of a gradual?
39:12
Realization yeah, it definitely happened in the ERI had a
39:16
thyroid issue act up where my my thyroid went hyperactive and so
39:22
my heart rate was elevating. No pun intended, but sorry, my
39:25
heart rate started increasing dramatically and and I didn't
39:28
know what was going on for a bit at first thought it was just
39:31
stress and kind of dismissed it and then started losing about a
39:33
pound a day and and in it in about a three-week period
39:37
suddenly realized it was looking gaunt skinny was having and
39:41
ended up in the ER and they were worried I was going to is it a
39:45
fib? They were, they were worried
39:46
about my heart was going to actually, you know, have a
39:48
cardiac episode because I checked myself into the
39:51
emergency room and and that was a a very real come to Jesus
39:55
moment to call my family and say, Hey, I'm in the ER and
39:59
here's what's going on. And So what did steps look like
40:04
after that getting out of the ER?
40:07
How quickly did you make changes and what did that look like?
40:10
Yeah. First was the health thing
40:14
getting thyroid issue contained and it's now in remission.
40:16
So thankful, thankful for that, that that's contained and seems
40:19
to be well managed now. But the second was the life
40:22
reset actually started unplugging from Session M at
40:25
that time. I was really fortunate it
40:26
actually timed kind of serendipitously with us starting
40:30
to sell and there was a couple different exit options for
40:32
Session M at the time. So it was very clear we were
40:34
going to sell and and my boss, who's CEO Session M at the time
40:38
was very understanding in terms of letting me start to unplug,
40:42
letting me start to, it was clear I wasn't going to stay on
40:45
through an exit, just do the earn out piece.
40:47
And and so he was very understanding in terms of
40:49
letting me start to unplug and unwind it and and kind of wind
40:53
out. And so it when then there was
40:55
the delivered ever deliberate effort with the family to to
40:59
start to make it clear to them that they were a priority and
41:01
that there were certain things that were going to be off limits
41:05
from work perspective ever interfering in that again.
41:08
You had kids at the time. Yes.
41:11
What were their ages then? Oh geez, great question.
41:15
So six years ago, so I had a 12 year old and a 10 year old.
41:17
OK. And what was their receptivity
41:21
to this announcement? They were worried, I don't know,
41:26
I'm a pretty high energy intense person, so I might have scared
41:29
them at the idea that I might be around more but but but no, they
41:35
everybody got it. I think we all as a family had a
41:37
scare with with me losing weight and and looking like I did and
41:42
going through all that and ending up in the ER that it was
41:44
a wake up call to all of us. Yeah, what's a fun fact most
41:49
people wouldn't know about you, Adam?
41:52
Fun pack people. I'm going to.
41:55
At least I was growing up an adrenaline junkie and so for a
42:00
long time did a bunch of crazy stuff from skydiving to a lot of
42:05
scuba diving, get a great white shark expedition in southern
42:07
Australia, lot of rock, rock stuff, MMA.
42:12
Was a martial artist growing up, so always kind of an adrenaline
42:14
junkie. And when the kid, my kids were
42:16
first born, I remember being told by my wife those days are
42:21
over, you're not doing great white shark expeditions anymore.
42:23
We have kids etcetera. So there was, there was a big
42:27
component of, of getting out of the adrenaline junkie days.
42:30
But I loved it for a long time. Still love scuba diving and
42:32
stuff like that but. I was going to say, are there
42:34
other safer endeavors that you found that allow you to still
42:38
get that adrenaline kick or you just kind of moved away from
42:43
that? I'll still love scuba diving and
42:45
what not but had to move away from the ones involving great
42:47
white sharks and and jumping out of planes.
42:50
But now, yeah, I just still love anything with just love having a
42:53
good time, being outdoors, anything like that.
42:56
It's fun. I'm trying to get back into
42:57
martial arts a little bit but I'm an old man now so.
43:02
Any specific mentors, books, podcasts, other experiences that
43:08
you want to call out for being helpful in your process?
43:14
That's also another good question and and almost too many
43:17
in ways. Love reading, love consuming
43:19
podcasts. There's a ton of good ones.
43:21
Yours is excellent. Grit is excellent, one of my
43:24
favorite books. I don't know if you ever saw the
43:26
bear on the the the series about the the restaurant in Chicago,
43:32
but there's an episode in season 2, I think it's episode 7, where
43:36
the the cousin goes to work in one of the top Michelin rated
43:38
restaurants in the world. And and then he's reading a
43:41
book, which clearly looks like a product placement that I
43:44
ordered. It's called Unreasonable
43:45
Hospitality by Will Guedeira and it's about his journey, him and
43:50
his partner's journey to build the number one restaurant in the
43:52
world. And an unreasonable hospitality
43:54
is about this idea of being so exceptionally customer oriented
43:58
that you want to deliver a world class experience to them.
44:01
And, and I love the book and the mindset and the fact that it's
44:05
around a completely unrelated industry to what we do, but
44:08
there's so many good lessons and, and our whole leadership
44:10
team is either read it or reading it now, but but it's,
44:15
it's outstanding And just the idea of how do you exceed
44:18
expectations is a great mindset, right?
44:20
For our employees, for our customers and then and then a
44:24
ton of mentors. But but we have two board
44:26
members that I look up immensely to and rely on daily for
44:29
guidance, Art Hopkins and and Paul Noble, who are who are
44:32
both. Outstanding.
44:34
So I'm completely aligned with the idea of delivering just an
44:39
outstanding customer experience. How can you over deliver?
44:44
How can you wow the person? How can you just deliver the
44:48
best of what you have to offer? Some people listening are like,
44:54
yeah, but man, that takes a lot of effort and energy.
44:58
And for those people, I feel like what they need to hear is
45:01
an example of, yeah, but here's the ROI.
45:05
Is there any way that you can, even if it's a just a single
45:08
anecdote, give somebody, here's the ROI, here's something I did,
45:14
and here's something that it led to.
45:19
And I almost I almost hesitate to ask the question because it
45:23
almost feels like in some way doing it for the wrong reason.
45:28
That's that's Anthony, you and I think alike.
45:30
I was that's kind of where I was going is in in my mind.
45:32
I'm like don't do it for the ROI.
45:34
Do it because it's the right thing and the ROI comes
45:37
naturally. I I to your point it, it's
45:40
almost it's almost like the what's in it for me.
45:43
It's like, no, don't that's not the reason you do it.
45:45
We're not doing this for what's in it.
45:46
If, if you do the right thing, things will play out the way
45:50
they're supposed to. And we actually talked about
45:52
this with our sales team a lot. Like there are a litany of
45:55
decisions we've made in the last four or five years that were us
45:59
coming out of pocket for a client because they thought
46:02
something was wrong or we thought something was wrong.
46:05
And and we never stopped. It was always just do it because
46:07
it's the right thing because you're investing in the
46:09
partnership and the ROI will be there.
46:12
It will, right. And it's just don't want people
46:15
thinking about the ROI, want them thinking it because it's
46:17
the right thing to do. But I and I agree 100% and
46:21
that's how I approach things. But I feel like we could pull
46:23
more people into doing the right thing if we could show them that
46:28
there was ROII mean look at look at all the green stuff going on
46:33
right? Like, you know, do this because
46:36
it's good for the environment. Well, you're going to get a heck
46:38
of a lot more people to to do it once.
46:41
Doing what's good for the environment is also good for the
46:43
pocketbook. Yes, so fair, but so let me, oh
46:49
gosh, I, I worry I'm always hypersensitive about anything
46:52
that sounds like a chess beat. But, but how about this for an
46:55
RO statement, ROI statement. We, we try to do the right thing
46:59
all the time and we always should as much as we can because
47:02
it's the right thing to do. And the ROI is four straight
47:05
years on the Inc 5000 for fast growth, right?
47:08
The, the frames on the wall that are the very definition of a
47:12
team award. It's not ACEO award, it's not a
47:14
president award. It's certainly not an executive
47:16
team award. It's it's a team award.
47:18
And we talk about that all the time.
47:20
And there's the ROI. We would not have achieved those
47:22
growth numbers if we weren't trying to do the right thing
47:24
everyday. Bingo.
47:27
There we go. That's that's the exclamation
47:30
point. What's something you wish you
47:32
could teach a younger version of yourself, Adam?
47:37
Something that's super obvious now that boy, if younger Adam
47:40
knew that. Don't drink vodka on an empty
47:44
stomach. No, that would have been high
47:46
school. So gosh, that is a great
47:52
question And there's so many lessons there.
47:56
I would say, and this sounds cliche cause I've heard so many
47:58
other people say it, but it's so true, which is don't, don't fear
48:01
failure. Like embrace it.
48:03
It's there is no such thing as failure.
48:05
There's just lessons learned and, and that is to some degree,
48:09
I think I've always believed that personally, but, but you
48:12
can't. Repetition is the mother of
48:14
skill, right? So I'd, I'd go back to young me
48:16
and, and beat myself over the head with it and just say don't
48:19
fear failure, fail it, embrace it, pivot, keep going.
48:23
If, if you're, if you don't stop moving your feet, you are going
48:26
to make progress. You might, you might vector and
48:28
veer a bit, but you're going to keep moving forward.
48:31
And, and I say this to my kids all the time, like no, embrace
48:34
it. You know, just move from it,
48:36
pivot, keep going, but don't fear failure.
48:38
That is in life. I just, I can't imagine a more
48:41
valuable lesson. I think that is powerful.
48:44
Did you find a way to phrase that for younger kids in a way
48:50
that they actually understood it and at least somewhat embraced
48:53
it? Yeah, I, I mean, at least I, I
48:57
can only speak from parenting my, my too, right?
49:00
But and I've got, you know, a son and a daughter and they
49:04
think very differently at times, God bless them.
49:06
But but I do try to present it around optionality, like what
49:10
happened, All right, What's and, and very outcome orientation,
49:13
right? And, and if you think it was a
49:15
failure, correct, OK, is that an end point or are there
49:17
additional options from here? Right.
49:18
What's the direction forward? And if you kind of reoriented
49:21
them to that this is a point in time and that there are options
49:25
from here and maybe revisiting, all right, my options 4 weeks
49:29
ago before this decision were X. Here we are at this point in
49:32
time. If they think they've failed,
49:34
All right, do you really not have options?
49:36
Oh, you do great. Let's reframe those.
49:38
What are the options from here? And this is coming up a lot
49:41
right now. I've got two kids looking at
49:43
college and so and, and both student athletes.
49:46
So having conversations around the path forward is is front and
49:50
center every day right now for us.
49:53
You know, and part of the reason I asked the question how to
49:56
teach it to your kid is because I think if you can teach, if you
49:59
can figure out how to teach it to a child or are a younger
50:02
person. Anyways, obviously there's
50:05
there's sort of a cut off point in terms of being able to
50:07
conceptualize and understand things.
50:09
But if you get to that point of being able to explain it for a
50:11
younger person, we're all really kids at heart and also someplace
50:16
in our reptilian brains, you can explain it to your team members,
50:20
your Co workers, and more importantly yourself as well,
50:23
right? You can reframe it in language.
50:25
That's like, that's what I needed to hear again.
50:28
And so I liked what you were saying.
50:29
Don't feel fear, failure. And then, OK, this didn't go
50:34
well. This I, I failed, quote UN
50:37
quote, I this didn't work out. OK, is this an endpoint or what
50:41
are the options from here? I really like that last part of
50:44
it. I think it's helpful you and I
50:46
were talking about this a little bit when we introduced ourselves
50:49
is I think the athletes mindset is immensely valuable for that
50:52
reason. You know, some people say they
50:54
love hiring athletes. I I love talking to athletes
50:57
because you cannot play a sport, no matter what sport it is and
51:01
not have experienced failure. You've lost at some point,
51:03
you've failed whatever. I don't again, not failed, but
51:06
you've lost at some point and there's just so many valuable
51:09
lessons there. And and that is one of the
51:10
effective ways with both my kids as student athletes is is using
51:14
sports metaphors like, OK, you didn't win here, but you won
51:17
there and you know, you just happened here.
51:20
But sports is a great teacher of, of the fact that you're you
51:23
still try and get better and and you're not failing.
51:25
You just learn new ways. What sports did you play?
51:30
I wrestled and did martial arts primarily growing up.
51:33
It's funny, I'm old enough that they didn't call it MMA back
51:36
then. It was just you were taking
51:37
Kempo, jiu jitsu, Taekwondo, etcetera, kickboxing, but would
51:42
call it MMA today. So so grew up doing martial arts
51:45
and and wrestling in a little bit of track to just be in shape
51:47
for those other two. And did you find?
51:49
Some level of success in any of those.
51:53
Yeah, I ended up finishing fairly high nationally in in
51:57
martial arts a long time ago and and had some success at
52:01
wrestling, but an injury actually derailed me from the
52:03
opportunity to play do college wrestling.
52:05
So. So you had some success at both?
52:07
Very fortunate there, no? Adam, one more question for you
52:11
before I ask it. I want to do something.
52:13
I just want to let people know the best way to get in touch
52:15
with you. What is that?
52:18
I I would assume LinkedIn is probably the best right or or
52:21
e-mail I'm adam@elevate-digital.com is the
52:24
easy way, but, but certainly on LinkedIn and live there right in
52:27
our space is, is a is a foundational point.
52:30
But, but we're headquartered in Charlotte, NC and I'm frequently
52:33
on the on the road and, and love meeting people.
52:35
And always if, if there's an opportunity for me to be of
52:38
value to someone else, I'd welcome and appreciate that
52:40
opportunity. That's terrific.
52:43
So last question I have for you, Adam, what do you see being the
52:46
big changes in your industry in the next couple of years?
52:53
In the industry, I think we're going to continue to see
52:55
consolidation. The interest rates in the
52:58
political environment have created a lot of kind of dry
53:00
powder sitting out there. And I think PE firms are going
53:02
to play a heavy role as well as the strategic players and
53:05
services are going to continue to consolidate and buy
53:07
companies. We're also seeing some thinning
53:10
of the herd if you will, right. It's been a tough market,
53:12
particularly in the recruiting space over the last couple years
53:14
with the fluctuations and hiring and that's forced some people
53:18
out of business or in into right sizing.
53:21
So it's going to be, we definitely think there's going
53:23
to be some consolidation. There's still a very unclear
53:26
hiring market trend, right, for the foreseeable future, just
53:30
given macro conditions. So it's going to be interesting
53:33
to see it play out. We think there's opportunities
53:36
on both fronts because you still see the end of the day a
53:39
shortage of resources relative to work for the CI OS we talked
53:43
to on a regular basis, particularly in our client base.
53:47
Most of them are are being tasked with delivering more and
53:50
more projects without the benefit of additional headcount.
53:54
And then that creates an interesting spectrum or dynamic
53:57
for the rest of us who are out there helping to try those, help
54:00
them try and solve those problems.
54:02
You know, just even a couple of years ago, anybody would have
54:06
agreed that if you can learn good coding programming skills,
54:11
like you're going to have job security.
54:14
And I hear people sort of Pooh poohing that now that AI has
54:18
made coding easier, more accessible, faster.
54:23
What's your take on that? Is this still a very lucrative
54:28
career endeavor for people, or should they be thinking of
54:31
shifting gears into something else?
54:35
Yeah. You know, it's funny, there's a
54:36
lot of, there's a lot of great debate among a number of smart
54:39
people out there on this exact topic.
54:42
And I tend to subscribe to the way a lot of the folks who who
54:45
come from BAI market right now believe, which is I, I don't
54:49
think it's necessarily going to displace, you know, I think
54:51
there's, there's a little bit of overdramatization on all the
54:53
jobs going away. But, but I think anybody would
54:56
be crazy to not look at how AI could enhance their skill set,
54:59
right? No matter what job I'm in,
55:01
everybody should be looking at AI and going, how does this help
55:03
me be more effective at my job? I think not being able to use AI
55:08
in your job is, is a bigger risk than AI taking your job.
55:11
And, and that the people who learn how to harness it and use
55:15
it for in particular, the productivity gain that it
55:17
represents are going to be at a distinct advantage going
55:21
forward. And that's kind of how we're
55:23
treating it, right? Is you've got to be able to use
55:25
it in your job. It's, it's an efficiency game,
55:28
right? In the same way that enterprise
55:29
search was when it came out the mobile phone, right?
55:31
These are enablers. And it should be viewed as a
55:34
tool that makes you more productive, not something that
55:36
takes your job away. I had a very similar
55:39
conversation with a woman who used to work for me years ago.
55:41
She came back and she was kind of all in a, a worry, a panic,
55:47
you know, she was sort of discovering what ChatGPT I think
55:50
was 3.5 was able to do sort of like, Oh my gosh, like maybe she
55:55
was very creative. She was great at copywriting.
55:57
And now she thought all these skills that I built up over the
56:00
years, like are going away, like I'm going to be out of work
56:02
pretty soon. And I, I gave her, I framed it
56:05
exactly as you talked about there.
56:06
Like, don't be afraid of it. Embrace it.
56:09
How can it help you enhance your skills, be able to deliver them
56:13
more efficiently, maybe to more people, maybe help you
56:16
brainstorm, give you new ideas? And she sort of went away for a
56:19
few weeks and ensconced herself in ChatGPT and what the prompts
56:25
were and how to use it. And she came back to me a few
56:27
weeks later and she was so excited.
56:30
And she had this new lease on life and she had all these ideas
56:32
for how she was going to grow her business.
56:34
And so, yeah, I, I think that's the the right way.
56:36
I think it's a smart way to approach it.
56:38
Love it, love it. That's a great story too.
56:41
Yeah. Well, Adam, I want to be the
56:43
first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story
56:45
with us today. I really appreciate it.
56:47
Likewise, your time is your most valuable thing, Anthony.
56:50
So I it's been an honor and, and just appreciate the opportunity
56:54
to spend time with you. Absolutely, folks.
56:56
That's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
57:00
Thanks for learning with us today.