Podcasts about cerius executives

Are you ready to Unlock the Power of Leadership: Transform Your Teams, Transform Your Business? Join us on Women Lead Radio as Shelly Harrison, your host of Amplify Your Influence, has a conversation with Kristen McAlister, President/Co-Owner of Cerius Executives (www.ceriusexecutives.com) where they discuss how to create value and growth in your company by leveraging leadership.   Sponsor Appreciation! Thank you to our partner and show sponsor, National University (nu.edu)!   Interested in Learning More About Connected Women of Influence? Click Here (https://connectedwomenofinfluence.com/attend-an-event-as-our-guest/) to Be Invited as Our Special VIP & Guest to a Future Event!   Interested in Becoming a Member of Our Professional Community!? Click Here (https://connectedwomenofinfluence.com/membership-application/) to Apply for Membership!  

Are you clear on what direction your company is headed? Have you established which values are going to take it where you want it to go? Kristen McAlister knows that if you're not clear on your company's values, that your team will create their own culture and that often leads to conflict. In this Powerful at Work Radio podcast episode, Kristen shares why leaders should lead with humility and be comfortable with not knowing every facet of their business. Learn how you can put more trust into your team and get the right people to come to your organization. Hint, you don't need to have all the answers, just know what questions to ask. Episode Outline: [05:40] The only thing you need in life to be happy is to be in service to others. [07:29] How knowing your company values can help in the onboarding process. [10:32] Why business owners can't afford to be enablers... [14:04] One of my biggest lessons as a business owner was when an advisor said to me, “Stop having all the answers”. [18:47] Do you have dysfunction in your company because everyone's making decisions and operating on different value systems? About Kristen McAlister: Kristen McAlister is co-owner for Cerius Executives. Kristen has spent most of her career helping companies establish and improve their infrastructure for high growth. She has grown companies and created optimal infrastructure from both an operational and client management perspective. Kristen has spent the last ten years teaching companies how to leverage executives for transitional situations such as high growth and turnarounds. She is a national speaker and is published on topics ranging from operations and productivity to talent management and the contingent workforce. Connect with Kristen: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-mcalister-b811267 Twitter: https://twitter.com/csuitegirl Website: https://ceriusexecutives.com/ Follow Rosa Ponce de Leon and Powerful at Work Radio: Website: https://rosaponcedeleon.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosa-ponce-de-leon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rosa_PdL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosaponcedeleoncoach/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RosaPoncedeLeonCoach

In this episode, Kristen McAlister, co-owner of Cerius Executives and author of "How I Fired my Boss and Made More Money", shares with us her 10+ years of experience leveraging fractional executives/interim leadership to help companies grow. She discusses who interim or fractional executives are and how to hire fractional executives to quickly scale business growth. Insights she shares include: Are CEO's trying to do too many thingsWhy interim and fractional roles are on the riseWhat is a fractional executiveWhy use fractional executivesHow you can benefit from fractional executives to regain strategic vision in your company and expand your horizons. Why do people become interim or fractional executivesHow to address growth and scaling a businessWhat are the benefits of a fractional executiveInterim versus fractional rolesHow best to manage dynamics between your permanent staff and interim executives. and much much more ...

Kristen McAlister is the Co-owner of Cerius Executives, a firm that helps growing companies find the talent they need to grow and scale their business. Over the last 10 years, Kristen has taught companies how to leverage interim executives for transitional situations. She is the author of How I fired my boss and made more money and The New Executive Search (How smart companies are using interim executives.)In this episode, we discuss:What is an interim executiveWhen an interim executive might be a good fit for an organizationThe three phases of growth in a companyWhat's expected of an interim leaderThe difference between an interim and fractional executive.How to know if your company could benefit from an interim executiveThe one keyword they look for in helping companies land the right talent for their situation and the tool they useFree Gifthttps://ceriusexecutives.com/mindshiftResourcesThe New Executive SearchHow I fired my boss and made more moneyThe Predictive IndexConnect with Kristen on Linkedin Like Today's Show?Rate, Review, & Subscribe on Apple PodcastsPlease consider subscribing, leaving a rating, and review.Also, if you haven't done so already, join the free MindShift Community to connect with other like-minded people.

Your business is growing or flat or worse, losing market share and it’s time to bring in more experienced people to help you keep it in the road to growth, but, you just don’t have the money or time to invest in finding the right people. Someone recommended hiring an interim or fractional executive; however, you’re not sure how to go about it? How do you find the right person? What are the steps you can take to making that decision? Kristen McAlister, President of Cerius Executives, Joins me, your host and fractional CMO Angelo Ponzi for an in-depth discussion on when to hire a fractional or interim executive vs a full-time person and the steps you need to take to ensure you’re putting the right person on the bus! Join us every Tuesday from 12:30 - 1:00 PM at the Business Growth Café, where we select from a menu of topics that can impact business growth. We’ll explore influences, barriers, challenges, and opportunities with experts from a wide variety of disciplines that can, directly and indirectly, impact your growth strategies and offer insights and actionable steps you can incorporate into your business.

Interim Executives, Poetry Agents, Content Curation, and More Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your weekly roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This week we’ve got interim executives, poetry agents, content curation, and more. For all the links, or to watch the video, check out the show notes at http://www.hacktheprocess.com/2018-12-11-process-hacker-news-interim-executives-poetry-agents-content-curation-and-more/. Enjoy! Media It’s essential that you evaluate yourself regularly to take control of the life that you want, as explained by Byron Morrison in his newest video. In his most recent interview for iHeart Radio, Barth Getto discusses how cooperatives can empower ecommerce entrepreneurs. Writing Congratulations to Avochato and their CEO and co-founder, Alex De Simone, who just announced they have raised $5 Million in Series A funding, which the mobile messaging platform will use to continue to provide great customer service. How do you know when to hire interim executives for your company? Find out from a recent blog post on Cerius Executives, headed by CEO Pam Wasley. Learn more about Kimberly Wiefling‘s career and her work with the group Silicon Valley Alliances in her featured interview on Lama. Discover some interesting reads you may have missed in Ashe Dryden’s recent post discussing her favorite books of 2018. Onboarding new hires well helps you keep them, and Ron Carucci shares his thoughts about how to do this in his latest articles on HBR. Poets, if you’re searching for poetry and literary agents, then look no further. Tom Corson-Knowles has a list for you. Recommended Resources CEOs can shape the external environment, and here are seven organizing principles suggested by Michael D. Watkins, whose book was referenced in Pam Wasley’s episode of Hack the Process. Learn about the EpiField and feel the ranges of energy at The Energetic Experience, led by Donny Epstein, on February 18, 2019 in Denver, Colorado. Adam Siddiq spoke highly of Donny during his interview. You can build your audience by curating content. Nathan Barry, recommended by Justin McGill, experienced this and explains how to do it in a recent blog post. In the newest episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim chats with author and integrative medicine practitioner Dr. Andrew Weil, who discusses plant medicine and more. Vinay Patankar, Alex Cespedes, Malek Banoun, Michelle Kim, and Omar Zenhom have all mentioned being influenced by Tim Ferriss. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.

Pamela is a serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, and CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors. She has served on private boards, is a frequent national speaker, and has advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. On this episode, Pamela shares insights on building a life as an entrepreneur and the importance of communication. She offers a free resource to help listeners grow their businesses as well. Books mentioned in the episode: The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation Support the show (http://buildingabusinessthatlasts.com)

Every entrepreneur needs to learn how to outsource, but equally important is recognizing the areas where they need to bring in talent and knowing the best way to do it. This topic is so important because as we grow, we have to be able to bring people in who can complement our skill sets. That's why I’m so excited about today’s episode and our fantastic guest expert, Pam Wasley. A serial entrepreneur, Pam is the co-founder and CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors. With multiple decades of knowledge and experience, she has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth. She has also been featured in prestigious publications, such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Fortune. In this episode, Pam discusses why it is so important for business owners to be diligent when bringing people onto their teams, as well as how her businesses can help them to do just that. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://bit.ly/2HjcpdC 

Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, Pam Wasley is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She’s been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces. In my interview with Pam, we focus on building long-term value. There are too many business owners out there who are solely focused on the profit today instead of the long-term value of their business. We spend so much time and energy on starting and growing our business while spending so little time planning the exit...when really we should be starting with the end in mind.

Pamela Wasley is one of the founders and CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors. She is a serial entrepreneur who has personally sold two companies and led a management buyout of Cerius. She has advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value, served on several private boards, and is a frequent national speaker and is published on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces. She is the author of How I Fired My Boss and Made More Money. Pam is a great storyteller and shares with us the current need for C-Suite execs and small businesses to be matched up, and how they recognized that they could tap into this new gig-economy. Click HERE to see the free gift Pam is offering up to the Thrive LOUD Community! ***** Connect with Lou:  loudiamond.net Subscribe to Thrive LOUD:  thriveloud.com          

Pam Wasley is Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors. She is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She’s been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces. ----- If your business is currently hiring, this statement shouldn’t come as a shock to you, but talent is a big problem today. There aren’t enough qualified applicants currently on the market to fill all the positions that companies are looking to hire. What can you do about it? My guest Pam Wasley says you need to really have a strategy for your talent … which means both new hires and current employees … and how to grow that talent long-term. For most companies, talent is an afterthought when it comes to their strategy. They say, “Okay, what talent do we need to execute our strategy,” but as Pam explains in the episode, that’s backwards thinking. Companies need to integrate their talent into their strategy conversation and start thinking about how to build their talent into a long-term asset to be more profitable. This is a problem for many of the clients we work with, and we struggled with it ourselves starting out, but it can be solved without having to make expensive hires. Companies are lacking a plan for growing their existing talent. Try identifying where your strengths and weaknesses are and then develop the talent you already have to fill those gaps. Listen and learn how! That was one of the nuggets from my conversation with Pam Wasley that stood out the most to me. Please let me know which stood out the most to you. Thank you for listening today! I appreciate your time so very much. Ways to contact Pam: Free gifts: getcerius.com/absoluteadvantage

Today's guest has been an entrepreneur for most of her life and loves helping entrepreneurs and business owners avoid making the same mistakes she's made. She is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, where she puts her serial entrepreneur knowledge and expertise to work. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and has advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder values. She recently co-authored, “How I Fired My Boss and Made More Money: Insider Secrets from Successful Interim Executives and Independent Consultants.” Please join me in welcoming Pamela Wasley. In this episode we explore: her thoughts on leadership: “Leadership is an ever-learning process of motivating people to achieve a goal. Each generation is a little bit different and leadership of each generation has to be a little different.” how she went from wallflower to President of her college dorm. her ways of avoiding myopic thinking. how outsourcing has helped her build her business with success. how she segments her time to clear her head to make room for brilliant business ideas. her practice of using LinkedIn to maintain connections. Listen, subscribe and read show notes at www.OntheSchmooze.com - episode 83

Today Pam and Kristen talk about how Cerius Executives has been using digital marketing and their marketing innovations lab to create more leads and increase sales. Later in the podcast, Kristen speaks with two marketing executives about how CEO's can find the best marketers and how they can be kept accountable. 

Pam Wasley Show Notes Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, Pam Wasley is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She has been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Business-week on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces. Most passionate about I’m the CEO of Cerius Executives, which is a firm that places part time and interim executives around the world. I started this company in 2005 and my passion is to get as many executives out into these companies around the world. These companies don’t have to hire full time executives; there are a lot of complications, it’s very expensive, and there are a lot of labor laws, however you can have these executives on a part time, interim basis and I get the most experienced executives for a reasonable price. I was one of 7 co-founders. We started it as a consulting firm, but consulting wasn’t appreciated back then and there was a lot of competition. I started looking around for different models and I found this model of interim executives in one company in Europe, and I have to admit, I stole it… and there was only one company in the US that used this model, and they only provided executives in the financial space. The idea is that the company gets a very experienced executive that actually has done the things the company is looking for, like acquisitions and mergers, selling companies, raising funds, marketing, sales, operations, etc. and they are capable […] of fast results.  The executives love this type of work; they get to choose the company they work with, the kind of work, and when they work, so for many executives that decided to go on their own, it’s a perfect match. In the past, executives that worked this way were considered to be those who probably can’t find serious full time jobs. Today, there is a huge demand for these people, they have the skill sets that companies usually can’t find and definitely not within a reasonable budget. Pam’s Career It’s funny because I don’t have an industry… I started a retail store in women’s fashion right after collage, and then I switched to medical software, then to telecommunications, and this fourth company is a services company. Being an entrepreneur, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t have anyone to guide me, my mentor was my dad, and he died in an early stage. I made some terrible mistakes and had to backup and start again. I managed to find my way, and had some very successful companies, but what I love about this current company and what I’m passionate about is helping entrepreneurs so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did. Pam’s customers Actually, we have two types of clients. The first are the companies that hire us; they are usually small to medium sized companies privately or family owned, it can vary from a startup to a well established company selling 600 million dollars a year. 20% of our companies are the $1 billion companies that find us through Google. The second type of clients are the executives, these talents are hard to find, so once we get them, we don’t want to lose them again. We want them to be available to us so we treat them very well. We make sure they get paid right away; we try to be very available and responsive to them and to keep tight connections with them. Pam’s best advice about approaching the customers Focus on the customers you already have. It’s easy to retain and get more money from existing clients, because if you know how to keep them as customers; they will stay and buy over and over again. But of course you must keep them,...

Pam Wasley is the Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. She’s served on several private boards and has been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces. What you'll learn about in this episode: One of the first things that Pam learned when it comes to people The value of realizing that you don’t know everything Some tips to keep up with the fast pace of the world today Why you should be thinking outside of the box when it comes to your business How being bored is good for your mind Surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you are Why you need to focus on hiring well, especially with your executive team The one thing that is important for any business & how it can help you grow Building a team of advisors that help you in areas that you have big challenges How to best connect with Pam: Website: getcerius.com Website: getcerius.com/onwardnation

On this episode of the Support is Sexy podcast, serial entrepreneur and Cerius Executives CEO Pam Wasley shares her expertise with starting, growing and selling companies, how interim executives are changing the workforce and how you can spot a void and fill it with your business.

Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, Pam Wasley is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She's been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces.

Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, Pam Wasley is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She's been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gapP3FUVnCs[/embedyt] Meet our Guest Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, Pam Wasley is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She's been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces.

Pamela Wasley:           Hi, I’m Pamela Wasley. CEO of Cerius Executives. Cerius is one of the largest North American providers of contract executives of part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. Cerius has a network of thousands of executives form operations, finance, sales, marketing, IT, engineering and human resources. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill a sudden gap, leadership, to run a key initiative or to provide specialized skills or knowledge for a temporary period of time. Cerius deals with thousands of CEO’s and over the past few years, more and more CEO’s have been telling us that they’re ready to sell the company. However, most don’t realize that they have to get a company ready for sale, and that they have many options when it comes to selling their businesses. Selling a company takes time and lots of preparation, as well as, picking the right partner to sell to. But today, we’ll be talking to four experts: an investment banker, a private equity partner, a CEO who sold his company to his employee- through an employee stock option program also known as an ESOP- and a strategic acquirer. All who can give advice to business owners considering selling their businesses in the next 1-3 years. Well Cal, let’s talk a little about the ESOP. Cal Lai:                       Yep. Pamela Wasley:           So you did that with your company, but you probably could’ve gone out and done a deal with a strategic buyer or a private equity firm or gone through a private investment banker. What was it that, what was the over-arching reason why you went with the ESOP? I mean you could discuss a little to begin with but what were those real reasons and why should any business owner consider it? Cal Lai:                       You know, we actually did have much better offers. We could’ve sold the company for a lot more money. Probably 50% more money if we took a strategic buyer and as I said earlier we got a couple of them. But as we went through the diligence process, we realized that the company would be a really different company and the founders really felt strongly that they’d spent ... the company started with one guy who built a thousand person organization, and you know one person at a time. And the company had a really strong sense of family values we really believed in doing things the right way and working hard and rewarding staff, we had great perks and benefits that people were highly incentived to perform and stick around. And we really created a family like environment. And we, we knew that once we were hired by a strategic buyer that would kind of like go away and since many, many, many other people in the company had been there through most of that time and contributed a lot to the success of the company, we didn’t think it was fair that we put their jobs in jeopardy or change the culture so I think management was willing, the ownership was willing to take a lot less because they could see the continuity of the organization that was built with a lot of pride in that. And I think if you ask the ownership that sold at the time, they would all tell you that even though they could’ve made more money they felt better about the transaction because the company was able to continue with a set of values and culture that it had built. Many of our key employees were able to continue in their roles, we had a succession plan planned out and put into effect and many of us are still around operating the business. So ultimately we just felt that it was the right decision to make a back of our employees to sell it to them, rather than to maximize our returns and leave them in the bag. So it all comes down to what we talked about before, the seller’s intentions are as an entrepreneur and as a business owner you really have to understand what your ultimate exit and goal is and you know having been through this I can tell you from my personal experiences it’s all about the money. You know, I think when you work very hard to build your company and you say yourself wow, I don’t want that change. Is there no way I can exit without changing everything I built? In that case you might take less, but you may have the satisfaction knowing that what you built remains. So, I think that’s, you know, owners always have to be clear about what they’re goals are and why they’re doing what they’re doing. You know, if your goal is maximize your financial returns that’s probably a different strategy than, you know, seeing continuity in an organization that you built. So you’ve got to think about what your goals are. Pamela Wasley:           So Cal, you weren’t ready to step down either. I think that’s one of the reasons? Cal Lai:           No, it was odd because there was basically 3 primary owners of the business. Two wanted to retire. I didn’t. If they were going to sell the company I was planning to step out anyway, and actually I was the one who had arranged the purchase from the few strategic buyers. So I’d spent 9 months working through that process. Because I thought that’s what the other two, who owned the business more than I did, wanted to do. And we came down to it, it was a matter of them deciding that they didn’t want me to leave, they didn’t want employees to leave. I still want… There’s a significant age difference. I’m probably 25 years younger than the two other founders, so I didn’t have an incentive to go sit on the beach and retire, so I wasn’t in that mode. So I think ultimately it was a really good decision that the ownership really thought about what was best in the long-term interests of the organization that they had built, not necessarily their individual pockets. Having said that they exited at a fine amount of money and were able to comfortably retire and not have to work again. So they did accomplish their financial goals as well.

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today? Kristen: I’m great, thank you. Matt:     Great, thank you. BT:          Great. So today we just want to kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. How is it, and I know the answer to this and maybe the answer that I have is the ultimate answer, but for me hiring experience is a lot like shortcuts. If you play video games, it’s like plugging in cheat codes. You’re paying an executive to come in, to give you experience so you don’t make those mistakes that you can only learn via experience. How does Cerius work with companies to kind of explain that? Because when looking at an executive contract they’re usually not cheap. They’re relative because the experience that’s coming in will actually save you and make you money in the long-term. But in that one moment instance where that proposal gets to the client, there could be that feedback or that thought. What would you say to that CEO who’s looking at your proposal going “oh I think this is expensive”? Kristen: Matt, I’m going to let you take this one first because you are, this is your sweet spot. Matt:     So first thing that I would say is, I think that we are worth what you pay us to do for you. And I think that if I were hiring, if I were a CEO in a startup situation and I were hiring a head-of-sales in marketing because that’s what I that was where my focus was. And the fact that this executive is going to cost me more than if I went to the marketplace to hire somebody. One of the things that we tend to forget is our executives, almost every one of them have been in the marketplace in a very senior position for 20-plus years. And with that they bring a not only a depth of the knowledge of what their discipline is, but a breath of other knowledge because they’ve been in large corporations or they’ve been in large organizations where they’ve seen more than just their discipline. They’ve been exposed to, many of them they’ve been exposed to acquisitions, divestitures, startups. They know what to look for in addition to just their discipline. So while they’re doing their job in this startup organization, they also can council the CEO, the board and say “now I want to make sure you know that from my experience, this is what you can anticipate on this side over here. Or this is what you should be prepared for over here.” So while they may be paying for sales and marketing, they’re actually getting a whole lot more knowledge, information sharing than they would get if they just went to the marketplace and hired someone who was the head of sales and marketing. And that’s the value that we try to make sure that our clients understand that they’re getting when they engage us, and they engage anyone of our interims that they’re always getting more than what they’re paying for. Kristen: Some of that depends on what you’re comparing it to. In contrast, if you’re comparing apple-to-apple that’s actually not more expensive. Especially when you look at fully loaded, the time to hire and the cost of [3:35] package when the time comes. For a full-time executive, you only get an interim executive and what you need them to accomplish they’re very focused, they’re accomplishing on that, and that heavily involves HR and office politics [3:48] water cooler. They don’t need to go through iterations, they’re an expert in what they need for what you would… If you’re thinking you need to hire a full-time executive when you can actually have an interim come or part-time come in couple days a week for the next 6 months in order to address yourself or help you accomplish strategic planning and executing it, or addressing your sales team and improving sales, re-doing the comp plan. Whatever those areas is, what are you looking for your executives to accomplish, you have a part-time executive accomplish it in likely a shorter period of time and that’s actually going to cost you a lot. Is it more expensive than the do-nothing option in the short-term? Yeah. If I do nothing, I don’t bring an executive in and I go with my assistive team, just remember your, their thinking is limited to the handful of companies that they’ve worked with. They’re likely not going to all of a sudden jump in expertise and have the answers that you need, or the expertise that you need the next couple of weeks, or the next couple of months. And that’s by design. It’s a double-edged sword. You’re internal team, you don’t want them to be drop jumpers, you don’t want them to have work in 10 to 15 different companies at that point in their careers because you want them to stay with you for the next, you know, at least the next 5 years. The double-edged sword is that means they’ve only worked in a very small amount of companies, and when bringing someone in like an interim executive management post, someone may have worked in 5 to 10 different companies in a single year, and they’re raining all their experience, all that knowledge and all that possible worth to your company. So you’re condensing what might be a 1 year cycle onto a 6 month cycle because there’s no testing, there’s no guessing. You got the action book all ready when you’re bringing them in. Just why we really focus on what you need them to accomplish, and what expertise is needed. Why we focus with the executives on knowing what their expertise is so that they can come in and head the [5:43]. Most cases it really is not an expensive option. In the long-term it is going to save or make the company more money, as long as it’s managed correctly. Always put that caveat on. BT:          Excellent. Any last minute comments before we say goodbye? Matt:     [laughs] Kristen: Well, I think you’ve covered a range of topics and [laughs] a lot of information is out there. It’s not easy but it certainly makes the world look different. And for us to see a company, and I’ve been in a company – we grew from 5 million to 50 million in a period of 18 months. I wish I would have had this option back then. I wish that I could have brought in an expert, rather than relying on “we have such fast growth, we have a limited cash flow budget, we can only afford this expertise.” It might help that there’s never a company where a CEO, especially a business owner, who’s in a situation and they’re not getting that leadership and expertise that they need to take their company forward because they can’t afford it. Because they think that they need to hire a full-time executive. There are other options for a range of situations. The only limitation there is thinking outside [6:58]. Matt:     I think the only thing that I would add is that we’re not new to this. You know Cerius has been at this for well over 12 years and I think that you know we’ve learned how to work with potential clients. That there are always ways to help them when they think that it’s too expensive, we can work with them to try to figure out ways for them to still get the knowledge and the expertise that they need from our interims and not spend as much money as they thought they would have to spend with us. So I think that there are ways of us working with clients, and I think the biggest thing to remember is that you know we can get an interim into their organization within a matter of days, and that with that that interim brings a breadth and depth of knowledge that it will take them months to try to find if they go out and try to find somebody on a full-time basis. So I think that they just need to remember that we’re there. And we can help. BT:          Excellent. Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time. Today we'll be talking to members of the Cerius team who are experts in either hiring or placing executives in full-time, part-time or on a consulting basis. So let's meet the Cerius team. First we have Kristen McAlister, President of Cerius, next is Matt Saur, Chief People Officer, and then we have Maria Hillman and Kim Person, both Vice-Presidents of Client Solutions. Let's get right to the questions, shall we? Let’s do a rapid fire session here and each of you give me one answer to each of the next 3 questions. Things to avoid when hiring an executive. Maria, let’s start with you. Maria:                   Anyone that uses the word “I” too much and not “we”, meaning they’re not a team player. Pam:                      Excellent. Matt? Matt:                     Don’t hire somebody in my image. Pam:                      Ah yes. Kristen? Kristen:                I would like to be careful from recycling within your industry. You may have an expert in your industry but they’re just going to recycle ideas and other concepts that are within it and not bring a great outside innovative perspective. Pam:                      Great. Great answer. Kim? Kim:                       Hiring an executive that cannot talk about his or her accomplishments. Pam:                      Alright. Next one. Things to ask an executive that you want to hire? Maria? Maria:                   I would ask them, what would you do in the first 30 days on your job. Pam:                      Ok. Matt? Matt:                     What were you brought in to do on your last assignment, and what did you accomplish? Pam:                      Right. Thanks Matt. Kristen? Kristen:                Ask them about the results from their last couple of assignments or positions. Some one can’t come up top of their head. What type of numbers, what type of impact that they’ve had? Especially using numbers other than, I just increased morale. They weren’t measuring it then, and they’re not going to measure it for you. Pam:                      So you want specifics. Correct? Kristen:                I want specifics. Better have it all on the top of your head because if you don’t have it from your past, how are you going to measure it and monitor it for me, and get me results. Pam:                      Exactly. Kim? Kim:                       I’m just going to reiterate. You’ve got to talk to executives what can you do for the company, not what you can do for the executive. Pam:                      Oh perfect one. Thanks Kim. Alright next one. Company X needs to diversify its revenue stream. What type of an executive should they be looking for? Expertise, duration of contract, etc. Maria:                   I would think expertise would be a marketing person or an innovation officer, and 3-6 months. And somebody from, that has some industry experience but that also has other verticals that you may be looking at. Pam:                      Right. Thanks Maria. Matt? Matt:                     I don’t know that I could add any more than what Maria said. I agree completely. To me it’s sales marketing, it’s experience. It’s having experience and multiple, looking at multiple organizations and being able to look at where they’ve been, where they need to go and how to get them from here to there. So still the marketing will be the obvious but I do think that there are other disciplines that could also get, make that happen. Pam:                      Great, thanks Matt. Kristen? Kristen:                Let’s start off with a very specific strategic product individual. Someone who knows how to productize, because optimally you’re not just looking at the revenue streams not just within the industry. It’s what is the product, how I describe the product and is it marketable within that. And a great marketing product person will know that and be able to carry out the messaging, so that not just the market gets it but your team as well. And then one great news about management consultant is that from that point is they diversify more within other industries. An Industry is vertical specific to executive, so we already have the contact say they know how to do it and they’ve done it many times. Pam:                      Great, thanks Kristen. Kim? Anymore to add? Kim:                       Really no. I just, I agree with everyone but also agree with Kristen that if you can productize, you’ve got to have someone that understands other verticals and other applicability’s for the product. Pam:                      Great. Thanks Kim. Alright before we wrap up here today, let me ask one last question to all the panelists. What last minute advice would you give business owners for thinking of hiring a temporary, part-time or contract executive? Kristen, why don’t we start with you? Kristen:                Telling them what I needed done. I’d want to know that they’re done it at least 3-5 times in other companies. I talk to those companies, I talk to the co-workers because I know that they’ve had used that expertise in those situations. Pam:                      You like the experience that they bring? Kristen:                Yeah, I want to know that they’ve got the expertise that I need and they’ve got proven results on it. Not just they’re a great person to work with and they’ve accomplished so much. Have they accomplished what I need done? Pam:                      So you don’t want somebody that just have an MBA and right out of college. Correct? Kristen:                Not just right out of college. There’s some incredible executives out there that have accomplished a lot of things. They just haven’t actually done and they have light team for balance. They haven’t actually done and been involved in my types of situation. It needs to be specific. Pam:                      Great. Anyone else have anything to add? Matt:                     I would add it. Our interims have both depth and breadth of experience in their specific discipline. The other thing that they have is that they come with usually 20-plus years of experience in a larger organizations or in large consulting firms. So what they bring to a CEO is that they bring that expertise, that is far-reaching under than just what that CEO is looking for us to come in and help them with. They can come in and provide advice on their whole organization, not just on the specific discipline that that CEO is looking for. Pam:                      Great, thanks Matt. So thank you all for being here today and sharing your expertise on things CEO’s need to know when hiring part-time, temporary and contract executives. Next month tune in for our podcast on the advantages of boards and advisory boards, especially the companies today. Should be a great topic and one you won’t want to miss. See you then.  

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time. Today we'll be talking to members of the Cerius team who are experts in either hiring or placing executives in full-time, part-time or on a consulting basis. Let's get right to the questions shall we? Matt, why would a company hire a management consultant? And what is management consulting? Mat:                      Well the reason that a company would hire a management consultant. One is that there may be difficult decisions that current management team doesn’t really want to make such as a downsizing situation or a situation where the company is in dire straits and they need to bring somebody in to help them make the most difficult decisions about how to streamline a company to make it profitable and there may very well be that the current owner is having difficulty making that decision on their own. Another one that I always like to use is, I’m the CEO of a company and my brother-in-law is in charge of sales. You know you realize that I’m never going to fire my brother-in-law but sales are stagnant. So I bring somebody in, I bring in a management consultant to head out my sales team and to teach my head of sales -my brother-in-law- how to do this job, how to go out and get new sales, grow organically and find new markets. And I get to keep my brother-in-law and the management person that we brought in at the end of the time when they’ve done their job they move on and they go do that for somebody else. As far as management consulting. Lots of different definitions, I think Kristen talked about it a few minutes ago, but management consulting is really that business where I have an expertise in a specific discipline and I no longer do it for a company, just one, but I provide that service to multiple companies. I go in, I look at what their needs are, I make an assessment, I help them put together a solution to that particular issue or problem and the difference I think between Cerius and most management consulting is that once I’ve made that proposal I move on and I go to another company and I do the same thing again. Cerius, we go in and we make a proposal on how to help them solve their problems and then we stay on and we become part of that management team long enough to actually execute a particular solution that we provided then. Pam:                      So you don’t just advise, you also execute? Matt:                     That’s correct, we do. Cerius, we do both of them. Pam:                      Great. Thanks Matt. Kristen:                 Pam, I would like to add on to that. Pam:                      Sure. Kristen:                One of the biggest challenges is that the company is hitting that plateau and it’s really hard to come up with the solutions and see your company from an objective standpoint when you’re inside of it. You need that outside perspective and as much as you can hire in individual to your company, those individuals come with needs and a handful of other company experiences because they’ve not always been there full-time. Management consultants may have experience that you get when you work with 10 companies within the given year. They can bring that perspective into your company and give a whole different view and take on things. You and I both know as business owners, sometimes it’s just too hard when you’re inside of it. You need someone from the outside. Pam:                      Excellent. Yeah, I totally agree with that. CEO’s today do not get enough outside perspective. They get very myopic. I get myopic in my business and all CEO’s complain that the same thing and they just need somebody from the outside to give them a different point of view. So thank you Kristen. So thank you all for being here today sharing your expertise on some things CEOs need to know when hiring part-time, temporary and contract executives. Next month, tune in for our podcast on the advantages of boards and advisory boards, especially in companies today. Should be a great topic and one you won't want to miss. See you then!

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time. Today we'll be talking to members of the Cerius team who are experts in either hiring or placing executives in full-time, part-time or on a consulting basis. Let's get right to the questions shall we? What last minute advice would you give business owners for thinking of hiring a temporary, part-time or contract executive? Kristen, why don’t we start with you? Kristen:                Telling them what I needed done. I’d want to know that they’re done it at least 3-5 times in other companies. I talk to those companies, I talk to the co-workers because I know that they’ve had used that expertise in those situations. Pam:                      You like the experience that they bring? Kristen:                Yeah, I want to know that they’ve got the expertise that I need and they’ve got proven results on it. Not just they’re a great person to work with and they’ve accomplished so much. Have they accomplished what I need done? Pam:                      So you don’t want somebody that just have an MBA and right out of college. Correct? Kristen:                Not just right out of college. There’s some incredible executives out there that have accomplished a lot of things. They just haven’t actually done and they have light team for balance. They haven’t actually done and been involved in my types of situation. It needs to be specific. Pam:                      Great. Anyone else have anything to add? Matt:                     I would add it. Our interims have both depth and breadth of experience in their specific discipline. The other thing that they have is that they come with usually 20-plus years of experience in a larger organizations or in large consulting firms. So what they bring to a CEO is that they bring that expertise, that is far-reaching under than just what that CEO is looking for us to come in and help them with. They can come in and provide advice on their whole organization, not just on the specific discipline that that CEO is looking for. Pam:  So thank you all for being here today sharing your expertise on some things CEOs need to know when hiring part-time, temporary and contract executives. Next month, tune in for our podcast on the advantages of boards and advisory boards, especially in companies today. Should be a great topic and one you won't want to miss. See you then!  

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time. BT:                  Welcome to Business Today brought to you by Cerius Executives, one of the largest interim executive and management consulting firms in North America. Today we are joined by Donald Nobel, a technology CFO who has spent a portion of his career as an interim executive. How are you doing today Donald? Donald:            Oh terrific, terrific! Nice to meet you Raj. BT:                  Nice to meet you too! So you actually have a pre-existing relationship with Cerius Executives. We’ve kind of tapped into you to be one of our interim executives and a CFO for some of our clients. That just leads me to wonder. When you work with companies, are there types of leaders or companies that you enjoy working with specifically? Do you like have a sweet spot with personalities or industries? Donald:            Well let’s start with industries if you don’t mind, and in with regards to that even breaking it down further, I prefer the challenge of really high growth companies. Where you walk in the door and they are doing a 100, 200, 300 percent a year, and those are very exciting and challenging for me and I love them. I love being in the door and I’m already hit with 5000 questions. Those are amazing. When you expand that to the industry, one of the things I love most is technology companies and today that’s a very broad term. A technology company could be software, it could be medical devices, it could be professional services. There are so many types of companies lumped under technology but again, love it because they are very fast moving and they are usually challenged a lot. As regards to people, leaders and CEOs, I tend to work best with those that have an organization where they trust the people below them, they trust that a CFO coming in can be part of the team and not micromanage ever single detail. The worst thing in the world is for a CEO to micromanage his team. And I think its best if I and the CEO are on the same page. That there are functions for the CEO and there are functions for the CFO and that’s the best atmosphere to work in. BT:                  And what do you do if you walk into a scenario where the CEO is micromanaging and doesn’t have a whole lot of trust with the people that work with him? Donald:            I probably try to do the best I can, but then shortly I recommend somebody else coming in. Again my job is not the long-term type job situation. My job is to do best for the company and sometimes the best for the company is a change. BT:                  When we look at the interim executive industry the consulting work that comes with it, it can be challenging, obviously, which seems to be a driving factor for a lot of executives who do this type of work. But at the same time it also, it could probably have its nuisances, constantly having to look for new clients or customers or contracts or... How do you do some of that, how do get yourself out there in the market place? So people know that you’re there and these are the services you have to offer and basically how does an interim executive in today’s day and age market themselves? Donald:            A very good question. I chuckled a little bit because I remembered something that a colleague said to me once and he said, “You are either working or looking for work, you cannot do both.” And I find that to be true in the interim game where again I think a common theme of our conversation today Raj is that interims do tend to get put into situations where they have to work very hard and they have to get a lot of things accomplished in a very short amount of time. So you don’t have time to you know kind of be searching while you’re dong this work for this company. So what I tend to do is, I tend to do two different things. Obviously I have an extensive network of companies I’ve helped and I get referrals. But the other thing of course I do is I partnered with Cerius Executives and work with them because they are one of the few firms to take the extra time to match the right executive or management consultant with the company that can benefit the  most from our expertise. There are a lot of companies out there doing it but it seems like Cerius has the best model for accomplishing both goals which is utilizing the expertise and helping the company. BT:                  Well Don. I wanted to thank you for your time. We really appreciate you joining us. And sharing some of this, actually not some of this, all of this great knowledge and information with us and our listeners. For our listeners we will be back every week with a different podcast covering a different topic, so please stay tuned. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Play Store. And until next time, this is Raj Prasad for Cerius Executives.  

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time.   BT:                  Welcome to Business Today brought to you by Cerius Executives, one of the largest interim executive and management consulting firms in North America. Today we are joined by Donald Nobel, a technology CFO who has spent a portion of his career as an interim executive. How are you doing today Donald?   Donald:            Oh terrific, terrific! Nice to meet you Raj.   BT:                  Nice to meet you too! So you actually have a pre-existing relationship with Cerius Executives. We’ve kind of tapped into you to be one of our interim executives and a CFO for some of our clients. That just leads me to wonder. You must have quite a few stories that have to do with startups or situations in which you’ve parachuted in. What’s one of your most memorable assignments, and the results that you achieved?   Donald:            Well let’s continue on on the example I just gave. A few years ago I was called in by a friend who had a CEO who couldn’t understand why his company was not profitable. And his company was heading over a 100 million in sales and they were doing a lot of business, a lot of satisfied customers. But believe it or not, he was considering laying off staff members because he just couldn’t figure out what the bottom line problem was. I come in and within a month after analysing the entire company, I realise the sales people were not being compensated correctly and didn’t have the correct incentives to do the job. So I proposed and implemented a compensation plan based on gross profit, not revenue. Within two quarters, gross profit tripled. This enabled the company not only to survive but thrive and continue on by expanding the product line, doing some mergers and acquisitions. And even implementing an entire professional services department.   BT:                  Well Don. I wanted to thank you for your time. We really appreciate you joining us. And sharing some of this, actually not some of this, all of this great knowledge and information with us and our listeners. For our listeners we will be back every week with a different podcast covering a different topic, so please stay tuned. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Play Store. And until next time, this is Raj Prasad for Cerius Executives.

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time.   BT:                  Welcome to Business Today brought to you by Cerius Executives, one of the largest interim executive and management consulting firms in North America. Today we are joined by Donald Nobel, a technology CFO who has spent a portion of his career as an interim executive. How are you doing today Donald? Donald:            Oh terrific, terrific! Nice to meet you Raj. BT:                  Nice to meet you too! So you actually have a pre-existing relationship with Cerius Executives. We’ve kind of tapped into you to be one of our interim executives and a CFO for some of our clients. That just leads me to wonder, why continue down the interim executive path? I’m sure you get approached with full-time opportunities. Has the right opportunity not come by yet? Have you just fallen in love with being an interim executive so much that your interim executive career might become your next full-time career? I mean what keeps you going with it? Donald:            Wow. Good question. I’ll answer in part Raj, that of course I get approached by companies that want full-time work, long-term employment. I have also been approached by some of the interim companies I’ve worked for and said can you continue on as a full-term role. I am not sure I explicitly choose not to pursue those, but I do love the challenge that interim work brings to me. I am a puzzle solver. BT:                  So let me ask you this – next question’s a little hard – Give me one mantra of Don that you use or give when you go into a company that’s either hitting a plateau, or going through growing pains or in the need of a turnaround situation. A Rajisim, one of mine, is what’s the difference between a butter knife and a sword? How you use it. You got a  Donism for me? Donald:            Well there are some serval mantras that I live by but I would probably say the one I use most often is ‘hope for the best and plan for the worst’. The reason I say that and the reason I use that is when you go into any situation, whether it be a company or a life challenge or any situation, it’s OK to hope for the best outcome possible. However a good CFO, a good COO, a good management consultant should always be planning for all the scenarios that might or could happen. And I try to do that when I go in. I don’t just look for the best outcome and say that’s the one we’re going to pursue. I look at that one and say let’s pursue that one but here are five others ones that I am keeping in my back pocket. BT:                  That’s actually a really good one. I’m probably going to steal that Don, I’m going to be honest with you. Donald:            Oh I have a few more if you want them, so. BT:                  Give me one more. That was actually a really good one. Donald:            It’s interesting you should ask that Raj because one the other ones that comes up quite often, especially when both entering a company as an interim or choosing an interim, is something I heard from a CEO that I respect probably way more than he knows and it’s a simple statement that says, ‘fast, cheap or good, choose any two’. The purpose of that is you can either have it fast or good, but don’t expect it cheap. You can either have it cheap and good, but don’t expect it fast. There is very rarely a situation where you can have fast, good and cheap and I live by that because that’s true. There are many times that you have to pay more for something that you want fast and you want extremely high quality and there are times where when you come in and try to give the lowest bid whatsoever and have it done yesterday, you’re not going to get the quality. So it’s a good maxim to live by. BT:                  Well Don. I wanted to thank you for your time. We really appreciate you joining us. And sharing some of this, actually not some of this, all of this great knowledge and information with us and our listeners. For our listeners we will be back every week with a different podcast covering a different topic, so please stay tuned. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Play Store. And until next time, this is Raj Prasad for Cerius Executives.

Pamela Wasley:           Hi, I’m Pamela Wasley. CEO of Cerius Executives. Cerius is one of the largest North American providers of contract executives of part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. Cerius has a network of thousands of executives form operations, finance, sales, marketing, IT, engineering and human resources. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill a sudden gap, leadership, to run a key initiative or to provide specialized skills or knowledge for a temporary period of time. Cerius deals with thousands of CEO’s and over the past few years, more and more CEO’s have been telling us that they’re ready to sell the company. However, most don’t realize that they have to get a company ready for sale, and that they have many options when it comes to selling their businesses. Selling a company takes time and lots of preparation, as well as, picking the right partner to sell to. But today, we’ll be talking to four experts: an investment banker, a private equity partner, a CEO who sold his company to his employee- through an employee stock option program also known as an ESOP- and a strategic acquirer. All who can give advice to business owners considering selling their businesses in the next 1-3 years. Let’s look at it from the seller’s point of view. What are the reasons why a CEO would look to sell his company? John, let’s start with you on that one. John Hammett:            [laughs] Sure. Yeah in the first deal I was involved in as a shareholder where I was in my early 30’s and I was working for an entrepreneur in two divisions. We sold one of those. He said, and this guy was in his mid-50’s and as we were working on the transaction, he said that anytime you have an opportunity to get liquidity in a private company you need to seriously consider it because that’s a risky investment, it’s illiquid and it’s very difficult get out of that unless you go through a transaction like this. And that’s stuck with me. For owner’s create huge value when they build a business in the early stage they take risks because you don’t have as much to lose. But you get to be in your 50’s and you’ve built a company and its worth $20 million, then suddenly you become more conservative. And you do have the risk of losing it all and as you get older, you have as we call lesser runway to get it all back. If you had a bad five years, when you’re in your 30’s that’s one thing but if you’re over 60, a bad five years can really affect things. So I think owners need to always be thinking about how do I exit this investment. Doesn’t mean that the company’s bad, just that as a single investment it’s something to be concerned about. Pamela Wasley:           How many [Murray speaks] Go ahead Murray. Murray Rudin:            The one thing to always think about is really the as important as price, particularly if they’re doing a deal where they will continue to be engaged, is the caliber of the firm, the private equity firm that they’re going to partner with, the reputation, the references, the style, the chemistry, the cost. Those kinds of factors. I think the number one mistake sellers make in scenario’s where they intend to roll over significant equity is they obsess over the last few dollars valuation when the really important thing is the quality of people that you’re partnering with. John Hammett:            I absolutely agree with that Murray. That’s much more important. Pamela Wasley:           Cal, anything to add to that? Ca Lai:                        Yeah, I think as a seller you really want to know why you want to exit. I think it’s true whenever you have a chance to get liquidity it’s worth looking at but I think that there are a lot of reasons why sellers want to exit. They want to retire and building a business takes a lot of time, energy and effort and I think after 15-20 years in the seat it’s very tiring. And I know a lot of people, a lot of CEO’s and founders who built businesses, at some point put so much into it that they don’t have the passion they once had. They want to do something different, so that’s another reason to think about why it’s time to be selling. So I think a good entrepreneur is always looking at their options going forward. Time is always a risk, and the more time you’re business is out there, the greater risk you have. So if you have, most of us do, some financial goals in the sale of a business you’ve always got to be looking forward to that and understanding what the best timing for a sale is, how you can get prepared to sell and finding the right potential buyers.  

Pamela Wasley:           Hi, I’m Pamela Wasley. CEO of Cerius Executives. Cerius is one of the largest North American providers of contract executives of part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. Cerius has a network of thousands of executives form operations, finance, sales, marketing, IT, engineering and human resources. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill a sudden gap, leadership, to run a key initiative or to provide specialized skills or knowledge for a temporary period of time. Cerius deals with thousands of CEO’s and over the past few years, more and more CEO’s have been telling us that they’re ready to sell the company. However, most don’t realize that they have to get a company ready for sale, and that they have many options when it comes to selling their businesses. Selling a company takes time and lots of preparation, as well as, picking the right partner to sell to. But today, we’ll be talking to four experts: an investment banker, a private equity partner, a CEO who sold his company to his employee- through an employee stock option program also known as an ESOP- and a strategic acquirer. All who can give advice to business owners considering selling their businesses in the next 1-3 years. So let’s meet the talent. Our first guest today is John Hammett, an investment banker with Corporate Finance Associates. As a former company owner himself, John understands the unique situation a private company owner who decides to sell. John maximizes their value by finding high-value buyers and negotiating the best price and terms for the clients. Our next guest is Murray Rudin, managing director for Riordan, Lewis & Haden, a private equity firm. Prior to joining RLH, Murray was Chief Financial Officer and Director of business development of Voxel, a medical imaging company. Previous to that, he was the principal of Valley National Investors, a private equity fund based in Phoenix. Murray also practiced law at Riordan & McKinzie, specializing in private equity funds and their portfolio company. Our next guest is Steve LaRue, Vice-Chairman of Rico Solution. His work with strategic buyers and private equity firms over the years to sell and buy companies. His many stories propel when it comes to MNA. Our last guest is Cal Lai, President and CEO of Recom Technologies, a software development shop that builds quality solutions for government and business. Established in 1980, the ownership of Recom sold its business to 600 employees through an ESOP in 2000.  What would you tell, and I want the advice of this panel, I know what some of you are going to say. But what would you say to an owner on how to prepare his or her company for sale? I mean aren’t there things you need to do before you even start talking to people? Murray let’s start with you. Murray Rudin:            So, I would say that and this touches a little upon some of the topics Steve covered exceptionally well a few minutes ago. But I would say that the owner needs to take a really honest look and then go. They have to realize that whatever flaws, warts, whatever you want to call them are on business are going to be found. They’ll be better off finding those warts themselves and finding, or mitigating or fix them before they start the process. SO that includes things like, obviously, get all your legal documents really diligently reviewed by a professional, be a lawyer not by your local lawyer. Have definitely get an audit from your financial statements, going back at least 2 or 3 years even if it costs a lot of money, you just want to have that. Because all of these things although they cost a lot of money upfront ultimately yield enormous ROI in terms of getting a better valuation on the back hand. If there are limitations in, as was mentioned, kind of the depth of your management team or you’ve got customer concentrations, supplier concentrations, major contracts that are nearing the end with customers that need to be, that really are critically valued business, that need to be reviewed in order that you get value form. Anything. You really got to be tough on yourself and on the business and say if I were the skeptic, what would I be worried about in this business in terms of predictability, revenue and earnings? And what can I do to mitigate that? And that mitigation effort will take time and therefore almost every business has some weaknesses so you really should start thinking about that whole identify the flaws and try to mitigate them a year before you really suspect to be selling the business. Sometimes more than that. Pamela Wasley:           Right, thanks Murray. Anybody else have anything to add to that? John Hammett:            Well, well your lead is Pam was a classic because so often we find donors that say, “Oh, I can sell this. I know who’s going to buy it, my competitor across town I see him every year at the tradeshow and they’ll pay me a premium to get me out of the business.” In my view, selling to a competitor is probable one of the lowest value deals you can put together because there’s nothing new brought to the game. You already compete with them, if he’d wanted to hire your salesman he’d do that, and if he wanted to sell to your customers he’d go try to find them, but the customers go buy from you because they don’t like him. And there’s a negative synergy there. We love entrepreneurs. I’ve been an entrepreneur myself and they start, create fabulous companies. But they definitely do that on their own and they think that selling the company on their own is going to be easy. Um, what they’re going up against is very experienced buyers. And they need someone on their side of the table that brings equal experience and some insight as to where find the right buyer. Murray Rudin:            Perhaps unexpectedly, I would agree with you on that. Folks might say, well as a buyer why would you want a seller to have spawn representation? But in our experience, um, the having strong representation with somebody like John actually really, first of all it improves the likelihood of the process will get successfully completed as compared to a scenario where the seller does not have an advisor. And it helps the seller understand and get comfortable with what are the norms of the deal business. Typically sellers don’t have any prior experiences selling businesses and they just don’t know what requests, what approaches, what valuation technique, anything are pretty much given standards in the MNA world. And so, by having a Sherpa, a guy who’s already been to the top of the mountain before, the seller is much more likely to have an outcome he or she is likely to feel great about. Steve LaRue:              Can’t emphasize that enough. It’s amazing how many sellers go into the process thinking it’s just a foregone conclusion, I’ll just find a buyer and there’s going to be a happy ending at the end of this journey. And it’s not an automatic. The transaction, the MNA feels littered with deal which doesn’t cross the finish line because of various errors and mistakes that were made in the process. So having an, assembling an advisory team is the single most important thing a seller can do and that advisory team needs to consist of an MNA advisor who gets the big picture, the big picture guy. Whether that’s an investment banker or broker or a consultant with strong MNA experience. The CPA is critically important that Murray emphasized earlier and legal counsel, and we’re not talking about the transaction attorney or corporate attorney. We’re talking about somebody who has deep MNA experience. In addition, Murray talked about doing a financial audit that’s also really important that you have a legal audit done as well. I can’t tell you how many deals got delayed or ended up with deal breakers or legal hurdles, issues around status of IP, reviewing the key contracts. We ended up successfully buying the company but we looked at one company where during the due diligence process we discovered that all of the distributor agreements that they had with their distribution channel had expired. And, you know, we had to go fix that before we could go buy the company. So it’s really important that they do their homework, the seller does their homework, does the housekeeping on both the financial side and on the legal side before they start the sale process. Pamela Wasley:           Yes, Steve you just mentioned due diligence. Tell me, talk a little bit more about that. What does that entail and how long does it take? Steve LaRue:              Yeah, the due diligence process is really the, it’s the risk mitigation activity conducted by the buyer. And it primarily focuses on 3 key areas: financial risk mitigation, operational risk mitigation and then legal risk mitigation. In the old days when I first started doing this it involved just a very exhaustive process of pulling together all the documentation, the information, the data necessary. Putting it in the binders, putting it in a data room. Today they have a, we have virtual data rooms. It’s all on electronically which all makes it a, a lot easier. It’s extraordinarily detailed. Very, very intrusive. It can take anywhere from a few weeks if it’s a relatively small transaction and the seller’s well prepared, to literally months if the process properly taken care of in advance. The most important thing I would know about due diligence is for the listeners which are thinking about selling their business. Perhaps, the most important thing I want to emphasize is that the due diligence submission that are entered into that data room typically become the schedule’s supporting the seller’s rep and warranty in a definitive agreement. So, it’s really important that you’re totally honest and very, very accurate in those submissions in the due diligence in the data room. Pamela Wasley:           Yeah, John you have a data room you talked about before. Anything you’d like to add there about that? John Hamett:               Yeah, yeah. I could give you a couple of antidotes. I think the advice we just heard about being brutally honest, totally complete is really, really important. Because you know you’ll have to indemnify the buyer against anything you did not disclose. Sometimes there’s a temptation to not disclose something and to think that you can scoot it by the buyer but I’ve never been a party to that happening but it can come back and bite you pretty severely. We sold a company here a couple of years ago to a Fortune 25 buyer. It was a mid-market company like most of the deals we do but we ended up, the buyer had 60 people in the data room looking at 2400 documents. And it took about 4 months to get it through right. I was astonished. They had the deal guys, the financial people, the legal people and then they had HR people in there, they had the safety person, risk management. It was the most extensive due diligence I’ve ever been through. But we got it done and we got the deal done so it turned out fine in the end. Murray Rudin: You know I might add something on that. We kind of look at the due diligence process with 2 different purposes. One of course being of risk mitigation elements that were mentioned just a minute or two ago. But what we’re really more interested in, particularly because we’re looking at going forward in a 60-40 partnership with the entrepreneur, is we’re trying to learn about business in conjunction with the entrepreneur to help map out strategy, and opportunities, needs for additional people in the organization. All those kinds of elements for what will happen going forward. And so we don’t get the diligence so much as a ‘us against them’ project as we do a joint effort to try to understand, help us understand the business and start to develop in conjunction with the owner what the high-level plans moving forward to maintain and accelerate the business’ growth and revenue and profits and value would look like. SO there’s kind of a second purpose for us in that process as well. John Hammett:            Yeah, Murray I’d like to respond to that. About half the deals we sell are to private equity and half strategic. Before I became a full-time investment banker, I was the president of a couple of companies that we sold at private equity. And the process is very interesting early in the deal you sort of share information and then you negotiate the letter of intent, it can be adversarial. Each side wants to get the best deal structure. And the adversarial thing begins with, carries over with the beginning of due diligence. By the time we get through, it becomes highly collaborative. I always enjoy watching that happen. The best private equity buyers do look at it as a partnership with the owners and they do have legitimate interest in where the opportunities are as well as the risks. In most cases it’s not a game of gotcha’, oh look what I found here, but very much a collaborative thing. It’s very nice to hear you speak to that too Murray. Murray Rudin:            yeah, particularly the issue: is it collaborative or is it adversarial is mitigated to some degree in some circumstances where the seller is rolling over a substantial portion of their equity which is typically the case in our transactions. Because conversely, when the seller is selling almost all of their positions then there’s really, the seller doesn’t really have any incentive to help the buyer become better educated and a better helper. Because there’s really no helping going post-closing. But in our scenarios we all view the second bite of the apple as the opportunity for everyone and it’s in everybody’s interest to get that process off to a strong start as possible.

Pamela Wasley:           Hi, I’m Pamela Wasley. CEO of Cerius Executives. Cerius is one of the largest North American providers of contract executives of part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. Cerius has a network of thousands of executives form operations, finance, sales, marketing, IT, engineering and human resources. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill a sudden gap, leadership, to run a key initiative or to provide specialized skills or knowledge for a temporary period of time. Cerius deals with thousands of CEO’s and over the past few years, more and more CEO’s have been telling us that they’re ready to sell the company. However, most don’t realize that they have to get a company ready for sale, and that they have many options when it comes to selling their businesses. Selling a company takes time and lots of preparation, as well as, picking the right partner to sell to. But today, we’ll be talking to four experts: an investment banker, a private equity partner, a CEO who sold his company to his employee- through an employee stock option program also known as an ESOP- and a strategic acquirer. All who can give advice to business owners considering selling their businesses in the next 1-3 years. So let’s meet the talent. Our first guest today is John Hammett, an investment banker with Corporate Finance Associates. As a former company owner himself, John understands the unique situation a private company owner who decides to sell. John maximizes their value by finding high-value buyers and negotiating the best price and terms for the clients. Our next guest is Murray Rudin, managing director for Riordan, Lewis & Haden, a private equity firm. Prior to joining RLH, Murray was Chief Financial Officer and Director of business development of Voxel, a medical imaging company. Previous to that, he was the principal of Valley National Investors, a private equity fund based in Phoenix. Murray also practiced law at Riordan & McKinzie, specializing in private equity funds and their portfolio company. Our next guest is Steve LaRue, Vice-Chairman of Rico Solution. His work with strategic buyers and private equity firms over the years to sell and buy companies. His many stories propel when it comes to MNA. Our last guest is Cal Lai, President and CEO of Recom Technologies, a software development shop that builds quality solutions for government and business. Established in 1980, the ownership of Recom sold its business to 600 employees through an ESOP in 2000. Do you have any last minute advice you’d give to business owners thinking of selling their companies? Murray let’s start with you. Murray Rudin:            Sure I would say, your question highlights one of the interesting aspects of our business which is that when we make the investment, that’s not the end of the road. That transaction is the beginning of the road. And where is, as for example, somebody in John’s position does a transaction he gets a seat and moves on to the next client. We, when we’re doing a transaction we’re just beginning a 5-7 year business marriage, you might call it, with the entrepreneur. So I might say the measure of our success is not when we do the investment transaction, it’s when we exit. And there is a real satisfaction. We sell companies, you know, every year. Probably something in our portfolio turns over one or two transactions depending on the maturity of the company in the light. But there is a real satisfaction after you work with a business and a management team for those many years to see a couple of things happen. Most importantly the entrepreneur realizes their dreams, they get a second bit of the apple, a windfall that allows them to do whatever they want for the rest of their lives. Which is wonderful. You see the opportunity that has been provided for the management team to have the experience of building a great business. And then typically to remain in place with the new owner. And then, you know, we try to make sure that we sell our business to typically strategic buyers where there’s a really good cultural fit and so we want to make sure there’s opportunity for everybody in the company to continue to blow their careers and make a good living. So when you have something like that, there’s a real satisfaction. And that’s probably what gets us up in the morning every day. Pamela Wasley:           Murray, can you give an example of that? A recent transaction? Murray Rudin:            Well sure. We just, in the last 12 months or so we have a sold a portfolio company called Secure Mission Solutions that provides federal agencies with cyber security services. Basically helping IT services to help protect federal agencies data and networks against hackers from places like China, North Korea, Iran and everywhere else. And we sold that company to a very large multi-billion dollar privately held engineering services company. Actually based here in Southern California called Parsons Engineering. Prior to that we had a portfolio company called Cybercoders which was an extraordinarily successful replacement recruitment business that was acquired on by assignment, a publicly held staffing and recruiting business and that’s proven to be a wonderful transaction for both us and for the, all the members of the Cybercoders team that are doing really well with their new owner. Pamela Wasley:           Thanks Murray. Cal? Cal Lai:           I don’t have any recent transactions other than the one that I did, the one that I described. I still here working on it, on the company. The advice I would give is really think about what you want to do. Surround yourself by good outside advices. I think we’ve heard that a lot today, and I think that advisors are key. One thing I heard a lot is that, “You sold your company to employees that must have been a really quick transaction.” It took a year and a half. When you have to go through the due diligence and all the legal aide work needs to be done and the creating of the trust and the refs and warrants, and the passage of liability from ownership to the company itself, it’s a very arduous process and I think the one thing is that it’s easy, easy to believe these transactions are very simple and easy to pull off but they’re complex, they take a lot of time and I think that invariably throughout the process you reach a point of exhaustion where you’re like, God this is taking a lot of effort why am I doing this? And the risk there is that you spend so much time in the transaction, and as said earlier you lose sight of operating the business. So something the key takeaway for me was we were fortunate in that we were able to pull off a complex transaction or deal and at the same time grow our business and not take our eyes off the ball. But that took a lot of thought and effort and planning ahead of time. So we had actually a team of people who did nothing but operate the business while we had an outside team primarily of people who helped advice and pull us through the ESOP transaction.  So I think creating two separate teams in that example really helped us to continue to grow the business at the same time and execute the transaction. Pamela Wasley:           Great advice Cal. Thank. John, can you give me a transaction? I recent transaction? And then any last minute advice you’d give companies? John Hammett:            Sure, let me give you the advice first. Because I’m going to give you a story that sort of relates to that. My biggest piece of advice is to be realistic about what the value of the company is and to be thoughtful in the final valuation. It’s so tempting to try to get the last half a million bucks out of a purchased price out of the last million dollars of the deal. And it does, the competitive juice get flowing, but I’ve seen two circumstances. One we negotiated a high price and the buyer couldn’t close it because he couldn’t get financing. The price was too high for financing. And in another case where we sold the company and negotiated a strong price and then went through 5 times of due diligence to buy or retrade the price. And I think they agreed to the price thinking that they can get it back again. We did a pretty good job of holding the line for our clients. But the story I want to tell you just came up about 2 weeks ago. Actually we sold a company 2 years ago and for our client who was 36 years old, and we often times most of our clients are in their 50’s or 60’s retiring. This was a young man who was 36 and his company was 20 years old. And if you do the math which isn’t tough, he started it when he was 16. It was an ennui based company started in his bedroom. And he built it up over time and took it through a number of different iterations. He was in the internet security business, a hot sector. And we sold the company for him 2 years ago. He ended up with a very interesting structure because of who he was and what his interest were. And the deal was about one-third in cash, one-third in a seller’s noted – a lot of sellers don’t like that but in this case it was good- and one-third in stock of the buyer. And it was a pre-IPO company. And he thought that stock, well I’m willing to take the risk, I like the people a lot, I like the company. So it was structured that way. Two weeks ago the company that bought him was sold to a Singaporean company. So the shares that he took, he’s probably going to get an extra 50% valuation on that second bite of the apple in this case. So that was a wonderful success form and the seller note when we negotiated that, the buyer was going to pay 4% and then we went back and said please don’t insult us to tell our client you’re only going to pay 4%. It should at least be 6. And they agreed to that. So I asked the client here, they’re going to pay the seller note. He said I don’t want them to. I got a good interest rate at 6%, I’m going to keep at another year until it matures. I couldn’t get that kind of rate anywhere else, so all the different components that he took of this thing meant something to him and solved a different need. He’s now a CEO of a company owned by his father and I’m hopeful in a couple of years we’ll sell that company for him again. But it was probably my favourite transaction with this young guy. Pamela Wasley:           Thanks John. Steve? Steve LaRue:  Yeah, like John I’d like to start with the advice. You know most entrepreneurs and founders of the company spend most time nurturing their company than they probably do their own biological children at home. So the companies become their babies. And during the selling process, especially during the due diligence process, it is a process where the buyers are looking for weaknesses in the business. And as a result it can get to be very challenging from an ego perspective for the sellers, so my advice is don’t bring your ego into sale and don’t take the process personally. There’s going to be moments during time, whether it’s negotiating the letter of intent or the process of due diligence where it’s going to get potentially adversarial. But at the end of the day, as many of the folks pointed out here on during this session, at the end of the day as the process comes to fruition it’s really about two parties coming together and putting together a deal that creates a win-win scenario for everybody. In terms of the example of a business I recently acquired, at Rico we acquired 6 companies. One of them was a company in Canada, which two brothers owned the business. They were ready to exit the business. They had run it for 30+ years and they were looking to profiticize their investment in that business. And we saw an opportunity for us to come in and acquire that company and take their product line which was very, very complementary to our own. And rapidly grow the business by leveraging our sales and distribution channel. So at the confirmation of the deal, one of the things the founder was really concerned about was not only getting a fair valuation but making sure that the employees, were really, really like extended family members for the, were taken care of. They were pleased to see that over the course of next 2 years after acquiring the business that the business grew substantially. We increased the employment up in Canada, and the manufacturing operations by over 50%. And it turned out to be a very favorable transaction for us as the buyer, for the seller’s in terms of the valuation they get. Perhaps, most importantly they got a terrific deal for the employees as well as the customers and suppliers relying on that company.  

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Do companies need either or both board of directors and an advisory board? Merissa:               You know, I think it also depends on the industry that you’re in and even geographical location. Like we’re on the east coast and I know the east coast is a lot more risk aversive when it comes to investment as opposed to the west coast. On the east coast, a lot of the advisory boards do not have investors on them because the structure and the advisory board members end up constituting a lot of presence from the government. So a lot of the advisory board members on the east coast, people who do business with the government. That is a huge presence on advisory boards. Whereas I know on the west coast where investors play a very large role in advisory boards. I think it really depends on where you are geographically in the industry that you serve. They can really drive the makeup of your advisory board. That’s been my experience. Ginger:                 I agree with that and like to just add another point in that from my experience. The advisory board can, thinking of the west coast there’s so many startups, so much Silicon Valley and Irvine area startup activity, and the advisors that are typically brought in may or may not have the specific experience for the overall leadership of the company or directional set from the company. From the west coast side of things, my experience is that they can run more myopic, if you will. You know there’s not as much diversity of experience. It’s more narrow. And I think the broader a company can go to include more vast differences in experience in experience and contribution, the more successful the company will be. Now in the near-term that can create more conflict and discussion but the more that can happen from an advisory board level, I think the more successful the company can be. Same with the board of directors but again they have to deal with the pressure of the shareholders and the fiduciary rigor, and sometimes that can limit the range of discussion. You know you’re pretty locked in sometimes. Pam:                      Absolutely Ginger. And Merissa, if I’m not mistaken, you’ve written on this topic? Merissa:               Yeah, I have a book out. It’s called ‘Built to Scale’, how top companies create breakthrough growth through exceptional advisory boards. And SCALE is a model I created that when I wanted to put in a board in my first company which is Information Experts, that’s a 20 year old multi-million dollar government contracting firm. I wanted to put a board in place about 7 years ago, and when I went to look for information on how to build a board there were lots of articles that said you should build a board. There was literally nothing out there on how to do it. So I created a model called SCALE and that is Select, Compensate, Associate, Leverage and Evaluate, Evolve and Exit. That is literally the full end and soup to that process on how you make sure that you are selecting advisors that really meet the needs of your company because typically what people do is they meet somebody, that they think is great and they say do you want to join my board but they haven’t really thought about how they sit them in to the board or what role they would play. And that’s kind of putting the cart before the horse, so in my model, the SCALE model, the entire Select phase is very strategic in making sure that you identify who you need according to your holes and your goals inside your organization and you put a very methodical approach to selecting and vetting and then bringing them on. There’s a whole way to associate them from a legal perspective as well as how you actually integrate them into the culture of your organization because your advisory board is really an extension of your company, it’s is an extension of your brand and if you do it well, if it’s a phenomenal recruitment and retention tool as well. So my book covers the whole model and the appendix has all of the templates, the worksheets, the tools, everything that a business needs to put this in place. And I typically provide those to the people that buy the book in Microsoft Word and it’s basically board in a box. They just build their board with the information in there. Pam:                      Excellent Merissa. Excellent, excellent.

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today? Kristen: I’m great, thank you Matthew: Great, thank you BT:          Great. So today we just wanna kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. Quick question, you both have mentioned the making yourself memorable using numbers and marketing yourself and so forth. Now what’s the best way to do that, because let’s say you are one of those executives who have achieved some ridiculous amount of success in your life and sometimes when you put things on paper, people will find it to be a little, I guess I’m looking for the right word, exaggerated. How would an executive kinda deal with that? Especially if you have a résumé that is filled with one amazing feat after another, how do you position yourself so you don’t look fake? Because I mean I’ve seen that in the marketplace where anytime I meet a consultant or an executive or former executive, I mean, their papers, their marketing documents are very, very strong in terms of this is what I’ve achieved. How do you bring a level of authenticity to that marketing? Matthew: I’ll go first this time if it’s OK Kristen? What I would say that, that’s where Cerius comes in. You know that’s where our regional VP’s come in, the business development team. Because they have to talk to the client and make sure that they understand that it is that level of expertise, it is all of that knowledge that that senior executive is bringing to the table, that is what they need for to help them transition through whatever issues they have or help them grow their company or whatever it is that they were hiring Cerius to do that they want that person who has that you know that huge amount of experience. Our team has a way of being able to tone it down some, so that the client is comfortable with the fact that we are bringing in this level of expertise, but that this is really what they need to turn their business around, or to solve the problem. Or again, to grow the business to do a merger, to do an acquisition. That’s what our interims bring to the table that they don’t have on their team. Kristen: Yes. And at that point bringing in interim executive management consultant is very different than hiring for a full time executive. For a full time executive if you were to put down on paper that you have had incredible, amazing results in these five different areas it might be a little more than attractive to me, and I am certainly going to follow up to verify that it’s accurate, but we are looking at in interim or management consulting it’s going to be less believable and I want someone who is an expert in one area who can come in and be the best at solving my problem. So I’m going to look more for consistency and not stellar résumé. At executive level I better see a stellar résumé, you’ve had twenty to thirty years in order to reach that level of competency, so it had better be stellar but I’m going to look for it to be consistently stellar and incredible results and a more narrow set of areas and competencies in order for me to gauge are you the expert I’m looking for. Which is certainly where you get into the challenge of most executives we talk to or come in from [3:47] and want to make a career shift is, how do I take thirty years of work experience and all that I’ve done and narrow that down into either resume or profile, or narrow it to expertise. This is probably one of the most challenging things that executives could possibly go through. BT:          Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. So, here’s one last question. How, and Merissa you mentioned this, so where do you go to find really good board, advisory board members? Obviously you’ve got some parameters of great board members that you love to have on your board. But where do you find them? Merissa:               You want me to weigh in on that? Pam:                      Please. Merissa:               Ok, so yeah I give a whole laundry list. But the first place that you want to ask is actually any current board members that you have that actually know the organization. That’s one place you can go, you can ask your partners, you can ask your employees. LinkedIn is a phenomenal reference, I mean resource. I mean, I use LinkedIn very extensively and strategically for a lot of reasons and it’s you know a great place to go and connect with potential advisors. The other thing is to attend events where CEO’s are. So smart CEO magazine, I don’t know even if they’re out on the west coast but I know on the east coast they’re all up and down on the east coast and they have incredible events where it’s all CEO’s. You know I mean they have got Fast 50, they have tons of award events so when you go there it’s just a great place to be able mingle with other people. And you want to make sure that you are looking for advisors that are not in the exact same place you are. So if you’re a company of 1 million or 5 million or 10 million, you want to be looking for advisors that have already achieved what you have achieved, and have already hit a milestone that you’re aiming for because when you surround yourself like we just talked about with the people who are exactly like you, or where you are right now then you’re not really stretching and growing and doing the things you need to do to move to the next level. So there’s lots of places you can go. You definitely need to be part of the networking community. You’re not going to connect with the people you’re going to connect with just sitting at your desk, you know being on your phone. You actually have to be out and investing in the relationships that can help you move forward. Pam:                      Excellent. And on the west coast, Ginger, Jeff any comments? Where do you find great board members? Ginger:                 Yeah I look for, I try to get the owner of the company to really drill down to what the essence of their business model is. You know just because they sell something or they manufacture something or they offer service, they tend to focus on what that specific services instead of the business model that they have and I would, I recommend that people look for successful businesses, not competitors but other businesses models in other industries where that have gone from stages whether it’s to turn around or it’s a 50 year old family business that needs to jumpstart itself into today’s world. Or if it’s a startup. Look for similar paths. This is paths and then try to bring those folks in because if they’ve done it once they can do it again. And then I also think that if they understand who their core audiences, if they really have an understanding of their business proposition, what they sell and what the value is and then having business advisors who can open doors is very valuable. But not, not linear but look broader. If you’ve got a software platform that is dealing with chronic disease, don’t just look for other people who deal in the disease you’re working with. Look for people whom have grown internet businesses based on software platforms. Look for parallel industries that where their best practices you can learn from. That’s hard for people whom aren’t, haven’t been in today’s business world outside of their own family and business. That’s a new concept for those whom have been in business working for larger companies, structured companies. We kind of get that but I find that’s one of those aha’s for families owned businesses especially. Pam:                      And do you- Jeff:                       I, I – Pam:                      Oh, go ahead Jeff. Jeff:                       I was just going to say and I think networking with real professional groups probably where you find successful business men is a great way to find advisors. You know there’s financial experts, there’s banking people, there’s attorneys. Also another aspect a company could look at is through associations in their industry and you know could possibly conventions. When they go to conventions they see, maybe someone is not in the same type of business but that’s, they are successful in their trade that can align with you to create successes for your company. Pam:                      Yes, sometimes outside perspective goes a long way. So yes you could be right Jeff. Jeff:                       Yeah, big time. It’s really important that you get outside help through your boards and your advisors because you want a clean set of eyes to help, you know, give you thoughts and ideas to help your business expand. Pam:                      Exactly. So do you guys, and anyone can jump in to answer this one, but what if somebody doesn’t have board experience? Whether its board advisors or board of directors experience, but they’ve got lots of great experience in the industry or in platforms or whatever and they’d like to get on a board, but again they’ve never been on one. Are they good to bring on to a board or do you dismiss them totally? Jeff:                       Well I think you’d have to give the opportunity like on any type of business is kind of like a sport or something. You got to bring in new people. They may not have the experience but you find sharp intelligent people with pragmatic business mind and they’re something you can groom and mix a combination of experienced board members. You can often train your novices or interns as you might call and to have groom and give them the experience and plus your guidance for the future. So I think it’s good to have an advisor or someone on your board that may not have had the experience that they haven’t been set in their old ways that you can giving their independent feedback. Pam:                      Ginger, Merissa- Ginger:                 Yeah, one of the things I’ve done with the family businesses that I’ve worked with in developing advisory boards.  They don’t really understand how to even run a meeting, a lot of times. So I will as, even though I’m a member of the board, I will also act as the meeting facilitator because people don’t know the Robert’s rules of order you know. I mean not that you have to get strict, but there’s certain etiquette. You know parking lot, and running meetings and just successfully running meetings. So I will do that on behalf of some of the companies that I work with and in doing that when you bring on somebody that doesn’t have prior experience, it’s really important to give them a starter kit, a guideline. Some very clear instructions as to the purpose of the board. It’s not just everybody getting together to you know to talk about, to look at sales. These are the objectives. And to run it very strategically and if you do that and the person is willing to participate and learn the process then that could be effective. I run into that a lot with these wonderful family businesses and they have to learn how to manage themselves within meetings, much less an advisory board meeting. So having some guidelines and some clear objectives that get reiterated and then feedback, giving feedback to new people if they’re on the board and their behaviour isn’t productive. You need to be able to give them feedback right away so that they can learn. Pam:                      Excellent. Merissa, do you want to jump in on this one or do you think the other two did a good job on it? Merissa:               I think they did a great job. [laughs] Pam:                      Excellent, excellent. Alright, let’s get to the questions. If we wrap up here then are there any further thoughts that you’d like to leave with our audience today about boards? Merissa:               Yeah, this is Merissa. I actually want to touch on one thing that we didn’t talk about with advisory boards. I don’t know if it really pertains to board of directors because they’re much more external but especially in small companies. You know I’ve owned multiple companies and especially had information experts where it was a very collaborative environment and you know we had upwards of 45-50 people. Like I mentioned, anytime a change is made in an organization whether it’s bringing an employee, a customer, a partner, changing policy, changing a jar, programs. Whatever it could be, the employees are always thinking how does this impact me. That’s all they’re thinking. They just want to know how does this change affect me. So look when we bring in an advisory board into our company, our company is going to change. If we had all of the answers and everything we were doing was right we wouldn’t need an advisory board, so I think it’s very important for the CEO and the executive team to have very honest and transparent communication with the entire organization. And when you bringing in the advisory board into the company, what we did is we really made a conscious effort to associate them in.  They would attend all hands meeting, they would attend social events like our holiday parties. Prior to when they came on we made sure that had business cards for them, they had their title of advisor or consultant, whatever they wanted it to have on the cards. So when they were out in public, they were really representing the brand and our company was on top of mind with them. And conversely when we would have the advisory board meeting at our office, we always left it open for the employees for like the first half an hour, 45 minutes. Sometimes even an hour so that if the employees had questions for the advisors it gave them an opportunity to come in, or even if they just wanted to sit in. That’s just how I ran a company, it was extremely communication based. A lot of transparency, a lot of honesty. And so I think associating an advisory board into a company, like I said it could be a very strong recruitment and retention tool. It needs to be done strategically. And another thing I would just mention is the other type of association is making sure you’ve got all of your legal documents in place, you’ve got your board, your board agreements in place. You’ve got NDA’s, you’ve got non-competes. This has to be very methodical in terms of how you get your board in place so that everybody knows what is expected of one another and there are no surprises and you end up with really great relationships that can extend far beyond the board room. So I just wanted to add that in about how you associate them in. Pam:                      Oh that’s fantastic advice. Ginger? Ginger:                 I just want to encourage anyone who doesn’t have a board of advisors to consider doing it sooner rather than later. It’s such a value add to the company and to have a sounding board of people you can trust who are smart and can contribute. Makes you less alone and I think that’s one of the emotional bonds, emotional handcuffs that many family owned business owners feel is that they carry the world on their shoulders and there’s no one to help. They’ve been doing this alone for so long. Well if you’ve got the right advisory board, you’re not alone and you’ve got folks there that can, will have your back and that can actually help you get further into the future. Pam:                      That’s also good advice. I think some CEO’s or companies think that your board of advisors are not actually going to have your back and you know they’re not to be trusted. I mean they just don’t know how to handle a board of advisors. So great advice Ginger. Jeff? Jeff:                       Yeah, the thing I’d like to add to Merissa’s comment is that it’s important that company also have professional liability insurance for the board. If you become a member of a board that you make sure that the directors insurance is in place. And the last thing and it’s just for everyone, it’s a very rewarding experience being a part of a board or an advisory board and it allows you the opportunity to input your thoughts and ideas on how to adjust the company growing. And I urge anyone that’s thinking about it that they’d undertake the task. And if a company’s looking for a board members or advisor boards, I think you have both because the advisory board is there to assist you and any help you can get and assistance, brain storm or just go through thoughts and ideas and it’s just good for the company. Merissa:               Yeah, it’s great for the company and if you head over to my website which is successfulculture.com, I have all of my smart CEO articles archived under the media section and there’s so much great information for business owners there on every topic. And my book ‘Built To Scale’ is on Amazon, you can also get it on my website. And anyone who orders it by listening to the show, if you just shoot me an email, I’ll go ahead and send over all the templates in Microsoft Word because it really will give them a leg up in helping to build their board. Pam:                      Terrific. Thanks Merissa, and one other comment I want to make on the insurance. That also applies to non-profit boards. On a non-profit board typically they have insurance, make sure you get a copy of the certificate or they show you proof.                                Alright, I want to thank you all for being here today and sharing your expertise on the topic of advisory boards and boards of directors. Tune in next time for a podcast on the topic of 5 warning signs that your business is in trouble. Should be an interesting topic and one you won’t want to miss. See you then.

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today? Kristen: I’m great, thank you. Matthew: Great, thank you. BT:          Great. So today we just want to kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. So the first question I have for both of you is what 3 things would you consider a consultant/ contract-based executive needs to know to be successful as an executive that is no longer part of an organization full time? Kristen? Kristen: You sure I can’t list more than 3? BT:          You can go 14 if you want to. Kristen: [laughs] Obviously there’s a big difference from when you’re going, from when you’ve had a very successful career as a long-term full-time employee inside of an organization, to being someone who has more of a characteristic for you parachuting into an organization for a shorter, medium term time and you’ve got specific objectives to do. It’s far more focused as one person thinks of making that transition as one, you’re always out there marketing, you’re always doing business development. Because you need find a situation. One of the best ways to find a situation is you no longer have a title, you’re no longer AVP of sales. You’re a problems solver. So start looking at your history and in your communications, in your conversation be clear on here’s the type of problems I solve. Most companies don’t say I’m looking for part-time VP of sales. They say I have a sales problem, I can’t sort my problem is. Let me find someone who can solve it. One of those specifics. And the third thing is making yourself memorable. Nothing does that better than numbers. You want someone to be able to meet you today and tomorrow and still remember the types of situations you have solved and what kind of impact you had on them. And those are really the 3 biggest things in making a shift. And I know those are all focused on that marketing and business development, but until you can do that just to get yourself inside an organization, you’re not able to in an area that make an impact. Matt? Matthew: So, you know one of the best, one of the things that I tell every new executive, new interim that I talk to, they all ask very similar questions of me is you know, how can I be productive? And how much work am I going to get from Cerius? And one of the things that I always tell them is that, you know, the most productive and the best interims are those that use Cerius as only one of the resources. That they constantly need to work at their business. You know they’re used to being under a corporate umbrella, they’re used to having business come at them as opposed to having to go after business. So one of the biggest transitions for them, and one of the best pieces of advice I give is, you know, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to market yourself. You’ve got to go after friends, family, you go after past acquaintances, you go after past assignments, you talk to everybody that you know about taking an assignment. And don’t necessarily think about an assignment as you know a 6-month assignment or a 9-month assignment which is usually what we provide, but go after a week assignment, a day assignment. Get your name out there so that people know that you are now no longer Mr. or Mrs. Corporate America. But that you are John Smith. And that you are John Smith LLC. And that this is the business you’re in. And you go after that business aggressively and for us, if we have an opportunity for you we will bring it to you. But also for you to be looking for as many opportunities as you can. BT:          Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!    

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today? Kristen: I’m great, thank you. Matt:     Great, thank you. BT:          Great. So today we just want to kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. So let’s talk about that a little bit more. I mean, I think that’s kind of a good thing to discuss. As an executive you do have a diverse skill set that you had to have to get the level that you are. How do you focus on that? How do you focus on one specific expertise? For example, let’s say you’re a marketing executive who eventually ran your own company so now you’ve got an idea of sales, you’ve got an idea of marketing and operations, and you’ve done various amounts of business deals that have given you lots of experience in contract law, and so forth. So you see, quite a few different scenarios in front of you. So how do you focus on that? I mean is it focused on per assignment, I mean when you’re out there in the field and you’re trying to find work, you’re looking at some point, the best opportunity whether it’s experience, financial, compensation, whatever it may be. So how do you focus on your expertise without it becoming more of a full-time executive’s lesson? Kristen: Matt, do you want to take that one? Or do I need to? Matt:     Well I’ll start and then you jump. One of the things that we do is that, again, our team works with both the client and the executive in creating a statement of work. And in that statement of work, we make sure, we don’t create it when we work with interim to create a statement of work. And we coach them on how to do a great statement of work. So we make sure it includes the beginning date, we make sure it includes an end date. And we make sure that we put in all of the details in between. And the reason for that is that it’s for both sides. It’s the client, as well as, the interim so that no one gets off track. You know, clients have a tendency that when they get a really seasoned, C-level executive with lots of experience they have a tendency to want them to start doing a lot more than what they were originally engaged to do. And because the executives can do more, they have a tendency to veer off track and start doing more. So the purpose behind the statement of work is just to make sure that both sides stay focused. Which is exactly what you just asked Raj. It’s that we help them to stay focused on what the assignment was. Not that they can’t do more. Not that the client doesn’t want them to do more. But really they were brought in to get something completed within a certain period of time. And if they, either side starts to veer off then the time starts to expand, which means it costs the client more money which you know is not a satisfying solution to why they brought us in. So we’re very focused on making sure that that SOW is making a thing or two which helps most sides stay focused on exactly what they were brought in to do. And it also helps the interim stay focused on what their background is. Whether it be marketing or whether it be sales, or finance. Whatever the case may be, it helps them stay focused so that, that is how it’s accomplished. Kristen: I’d really like to go back to the example that you gave for the marketing exec. And that’s absolutely right. Making it curt. Not just figuring out what that expertise is, it’s making clear to the company here’s what they’re being brought in for. Do we need to expand on that? Do we need to stick to it? And we’ll get to, I’d love to hit on expectation management between interim executives and [3:36] the very subject. Going back to your marketing example, that’s probably not a more common situation we run into is, I... Executives have been doing, have been taking on executive involvement [4:10] credified companies, and sometimes they are supervising variables of their own. And they’ve gone out and they manage their own company, a marketing services company and they had to go out and sale in business development. The question for figuring out what are you an expert at [4:26] executive is, right now if I had to get up on stage with, in front of 50 of your peers, what subject, and what situation could you talk about and give a lecture on as an expert? You could cite more than one case study. A case in point, walking them through here’s how we’ve done and here’s how it was done then, sent on successfully. If you can’t stand up in front of your peers and sell confidence that you are an expert and you’re teaching them something that they likely don’t know, probably not your expertise. So when you look at an owner of a small marketing services company, could they stand up there and talk about sales and business development in front of 50 other sales executives? Probably not. But they stand in front of other marketing service company owners and talk about  business development and sales within a small boutique marketing services firm, if they’ve been doing it long enough, they’ve trading up things and giving up examples, probably so. So then it should take just a matter of narrowing it down and focusing it to what situation can you be dropped in when you’re the expert on, stand in front of the audience and lecture on it. BT:          Wow, that’s excellent. Excellent advice. I mean I think that’s great when someone would know where your great expertise would be. Right to be able to, kind of, where will you be able to be a thought leader and have actual presentations and be basically a source expert. So excellent advice. Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!

BT:          Hi and welcome to Business Today, brought to you by Cerius Executive Solutions. Today we are joined by Kristen McAlister and Matt Sauer from Cerius Executives. How are you guys doing today? Kristen: I’m great, thank you. Matt:     Great, thank you. BT:          Great. So today we just want to kind of get right into it. Today’s conversation is about contract executives, interim executive and consultants who were once CEO’s, C-level executives that are either trying to make the transition, have made the transition or are looking for ways to find more consistent work and some tips that may help them. You mentioned a little bit about client expectations [0:39]and I wanted to kind of get into another question, and it’s still along the lines of things executives need to know to be successful. When I was in college, and I’ll forgive me when I was in college I wasn’t really paying attention a lot, but when I was in college there was this sociology class and in that class we had discussed 3 different types of leaders. One leader was effectively very aggressive and it was one of those you steal, your hand gets chopped off. Second leader was overly understanding and compassionate, and then the third leader was actually a mixture of both. The society that actually ended up lasting the longest was the society that had a mixture of both good strong beliefs in terms of punishment for crime, as well as, a good compassionate understanding personified in general. Now I bring this up because one of the biggest changes that executives go through when they leave a organization and they start their own consulting business, or they start getting into consulting. Even though you’re a good leader in you executive days, one of the airier C-level days, one of your tricks in your back pocket constantly is the ability to become aggressive if needed or become assertive if needed by working on writing employees up, having the final say on their employment status. Kind of being the final word in the organization. Now when you make this transition that goes away. You have any advice on how a former CEO, now executive, can kind of manage client expectations as well as get the job done without having their, you know lack of a better phrase, normal superpowers? Kristen: Some of that’s going to depend on why they’re being brought in and the type of project. Because looking at the 3 that you described, interim executives or management consultants could be brought in specifically to help change or form the leadership process in the organization. Especially when you’re looking at an entrepreneurial organization [2:38] by the seat of the entrepreneur’s pants not necessarily because they’re a good leader, but because they’re a good businessman as well. So in some cases they actually step in and they take that leadership role and they spread it out throughout the organization. So sometimes Cerius is more of a driver in what a temp, seen as a temporary situation than what they were in a more permanent situation. There’s probably more consistency there. In these situations there’s a lot of inconsistency and the executive is there to bring consistency to the situation. In whatever manner it takes. Sometimes it probably feels like Jekyll and Hyde, and you’ve got multiple personalities in a given day depending upon what situation you’re in, which company you’re in, what that culture is, and who you’re working with throughout the organization. But in most cases, the executives that we work with haven’t made it to the point in their careers by being that aggressive over-bearing type, and there’s a fifth where the individuals who are not looking to do interim executive or management consulting work. So some of that is just a natural selection, they vet themselves out or they’re vetted out at that point. We keep that expectation management separate from that but I’d love to hear Matt’s thoughts on that. I know you’ve come across and you’ve really talked to executives on a daily basis. I’d love to hear some of their perspectives, you talk first. Matt:     You know, I guess what I would just add to what you said Kristen, and that is that most of those who realize that they are no longer going to be in charge, let’s say, and are going to have to persuade and have to provide information and that they’re not necessarily going to be whatever they recommend is not necessarily going to be followed depending on the situation there is. You’re right, they do, they self-select out. When you start talking about what an interim assignment is and the company that they’re going to be going into and who they’re going to be working for, whether it be a board or a CEO or the owner of the company, and what their role is going to be. I think that those that realize that they, hate to say it this way, but they have to be in charge and they realize that they can’t be in charge. That they realize that you know I think I need to go look and do something else. I need to back into Corporate America, I need to be on a board, I need to do something different because I want people to listen when I have something to say, and I want them to act on it. As opposed to, I just want them to hear what I have to say and I need to try to persuade them to follow my lead. And I think that’s a big change. Kristen: When all else fails that has a great assessment tool. That doesn’t necessarily look at culture and the personality of an individual but the work style. If we can easily change, and alter and adjust our personalities, our work styles are a little more consistent in what we are most, what type of work style we are comfortable with. So looking at that you go through an assessment of what work style works best for this company and the world that they’re looking to fill their needs, and what’s the work style of the executives that we work with. So again another tool in ways of leading [5:59] and figuring out does the company really need a hug-in-the-mug and compassionate executive, and not even so much a mixture in this situation. Because many companies in that case situation are alike. Matching that leadership style with the situation is key. You can have two executives with the exact same skill set. It’s how they address the situation, how they work within it and their approach that can make one successful and one fail. BT:          Interesting. Well Kristen and Matt, I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to all my questions and answering them. And for everybody else that is listening you can find Business Today on iTunes, the Play Store and off of the Cerius Executives website as well as Podbean. Please visit us at www.ceriusexecutives.com. Thank you!

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Jeff, you actually have been on a fairly decent size board and how did you go about finding and recruiting your board members? You were on the NASDAQ exchange so you had to be careful. Jeff:                       Right well we used a combination of well knowledged individuals in the industry, so that they could give us feedback. We put a team of financial experts in that knew financials and knew the regulatory requirements. One, another one was a retired accountant that was with the business. And the last one was an attorney that could help give us guidance during the meetings or anytime we publicized or put out anything making sure it was regulatory compliant. Pam:                      Ok and Ginger, what about the boards you’ve been on? Ginger:                 They’re different depending on the board and the industry, and the stage of the company also. When the participated in a lot of early stage startup boards and in those situations there tends to be more of a focus on opportunities to open and support the growth of the company, the early stage growth and exposure of the company and risk assessment along the way. As opposed to the more established companies that maybe have the round, well-rounded approach that was just described a few minutes ago. It just, I think the stage of the company really has an impact, and my other comment here is to go back to Merissa’s description of the book, early stage companies would definitely benefit. I think from having a more methodical approach. There tends to be random, in my experience, there tends to be ‘I just met this person and I think they could maybe invest in my company’, whether or not they have a strategic capability or experience that could be a long-term contribution and I think it’s short-sighted if you only look at possible investment potential for an advisory board or a board or directors, but speaking specifically here an advisory board. Now, Ginger you mentioned startups a couple of times now. So if a startup doesn’t have a VC or investor and they’re just starting up, do they need an advisory board? Ginger:                 Uh, I believe they do. The primary reason I think is for the strategy and being able to identify gaps, as you said, holes and roles for where the company is going, what it’s going to do, its primary point of difference, value proposition. All of those things can. The board can be a sounding board typically, my experience again, that the folks who have a startup, an idea, an incubated idea, are very, very passionate about what they’re doing. And sometimes that can keep them from seeing the bigger picture or seeing their vulnerabilities. An advisory board can provide that sounding board and be the devil’s advocate for an enthusiastic, zealous startup originator. So that’s one reason. Another reason to have a board of advisors is that it can be a financial, an investment syndicate. You know, where there’s a syndicate of investors, and then there’s representatives from those investors that represent a role on the board. And typically they will request that because they want to make sure that the money that they’re investing is being utilized in a way that is compatible with what they understood the proposition to be. So it’s in a way, similar to the fiduciary response on board of directors but different in that it is different, it is startup and early stage. And they’re basically shepherding their own investments. Pam:                      Great. Excellent. And one other, since you have actually have a lot of expertise in the family owned business world. You know I’ve noticed that a lot of family owned businesses, they do have a board that is all family members. Do you recommend that family businesses also have outside directors? Whether it’s a board of directors or advisory board. Do you recommend that? Ginger:                 Absolutely. I have over the past 10 years, I’ve worked with several companies that were long-standing family owned businesses that had changed leaders because of inheritance. The founder of the company had aged out and then the siblings or the children of the company had to come in to the leadership roles. Well that’s a perfect storm of problems for companies because they can be stuck in their old ways. They have a heritage which is wonderful, a legacy that’s gotten them to where they are. But if their competitive environment has changed, which I can’t think of an industry where it hasn’t, a lot of times that entrenchment can keep them from being objective about what they need to change. I’ve had the good fortune to work with several family-owned businesses that had the foresight to put together a board of people who were. For example digital, many old-standing companies, 25-35 years old, have just ignored the digital world. And you can’t be in business today without having some sort of digital presence. Not necessarily social media but certainly internet. And they don’t know how to do that themselves and many of them are frightened of it. So by having a board of advisors who can help them overcome their fear of it, it can definitely help them transition into the new millennium from a marketing positioning and value proposition to their customers. Pam:                      Excellent. And Merissa, I’m going to go to you for just a second. Merissa:               Sure.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Great. Let’s move to another topic here Jeff, and we’re going to stay with you for just the moment. I hear a lot of references to inside, outside independent directors. Can you tell the audience what that means? Jeff:                       To me the inside directors were the ones that were, you know, some had either a family member or a part of the management team that were on the board. We had both where I was. And also the outside where the independent or 3rd party investors or directors that would not have had an interest in the company, but they had valuable insight through their knowledge and experience to give direction to the board and help with the judiciary aspect to running the company. Pam:                      Is there a ratio of inside directors to outside directors? Jeff:                       That’s a good, good question. Where I did, we had a… the majority was the management and the family. I think it was like 7 on the board, we had 4 inside management and family members total and 3 outside directors. Pam:                      Ginger- Ginger:                 That’s been my experience with family run businesses as well. It’s that there’s a, even though there’s no on an advisory board capacity, there’s no voting situation or fiduciary control aspect to what the action is. But still because of the, I think the commitment from the family and the fear of bringing in outsiders. They may have the courage at some point to say that ok, I’m going to bring in a board of advisors. Still want to make sure that they have a controlling interest in the conversation which makes it challenging for advisory board members to really speak the truth and you’ve got to be very good at debate and consensus building you know to be effective I think. But it’s, so that’s one. And then again, I’ve consulted with others with a startup for example, where it’s not family. There might be one or two operating folks there like a high level executive who’s actually in the business day-to-day but there’s more variety and a pitch more collective. Pam:                      Thanks Ginger.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Since you mentioned compensation. How are boards of directors and advisory boards, let’s start with advisory boards first, how will they compensate it? Everyone think that you either give them stock or have to pay them a huge amount of money. What is it in reality? Merissa:               So for advisory boards in my book, what I did was I interviewed a long-standing attorney that I’ve known for 15 years who is also a CPA and he is a compensation expert. And in there everything is transcribed. And the way I broke it down was monetary compensation, non-monetary compensation – because there’s creative ways to actually compensate your advisory board — and then also with equity. So what weighs out is that the person that I interviewed, he broke it out in 4 different ways that you can compensate with equity but his main role was that you never give more than one quarter to one half of one percent to each board member that you have. And you basically put in a 1 year agreement that with a restricted stock agreement that allows you to buy back that stock, basically at a penny, in the event that you roll off that board member. Because the last thing that you want to do is that you want to give a large chunk to somebody who’s working very part-time for you and if they don’t work out what happens is you’ve got someone who’s walking around out there that owns stock within your, you know, of your company. And getting back to the point that was made earlier about startups. They might have nothing. They might literally be under a million dollars in revenue and they think ‘oh, I’ll just give this person 5% or 6%’. Well 6% of nothing is nothing. But if you build a company to 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 million dollars, that’s a lot of money to be giving to somebody basically part blanch. And you’ve got think that you’ve got a board of 4, 5, 6 people, you have to make sure that you’re very judicious with the amount of stock that you’re going to want to give. You don’t know who you’re give stock to, whether you do like an ESOP, you want to give it to your employees, you want to give it partners, maybe you want to have an LTI, a long-term incentive agreement in place of your employees. So you have to be very, very judicious with the stock. So that’s kind of the, you know, the framework in a nutshell when you’re going to give equity. When you have money that’s involved- Pam:                      So just for clarification, so at the end of the year you have a buy back for that whole quarter to a half of one percent? You have a buyback of one penny? Merissa:               Yes. So the way, this what Wayne recommended in the book. Yeah, you put in a restricted stock agreement because in the event that it doesn’t work out and he recommends and I recommend that you basically do a 1 year agreement. Look, you know what, when you bring someone, when you bring anyone on whether it’s an employee or a partner or even a customer, a board member. Obviously when you first bring them on everybody gets along, everybody is, you know, happy and enamored with one another. You never know how a relationship is going to go. And so if you have an advisory board member that is not showing up and is not delivering, it’s important to get them out of your board because they’re taking up a seat that’s someone who actually could be delivering for you. And you want to make sure that you get them out and you get them out clean, so that they’re not walking around with your stock that you can give to somebody else. And also that they’re not a liability down the road when they actually own a piece of your company. So it’s really important to set that up with a restricted stock agreement and get them out cleanly if they decide to roll off. Pam:                      I can’t tell you Merissa how many CEO’s I’ve heard say ‘gosh, you know I’ve got this advisory board that’s just really not very good and I give them equity, and how do I get rid of them?’ I mean I can’t tell you- Merissa:               Well that’s how you get rid of them. Pam:                      [laughs] Too bad. Merissa:               And the thing is when you’re exactly right when you first get the group together, you got a vision and this is true for small family businesses as well that have been around for a long time and they first start to do it, they think they know what they’re looking for and then when the time comes that you’re in discussions and there’s significant issues that have to be addressed and conflict arises. Not everybody plays the same under conflict and stress that do when things are copasetic. So you just need to have some flexibility and for the long-term so that you’ve got options. Pam:                      I totally agree with that. Merissa:               But that is why you really have to let them upfront that is very specific selection model right. Because it isn’t just looking at the resume of the person or wondering you know what contacts they have, what experience they have. Like I said before, this is an extension of your brand and you’ve got to make sure that there’s a cultural fit. I know we had our advisory board. You know they were integrated into my company, my advisory board members I didn’t want them just showing up just once in a quarter, I wanted them to be accessible in between meetings and I wanted them accessible to my executive team. So that’s why putting all this out in front, you know, and really saying these are really the expectations, and this is the framework on how I want you to engage with my company. All that has to be decided and agreed to upfront and signed off on in a board agreement so that hopefully when you get to the end, everybody wants to continue. And you know at the E part of my phase which is evaluating all the exits, we, I actually have a full interview in there, an exit interview. You know I have the human capital background, and so when you’re rolling off an advisory board member the most important thing you want to do was keep the doors open and never burn any bridges because you don’t know if maybe you want them back or maybe they could lead you to another advisor. You want everybody to feel good about the experience so I have a full exit interview in there so that there’s closure in a very professional manner that makes everybody feel good about the experience and people aren’t left hanging, that’s the other thing. Pam:                      Perfect, perfect. Jeff, let’s go over to the public board. So give me your advice on compensation for public board of directors. Jeff:                       We did things a little bit differently. We paid every member a fee for the quarterly meeting. It wasn’t a large amount of money but there was a small fee. Plus, obviously we carried all their expenses. We had some people from the east coast and it’s good to have east coast and west coast kind of merged together to get different ideas and thoughts about business and regular trade environment, etc. And the last thing we did as an additional perk. We created a small pool, and it wasn’t a big amount like 1 or 2% of the company. And invested over 5 to 7 year period. So in order to earn that small amount, you had to have long-term plans and goals with the company. So if you left early, you didn’t get much of anything so the different aspect on the stock restricted plan we talked about earlier. Pam:                      So Jeff what if somebody got, ended up being there for 5 years and then they rolled off or they left good or bad. What do you do? Get that equity back? Do you get that percentage back? Or would they keep it? Jeff:                       No, they would earn that. They invested into it and they’d have the right to either take the stock or sell it back to the company. And again, it wasn’t 1 or 2% that was shared, wasn’t a total 1 or 2% per board members who wanted 2% put into a pool and was shared equally by the number of board members and it was just an idea. It was an additional perk outside the fee, paid you to come to meetings and be available and also to cover your expenses.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. Today we will be discussing advisory boards and boards of directors and why companies, especially today, need them not only to grow but also to survive in this competitive environment. Our first guest is Ginger Silverman. Ginger is a 25 year veteran specializing in marketing and regeneration. After studying her discipline with the leadership of Fortune 1000 companies, she turned her focus to small to medium family owned businesses with a launch of a private consulting practice Aha! Unlimited. She had served on advisory boards and boards of directors for private, public and non-profit companies including Norco Delivery Services, IVIU technologies, Brain Disease Management, Cutagenesis, Oroscience, Susan G Komen and the South Coast Singers. Our next panelist is Merissa Levin. Merissa is a renowned authour, speaker and expert on boards. Her TED talk 'Women taking their place in the board room’ shares why there's never been a better time to increase the number of women board members. Her most recent book, Built To Scale, discusses how top companies create breakthrough road to exceptional advisory boards. She also writes a monthly column for smart CEO magazines as their board expert. Is ABC's small business expert on the number 1 ranked business show in the DC region: Washington Business Report. Is a board member at SMBC, a technology company located in Fairfax, Virginia. Our third panelist is Jeff Thompson. Jeff served in the board of directors for 10 years at Edelbrock Corporation, publicly traded automotive active market company when the ads back exchange. He was responsible for all financial reporting and served as shareholder liaison. He was also a member of the executive, compensation and audit committees. Alright, let's get to the questions. Merissa, let's start with you. What are the key differences between a board of directors and an advisory board?   Merissa:               Well there's quite a few but I would say the most important ones are fiduciary responsibilities. So your advisory board members are people that are hand selected and that don’t have any fiduciary liabilities, or fiduciary responsibility to the company. When you have a board of directors, if they advise the CEO or the executive team in the wrong direction, they're actually liable, financially liable for that advice. An advisory board is really just a team of hand selected advisors, you can take their advice, you can decide not to take their advice but definitely the level of fiduciary obligation is much different between the two structures. That's probably the main difference. Pam:                      Excellent point Merissa. Anybody else have any other difference between a board of director and advisory board? Jeff:                       Yeah, this is Jeff. I'd like to say that the advisory board is more of an informal type board consisting of a third-party, typically, and probably not that important factor besides the fiduciary responsibilities. The advisory board has no voting rights. It’s the board of directors that will typically make the votes on behalf of the shareholders. Pam:                      Great. Thanks Jeff.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. OK, what role do board members and advisory board members play and are they different? Ginger, let's go to you. Ginger:                 In my experience they are definitely different. I've served on many advisory boards for small and big companies and I can talk from my experience. The level of tender and hands on tactical advice is higher for me on the advisory board capacity. The board of director’s role, when I was acting in that capacity, it was much higher level. It was more strategic, and again shareholder focused. So you really had more high-level impacts to consider. The advisory board work for me has been more specific to the actual changes that are happening in the company, are the future vision of the company and there's more active participation in an advisory board. Pam:                      So Ginger, the advisory board is not strategic? Ginger:                 No no, it is strategic. It's just when the differences. There's strategy on both sides but when I served on advisory boards, the work has been more hands on tactical operationally focused if you will. It is, when I was hired to join an advisory board the work was specific to the expertise that I brought so I was able to advice and then actually, in some ways participate in the execution of what was being discussed and agreed to in the advisory board. My role on the board of directors was higher-level. More strategy, less hands on. Where there was guidance provided but then there were other folks who were doing the operational execution of those. Pam:                      Excellent.  

Pamela Wasley:           Hi, I’m Pamela Wasley. CEO of Cerius Executives. Cerius is one of the largest North American providers of contract executives of part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. Cerius has a network of thousands of executives form operations, finance, sales, marketing, IT, engineering and human resources. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill a sudden gap, leadership, to run a key initiative or to provide specialized skills or knowledge for a temporary period of time. Cerius deals with thousands of CEO’s and over the past few years, more and more CEO’s have been telling us that they’re ready to sell the company. However, most don’t realize that they have to get a company ready for sale, and that they have many options when it comes to selling their businesses. Selling a company takes time and lots of preparation, as well as, picking the right partner to sell to. But today, we’ll be talking to four experts: an investment banker, a private equity partner, a CEO who sold his company to his employee- through an employee stock option program also known as an ESOP- and a strategic acquirer. All who can give advice to business owners considering selling their businesses in the next 1-3 years. What is some of the mistakes you see business owners make when they try to sell a company today? Steve LaRue:  Oh gosh. There’s probably four key things I’ve seen in my experience. The first and foremost is that you typically will find, especially sellers of smaller private businesses that they’re pennywise and dollar-foolish. They resist going out and hiring professionals to help themselves in the business. This is probably going to be the single most important financial transaction that a founder’s ever going to have, selling their business. So it’s really important to get professional advices and help them through the process. The second is and perhaps the most, the biggest reason why most deals in experience has failed is because of a sense of valuation by the small business owner. The founder doesn’t accept the unreasonable offer from a seller but also refuses to get a valuation resulting in an impasse [laughs]. I just had this experience, just last week trying to acquire a business and I’m talking to the founder and I finally, just had come straight out and say, “Help me understand, where you came up with this valuation number?” [Wasley laughs] And you get some really, really interesting processes that people go through to value their business. The third is that small businesses tend to have a lack of discipline and the buyer won’t do the necessary preparation in advance sales so sometimes small businesses for example don’t always follow business practices or principles, they have inadequate or improper documentation, and as a result of not having that cleaned up in advance of the sales process, that can result in either a delay or derailing of the transaction. Once the sales process starts, there’s really very little time for house cleaning and so you really need to get your house in order before you enter into the sales process. And then finally the selling process can be long and it requires a tremendous amount of commitment, prime commitment on the part of the founder and often the management team selling the company. And we found in some cases that the founders have either not have the necessary resources or willing to commit the necessary time to file the transaction all the way through to completion. Pamela Wasley:           Great thanks Steve, and Murray you’re not buying this that owner’s think that their companies worth a whole lot more than they, than you think it is. Are you? Murray Rudin:            [laughs] I tend to think a line. I tend to believe that, you know, we have as a firm pretty good idea of 30+ years of experience what the kinds of businesses we invest in are worth. Um, you know, in our view when somebody says, well I think it’s worth 50% more, you know, that’s great. If you can find somebody who will give you that valuation you should definitely take it because based on our experience that will be an extraordinary valuation and we want you to do the right thing for you. And if you get somebody to pay that, give you that kind of valuation today in cash, that’s wonderful. We’re really happy for you and you should grab that. Pamela Wasley:           [laughs] John, are you finding any other mistakes that companies are making today in selling their company? John:                            Yeah, well Steve said something I think is important and it’s what we call ‘deal fatigue’. It is a long process and at some point in this the owner gets, could get so wrapped up in the deal itself he neglects the business. And that’s one of the worst things that can happen is you’re right in the middle of selling your company, you’re starting to get into the final two months of due diligence and suddenly the growth slows down or there’s a dip in the backlog or things that come from taking the eye of the ball. And that’s always, always frustrating. One of the reasons people hire guys like us is so that they, we handle a lot of the transactional stuff so that they can keep the business going well. Um, I think the other big mistake is depth in management. Owners, entrepreneurs start a company and they build it and they know everything, they know every customer and how the product’s made and all the technology, and that’s great and it’s very satisfying to entrepreneurs. I’ve been one myself. But if you want to leave the company and go retire to a beach, you have to have someone who will run it after you. So owners really do need to identify and hire and groom a number 2 person who can step into the company and lead it forward. Sometimes owners think like I can’t spend a quarter million dollars to train a chief operating officer here, it’s too much money. But when in fact we package a company to sell it, that’s what we call it, an add-back. We would leave that person’s salary and take out the owner’s salary and say he’s there because he owns it not because he’s running the business. So it does not affect value from a math calculation standpoint and in fact enhances value because the buyer feels like he’s got an experienced manager to run the company once he owns it.  

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. So here’s a question that’s always debated. Is it good for the CEO to also be the chairman of the board? So let me turn it over to your Merissa first. Give me your opinion on that. Merissa:               You mean for an advisory board? Or board of directors? Pam:                      No. Board of directors. Merissa:               You know, I would defer to some of the other people on the call. My expertise is really in the advisory board realm and it seems like we’ve got some really good board of director’s experience on here. I will tell you the board of directors that I serve on, the CEO’s are the chairman but I don’t feel that I have enough knowledge on board of directors directly to say whether or not that’s the best practice. Pam:                      Ok. Ginger, let’s move to you then. Ginger:                 It is my experience that the CEO is the chairman and for-profit group. There is a practice in not-for-profit group where it is actually different and they do that by design, so that there is a kind of a built-in failsafe if you will. The 4 non-profits that I’ve served on there was a definite, there was an executive director and then a chairman of the board and there was, that made, that created some really good checks and balances.

Pam:                      So what are some of the big differences between a non-profit board and a for-profit board?  Ginger? Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. So what are some of the big differences between a non-profit board and a for-profit board?  Ginger? Ginger:                 Well, differences. I, uh, the first thing that comes to mind is not the answer to your question which is similarity. There’s still for board of directors and for non-profit, you have fiduciary responsibility to make sure that whatever monies are being managed properly and used according to the charter and all the agreements, the tenants of the organization. Some of the other benefits or differences I find is that for the non-profit there’s usually some sort of ultraistic motivator that you don’t see very often in the for-profit role. Certainly not in the board room. They’re much more interested in shareholder value than they are you know the other aspect. So there’s a lot of conversation around the ultraistic charter as well as how are we using the money and does it fulfill on the ultraistic side of what they’re trying to achieve. The best run non-profit boards that I’ve ever worked with, one example that comes to mind is the Susan G Komen organization. They are extremely strategic and have as highly functioning leadership and all the way from the way the organizations run, all the way to the advisory board and the board of directors as well. They are extremely professional in the way they approach running their organizations. And they’re very similar to my experience with for-profit public boards. Pam:                      Interesting you should say that because I have the same experience being on the board of Orange County Head Start. They too are a very professional organization. One of the reasons being they get so much federal money that they really need to be, you know, held liable for what they do and making sure it matches their charter so there are non-profit boards that are very professional out there.

Pam:                      I'm Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step into companies on short notice, to fill a sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative which provides specialized skills and knowledge for temporary period of time. What are some of the signs, and Jeff I’m going to go to you on this one, what are the signs that you just might have a dysfunctional board? Jeff:                       Well they’re not following the mission statement of the company. They’re not doing the right things to maximize shareholder value and I think that’s probably the most important things talked about by Ginger that mentioned that if you have a public corporation that’s for-profit that you’re looking not only, you’ve got to make your numbers and you’re there to maximize shareholder value. And if your board is not on that same boat and somebody’s making a bad decision. Or maybe they’re self-serving or maybe they’re part of some other boards that creates a conflict. We also had that situation then it’s time that you have some type of internal vote through a committee normally the executive committee. And you talk about removing that board member if he doesn’t want to resign. Pam:                      And how do you do that? Jeff:                       A particular instance I had an experience in is that fortunately for us the board member did resign. He had a conflict of interest with another public company and he was being investigated by the FCC.  And, you know, we were fortunate enough that with all this and our ammunition that we got him to resign. Other than that, I believe there’s typically stuff in the company’s charter or in your board member minutes that allow you to remove a bad board of director. Pam:                      Merissa, what experiences do you have? Merissa:               Well with the board of advisors, I mean this is getting back to why you do a 1 year agreement, right? So that you revisit it every single year and again getting back to making sure that you’re doing really strong due diligence when you select. I mean the idea is to mitigate, you know, and eliminate any risks that you’re going to have to actually forcibly remove somebody. So I think that if you are really clear upfront with creating a strong set of performance based parameters and dedicated swim lanes for the board, and you know really what your objectives are moving forward then you can avoid that. I think, you know, regarding some of the pitfalls that can happen on an advisory board that I’ve seen are that, you know, people give you suggestions and you don’t implement them. There’s nothing more frustrating for an advisor than to dedicate their time and energy and they get behind an owner, and they get behind a company and they want to see them succeed and things don’t get done. Now that being said a lot of time board meetings will result in a dozen different action items. So it’s really important that you prioritize the action items and you put some of them in the parking lot and you commit to actually following through on maybe 2 or 3 of the action items in between meetings. So there was some ways you can actually set up a board for success. Just having realistic expectations of what can be done. And as the CEO and the executive team commit to making the changes that the board is suggesting. Pam:                      Ginger? Any comment there? Ginger:                 Yeah, a couple of other things that I look for when I’m participating in a board or I’m advising an owner in how to select a board. I will say to them, and I do believe this from my own experience that if there is no disagreement or there are no challenges going on in there then you’ve got to the wrong mix. People tend to hire people like themselves unless they’re evolved and conscious so you don’t want to have a board of clones, you want to have a board of different experiences and expertises that can give a holistic look at the company and the plan for the company. So that’s one thing that I say is don’t have disagreement challenging going on in there then the mix, you may need to look at the mix. Another thing is to the point that Merissa just made about making sure you’re just checking that you’re executing upon the ideas that your board has graciously given you. Also, if you have a board where there’s lots of discussion and no action items listed, there’s no outcomes, there’s no direction and decisions made then I think that’s an indication that it’s a dysfunctional board as well. It’s not just a therapy session. It needs to be, and in my opinion and for a successful special board, there needs to be real strategic conversations going on and action plans coming out of it. Pam:                      Very true and I’ve been on a board by the way Ginger with Yes Men or Yes Women that literally just follow everything with the CEO, that the chairman of the board wanted to do and that company did not, I mean we tried to get that company to advance was almost impossible so, yeah, I can see your real problem there.

Transcript Below BT: Welcome to Business Today brought to you by Cerius Executives, one of the largest interim executive and management consulting firms in North America. Today we are joined by Donald Nobel, a technology CFO who has spent a portion of his career as an interim executive. How are you doing today Donald? Donald: Oh terrific, terrific! Nice to meet you Raj. BT: Nice to meet you too! So you actually have a pre-existing relationship with Cerius Executives. We’ve kind of tapped into you to be one of our interim executives and a CFO for some of our clients. That just leads me to wonder, how long have you been an interim executive or how long have you been doing interim executive management consulting work? Donald: I have worked as an interim or fractional CFO, COO for nine years now. BT: Being a fractional or interim CFO, what are some of the things, or some of the projects that you get called in to kind of work on? Donald: Many times I’m called in to accompany those looking to grow rapidly, or perhaps in a turn-around situation. Sometimes it’s a company that has hit some kind of wall and needs an executive to push them over the wall. Perhaps they’re struggling with the new product line or looking for ways to expand, or can’t quite seem to get the profitability they’re looking for. BT: I see. So I’m one of those people that tries to do as little work as possible, and you get brought into scenarios that aren’t exactly perfect. What prompted you to kind of become a savior of sorts? [Laughs] For small businesses? Donald: Well interesting, interesting comment. Well I was working as a CFO for a technology firm in New Hampshire and when we sold the firm off, a former CEO called me and said, “Help me. Can you please be fractional CFO and help me grow my company?” Since I had already known him and knew his company well, it fit me at the time. But as I stepped in, I fell in love with all the work that we could accomplish. And 18 months later I helped him open a new warehouse, hire a controller, grow the revenue by over a 100%, implement some new pricing models and grow the staff by 50%.  Next thing I knew, I fell in love with it. And I didn’t realize how much I loved the scenario of, as you put it, parachuting into a company. Maybe not necessarily in trouble, but definitely needing some expertise. And then all of a sudden, nine years later I’m still doing it because I love it. BT: Do you find that companies are more responsive to you when you go in as a fractional CFO or do you think it’s about the same amount of trust and knowledge, and I’m having a loss of words here, and I talk professionally for a living. Don’t believe that [laughs]. Donald: I think I understand the question. Let me give it a shot and you tell me whether I’m correct. Um, it’s a different type of respect. It’s not better or worse, and it’s a different type of expectation that they put on you. First of all they know that you’re fractional or interim, and that by nature is shorter term than, you know, hiring for a 10-year or 20-year career. So there’s, it’s a different type of view that they have for you. Which allows you to get more done in most cases because you can come in and they expect you to be dynamic and they expect you to be direct and blunt instead of you know working through all the issues, as a long-term employee might do. BT: So you mentioned it allows you to get more done. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that because that does seems to be a driving force here in the interim executive industry where the interim executives themselves are highly driven, highly motivated individuals like yourself. Can you give some examples of how an interim executive has the opportunity to get more done in a short period of time? Donald: I think in my experience, the best way to describe that is from the standpoint of what you’re expected to do. As you put it, you’re asked to go in and parachute into these companies. Immediately, you don’t have time to worry about what I would call the ‘niceties of the job’. For example, if the CEO calls me — and this has happened to me — and says, “We have a lot of sales but we just can’t figure out why we’re not making any money.” I’m allowed to go in, and uncover, and poke and prod in places that perhaps other people are not allowed to do. And that enables an interim to really pull the covers away from the operations, the finances and get to the bottom of things really quickly which by example enables them to do more. BT: Well Don. I wanted to thank you for your time. We really appreciate you joining us. And sharing some of this, actually not some of this, all of this great knowledge and information with us and our listeners. For our listeners we will be back every week with a different podcast covering a different topic, so please stay tuned. Subscribe to us on iTunes, Play Store. And until next time, this is Raj Prasad for Cerius Executives.

TalentTalk provides an opportunity for talented individuals like CEO's, HR Executives and business leaders to share their thoughts on talent management, leadership development, and company culture. In this episode, Bjorn Erland, Senior Director of HR Excellence, Taco Bell and Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives talk talent, leadership, employee engagement and culture with TalentTalk host and PeopleG2 CEO Chris Dyer.This show is brought to you by Talk 4 Radio (http://www.talk4radio.com/) on the Talk 4 Media Network (http://www.talk4media.com/).

Bjorn Erland, Senior Director of HR Excellence, Taco Bell and Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives share their insights on leadership and culture.

Cerius Interim Executive Solutions CEO Pam Wasely recently had a discussion with CEO’s about the business challenges that keep them up at night. Here’s what they had to say.Transcription Below:I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, an on-demand, searchable database that matches business problems with thousands pre-vetted, part-time, temporary, interim, and contract executives. These executive level management consultants provide key insights, execution, and results to companies of all sizes and in all industries.Today, we have four CEO’s joining us on the podcast, Antoine Ford, CEO of Enlighten, located in Washington, D.C.; Jenny Rosoff, CEO of Village Green Foods, located in Irvine, California; and Dave Kearney, CEO of Boomerang, located in Palo Alto. We have a diverse group of CEO’s here today, so I’d like to give each of you 30 seconds to describe your business. Antoine, let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit about your business.Antoine Ford: Hello, how is everyone? My name is Antoine Ford, I’m President and CEO of Enlightened, Inc. We’re a technology consulting firm located in Washington, D.C., primarily focused on government contracting in the cyber security area, big data analytics, and a lot of software engineering. We do work in the top secret cleared space, as well as other government entities. We are aggressively looking at diversifying into the commercial sector. Glad to be here with the other CEO’s.Pamela Wasley:  Thanks, Antoine. Jenny, tell us a little bit about your company. Jenny, I think you’re on mute. Jenny, can you tell us a little bit about your company? Jenny Rosoff:  My company is a wholesale food manufacturing business. We make food primarily for restaurant chains and other manufacturers. We have 30 employees on the production floor where we’re cooking. We have about 150 different products we make for about 30 different clients.Pamela Wasley: Excellent, thanks Jenny. Dave, tell us a little bit about what your company does.Dave Kearney:  Thanks Pam, thanks for having me. Boomerang, for the most part we’ve been running for the last 20 years on the CEO Boomerang, and we’ve been doing online marketing, mostly around email marketing, newsletters, and so on for large and small companies as well as event management and social marketing now we’ve added recently. The other side of Boomerang is we do – for a lot of our customers we do automated marketing software consulting, so a fair amount of software enabling systems integrations and so on to make that marketing application work very well.Pamela Wasley: Great, thanks Dave. As CEO’s we run across some really tough problems that we have to deal with, such as the organization losing money, declining profit margins or sales, non-performing employees, finding and keeping the right talent, system outages, the need to reduce costs, and how to get your entire company culturally on the same page. Today, I’d like each of you talk about those business issues that keep you up at night. Antoine, so does dealing with the government keep you up at night?Antoine Ford: Yes it does. If you look at my business, being a government contractor, as soon as we have a budget crisis between the two parties, we’re greatly impacted by that. When there was a government shut-down last year, we were greatly impacted by that. One of the things that keeps me up at night is making sure the government continues to function, and to let the two parties get out of the way of folks that want to serve.That’s important, and that does keep me up at night because we have to look at not where we are now, but we’re looking at budgets in the next two to three years. You win a contract as an entity, you’re thinking about the next contract immediately because you only have a number of years before you have to perform in other places.The second thing that keeps me up at night, quite honestly, as you mentioned it earlier, was people. Your investment in people, people representing you, the other CEO’s have this same issue probably ensuring that the people that we have that are going to carry the culture are carrying it in the way that we think they should. One of the things we do at Enlightened is try to make sure that our leaders have the same DNA as the executive management. When I don’t have somebody who doesn’t have my DNA, that keeps me up at night.Pamela Wasley:  Thanks, Antoine. Jenny, being in the food business, what issues are robbing you of sleep these days?Jenny Rosoff:  Actually, one of Antoine’s issues is also one of ours because we’re regulated by the government. We have USDA and FDA in and out of our plant regularly. When the government’s not functioning well, neither are our inspectors nor are their agencies. That is something that does, from time to time, keep me up at night. Another one is that the product that we make is going inside of people. That’s one of the most intimate things that you can do with somebody.I wake up at night wondering if the metal detector’s working right, if the people running the metal detector understand what they’re doing, if everybody’s following the protocols that we’ve put in place to make sure that everything’s functioning well. I don’t – 24 years, I haven’t had it happen yet, knock on wood, I don’t ever want to get that call saying that something that we made, made somebody sick.Pamela Wasley: Thanks, Jenny. Dave, as the CEO of a service company, what issues are bugging you these days?Dave Kearney:  Well, as a services company, specifically a high tech services company in Silicon Valley, there’s the constant battle of maintaining relevancy, being relevant to our customers, and competing against a large number of companies that are well-funded. As you might be aware, the online marketing space is very crowded, with companies providing the latest tools and technology to market to your customers, to help other companies market to their customers.The things that keep us up at night are the idea that we have to constantly, constantly innovate and compete against not only the companies that have been in business for a long time, but also the very new ones that are up and coming. We have to stay relevant, and we have to make sure that the choices we make today, and the technology that we’re releasing in the next year or so are going to be the technologies that people need and want, and are going to be coming across as better than the competition.Pamela Wasley:  Absolutely, Dave, it’s even hard to keep up with technology these days. I get it. Thanks for sharing today; however, before we wrap up, I’d like to ask each of you what advice you would give to other CEO’s on how to effectively deal with tough issues. Antoine, let’s start with you again.Antoine Ford: One of the things that a CEO has to have is a good ego, and they also have to have good judgment, when to let their ego go. One advice I would give to other CEO’s is to know when to ask for help from advisors, mentors, other CEO’s because we’re all facing the same game, and although we may be in different business segments, the advice, even that I heard today, is helpful for me. Know when to let your great ego go, and ask for help.Pamela Wasley: Thanks Antoine, Jenny?Jenny Rosoff:  Something that I’ve been told for years is to surround myself with good people, preferably people smarter than I am, and at this point, people younger than I am. That’s something that I’m working on regularly is bringing on more people who can support and take the culture and the vision that we have here and move it into the next day, week, month, or hopefully the next generation, to keep it going the way I’ve always wanted it to go.Pamela Wasley: Great, thanks Jenny. Dave, what advice would you give?Jenny Rosoff:  I’d like to second the opinions of Antoine and Jenny there, but also add on in that your – to stay on top of things, relationships with other companies and other people outside. A fair amount of networking and collaborating with other groups and folks to help you grow and stay relevant in this amazingly fast-growing business is important. It’s not just to look inward, it’s to look outward as well.Pamela Wasley:  Great, thanks Dave. Thank you all for being here today, and sharing what problems were keeping you up at night. I’m sure that many other CEO’s around the world are having similar problems and appreciate your insights. Next month, tune in for our next Cerius podcast on the topic of the six business challenges that give us [00:13:18]. CEO’s and CFO’s will not want to miss this. See you next month. Thanks guys, I really appreciate all of your patience with us getting this started. Harry, if you’re still on, my apologies. We’ll try another venue next time, and we’ll have you participate. Again, thank you everyone, and have a great day.