Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Victory Podcast. I'm Travis Cody. I'm excited to have Jeff Reynolds with us today. He's a nationally recognized expert in scaling people based businesses and he has an impressive track record because he's scaled two service businesses himself past the nine figure mark. But he's also evaluated over 350 service businesses and he's authored offers totaling in excess of a billion dollars. He's the founder of the PSF Accelerator where he empowers founders and CEOs to elevate their service firms to new heights.
Jeff has a deep understanding of the unique challenges faced by professional service firms and his proven strategies for growth and success make him an invaluable resource for any entrepreneur or owner looking to accelerate and scale their business. Jeff, thank you so much for being here today. I'm, I'm so excited for this call. Based on your background, you've got such a unique, unique insights and I mean very few people have had the privilege of scaling a business past nine figures. So let's start there. Let's start with business number one. Like what was your journey of getting into a company and taking it to that?
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So in, in 2003, my wife and I got married and we wanted a little adventure so we moved to Los Angeles and I joined a little consulting firm that was sort of a consumer behavior specialty firm that did insights and strategy work. It was about a 30 year old firm, had about 100 employees and I'd been hiring the firm so I really liked the people, thought it'd be a great, great way to start our new married life. But I never understood the adventure that was going to be headed my way. Ended up being there for 18 years. Became president of the company, sort of about a third of the way through the journey.
Sold the business to private Equity so our 70 year old founder could ride off into the sunset about 2/3 the way through the journey. And then stuck around. So by the time I left it was about 1200 employees.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: And so you started it was 100 employees and when you left it was 1200. That's right, yeah. That's a little bit of growth.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And the, you know, the original business, what I'll call the organic business, we took from 100 to 800 and then we, we ended up acquiring 10 companies that represented another 400 people, if you will, of that growth. So really interesting set of experience.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: What, what was the time frame to go from 100 to 800?
[00:02:41] Speaker A: That would have been 18 years.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So, so it was 18 years to get to 800.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: So you're adding like 50 employees basically every, every year?
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think it's, it's probably right around 10, 11% compound growth rate of the business over that 18 year period.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Okay, so that was business number one. What was business number two?
[00:03:04] Speaker A: So after that successful run, I, I was taking some time off and actually gone to work on a, a book with my own framework for what I thought was what I'd learned over time about how to scale people based businesses. And then a private equity firm out of Texas found me through a headhunter. They were doing a scaling model where they wanted to acquire these lower middle market service businesses that were digital marketing specialists. And it was a good fit for my, for my background. So I joined as the, the CEO of that business and we ended up acquiring seven companies over the course of, of of three years, ultimately launching a brand called Agile and.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Seven companies in three years. So every six months you were closing on a new company.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah, and I mean we looked at 250 over that three year period. So we had a very dedicated team to talking to these entrepreneurs, which I always enjoyed. I think maybe for some CEOs that it's called corporate development would, would be, I don't know, maybe they wouldn't enjoy it. I, you know, I just enjoyed every one of those entrepreneurial conversations.
Never fascinated me how people started those businesses, how they'd become successful enough to, to be at a level where they wanted to talk to us and we wanted to talk to them and you know, the majority don't work out, but it was always fun. And, and again, in talking to 250 of them, I learned a lot about, about those businesses.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Awesome. We'll get there. So, and we'll get to that in a second. What was the size of the company when you joined the second one?
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Well, we were just acquiring the first business and it was maybe 90 employees. When I left, we were 400.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Wow. So what's fascinating to me about this is, you know, we were talking earlier and one of the things I've noticed in the conversations I have with my clients is that so many companies, and I shouldn't say companies, it's, it's more solopreneurs. It's, you know, entrepreneurs hang out the shingle, they start building successful business, they sort of get into like the 5 to 10 employee range. Maybe they're doing a million, million and a half a year and then they just get stuck there.
So like what is it? And, and seeing as you've looked at so many companies, like from your framework, like, what does it take to go from like somebody starting with one or two employees and, and breaking through that 10 employee mark to just hit that? I call it the milestone. The first milestone is 25 employees.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah, so I, I think in the services, the, the threshold for me is around 25 employees. And I say that because usually the person that starts a service business, whether that's like a salesforce implementation business or a strategy consulting business, or again, looked at many marketing businesses, they're usually somebody that was really good at the craft and probably had been successful at a bigger company. Maybe they bootstrapped it, But I'd say 80 or 90% had worked somewhere else and then wanted to go build a better mousetrap or just do it themselves. And so the first tranche of it is if they're a good leader and relatively good at sales and they are indeed good at the craft, they can build up. I think it's around 25 employees because they can attract them, they know how the work gets done and it's really similar to what they did before. But in my mind, they really haven't started to scale the full business at that point. So I see that first tranche at around 25 employees. And I think you can get to from 25 to 50 if, if that leader has. It's called the law of attraction. If they've attracted good leaders and because they're good, good people, good leaders, they built a good culture. Culture, which I ultimately think is the thing you scale in these businesses. Culture can take you to about 50. And that's when it really hits the wall because then the span of control is more than 50. The founder can no longer see and touch everything. They can't hire everybody. And now it's all about leaders and business systems. And so you've really got to start empowering leaders to own real things. And there's a lot of people that empower leaders. They create leaders, but they don't really give them clear boundaries of what they're responsible for. Where's your garden? What are you growing? What am I going to hold you accountable to? And so that, I think that's the number one threshold is that act of letting go. Becoming a leader of leaders is a really hard part of the journey because you're scared to let go of control. Because if you've gotten to 50 employees and in a service business that might be 8, 10, 12 million in sales, you know, you don't want to kill the golden goose. And so it's really hard to let go and develop that new set of leadership skills. That's about lead leaders.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Well, and, you know, and I've, I've had clients that, you know, they get up to eight or nine employees and then they start to outsource some of the things and they let go of a couple of things and then, you know, somebody makes a devastating decision and just clobbers them financially. And then it creates the fear of like, oh, if I let go, the car goes off the track. Right.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: I find with a lot of these folks, there's a lot of once bitten, twice shy that happens. That I tried the thing, the thing was a dumpster fire. Ain't trying that thing again. And the answer was it was the right thing and the execution wasn't there, or you didn't hire the right person or, you know, exogenous misfortune happened. Like it was the right thing. You got to do it again and learn from it.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: You know, that reminds me of what you're saying. Like you get to the point of 50 and not having a hard time letting go. And that's why people will get stuck in that phase. It reminds me of a story one of my, my clients shared with me. He was with a private group and they went to Necker island and, you know, hanging out with Richard Branson. And he had the opportunity one of the nights to be sitting right next to, to, to Richard and this client, he's doing solid eight figure business. And so during dinner, he said, he's like, I just looked at Richard and I said, richard, here's my business. This is what I'm doing. How do I go from a millionaire to a billionaire? And he said, Richard just looked at him and he said, you need to get rid of all of your bad millionaire habits because that's preventing you from growing.
He was so shocked. He said he did the whole rest of the dinner, he didn't even talk because he's like, what do you mean I have bad millionaire habits?
[00:09:35] Speaker A: There's A very famous HBR article that I recently post on LinkedIn called the Founder's Dilemma. And the, the subtitle is do you want to be a king or do you want to be rich? And the king item is this. It's it, you know, to be in control, to be on the perch, to have everything flowed through you. I mean, there is some, some fun, some power, some control, some nice things around that, but that's not actually what's going to, you know, the get rich is a little tongue in cheek but to scale you're going to have to get past that. And it's, it's a lot to ask of somebody. You know, the, I'm quite convinced that the skills needed to be a zero to one founder, to go from one employee to two to three is a pretty different skill set than to go from 50 to 60 to 70. And so you know, these poor leaders have to undergo the, something just short of a lobotomy in terms of they really have to be willing to do the developmental work to shed those skins of old and, and become what the business needs. And there's probably a realistic view that's that some aren't capable of doing that. And, but by the way, you can hire someone to come do that then and, and learn how to be an owner, chairman or you can make that, that journey and that leap. But it's going to take work. It's not for most people. It's just not going to happen. Because you just intuited that you needed to start operating 170 degrees different than you were.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. Well, and I think also too right, when you get into a corporate world, there's always the, for someone who's had a middle manager, we always hear that term, dirty word, middle manager. And a lot of times in big corporations the middle managers are sort of promoted to the level of their incompetence. Right. So I sometimes again my own work with some clients, people running businesses, I kind of work with them and I'm going, well they, they're sort of successful despite themselves, but they have enough to, you know, get a million dollar, your business. But then that also then is what prevents them from kind of breaking through that. So what were some of the big. So you look now at 350 businesses for potential merger and acquisition and you were saying, you know, you, you looked at a couple hundred of them and, or 250 and you know, 220 of them you said no to. So what made the difference between the ones that were attractive to be acquired versus the ones where you're like, you got a great company but sorry.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say, I mean it's, it's, it's wide ranging but if I had to put them in prioritized order, the, the number one. So I've got sort of a framework that's like there's seven business systems you've got to build and some of them are intuitive and some of them are maybe a little more unique to people based businesses. But actually building a, a revenue system is the number one thing A lot of service businesses get to early success because they find a big client here. Boy, you, somebody follows you from the Fortune 500 client loves you, loves your work. The next thing you know that's a couple million of your revenue. Well, you're at 10 million bucks and three of your clients represent $6 million of your revenue. That client concentration is not investable because called stroke of the pen risk. Like new CEO comes in, new head of marketing, new head of whatever and you can be to zero pretty fast. But if you're also just a founder and entrepreneur wanting to grow like you may not fully understand how much business risk you have in that. And if you're doing well, like if the $2 million client went away and you went from 10 to 8 million, you'd have to lay some people off and it would be hard, it wouldn't be the end of it. But from an investment standpoint that becomes a non starter or the revenue system simply isn't driving consistent growth. Because ultimately when somebody invests in the business they want to believe that it will continue to grow and that it can grow outside of the founder because most transactions founder's going to get a pretty nice size check. If they happen to go off into the sunset and they're the number one driver of revenue that's going to be a problem for the business growth. So the revenue system I think is the number one problem. And the second close second is the leadership gap where they haven't really built a real leadership team beyond themselves. Too much of it flows through the founder, CEO. They haven't empowered others which creates call it key man risk and ultimately isn't healthy for the, for the culture and, and building real leaders like I obviously ask lots of questions around those things but you could really see it in some business nothing, nothing's more predictive than, than past behaviors. And those that had really created leadership systems, even founders that had designated presidents. And I saw that happen with 52 person companies, those that had created incentive systems that were about value creation for the business, not just compensation on sales or hitting plan those years, people that understood that business value creation was going to need to flow through other people. But when I could see those things actually already in place by the time we started discussions, those told me that those leaders really understood how to build leaders and the importance of leaders for their long term business success.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Wow.
So how did your seven step process framework, how was, how did that evolve?
[00:15:13] Speaker A: So when I spent 18 years at one business.
So I'm a, I'm a recovering Academic in that I did all this graduate work and in human, human behavior and then decided I didn't want to be an academic. So then I had to go figure out what to do in real life. And marketing was a wonderful place to be. And then I was in that business and trying to be successful and having some success and then I get tapped to be the president of the company. And I was highly unqualified for that role. And so I was just learning by hook or by crook and on the job and mentoring and I joined an organization called ypo and started reading lots and you know, just filling my mind up with how do I figure out how to help this business grow and be successful. But I think the, the, the human behaviorist never left my DNA. And so I was always looking at like what is the, the nature of these human systems that allow them to, to grow. Putting a real lens on things like motivation and creativity and innovation and, and growth and development of those folks. And so I think my, when I had time to step back and I said, you know, and some of this is just synthesis and I, I was so affected By Steve Covey Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Back in the late 80s, early 90s was a book that changed my life. You know, seven I like as a number. And so I was really trying to boil it down like what are the seven things I know something about? And, and they're really about building systems inside of the business that accomplish these seven things. And, and again I don't want to go into all the detail of it, but maybe the unusual ones are what is the motivational system of the business? Because I think in people based businesses, if people can start their own engine every morning and you're not trying to do it with a cattle prod, you built the right kind of business.
And the secondly I call the human data system which is how are you getting, if people are your most important asset, how are you getting information on that? That's the human information that lets you know, you know, if Amazon knows to the second its delivery times. Why do you not understand more about your, your number one investment than some sort of rear view mirror financial picture that says how was our payroll last month? And there's a lot of data that firms have that can be repurposed to understand it. And there's some systems that can be added that create the kind of knowledge for leaders to understand. How are they doing with these with ultimately again they all say it your most important asset, the talent you got on the, on the team.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: So, so Walk me through that a little bit then. How does that look in a sort of a day to day organization having a human information system like for you as a leader, like how, how. Especially when, you know, when you've got a company that's 800-1200 employ, how does that function inside of there?
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I could take you through a little bit of kind of commentary on the, on the five stages. So from 0 to 25 you're not putting in any, any sort of a, of a formal system, but you're creating a context where people share what's really going on. And that's both at the, I'll call it cognitive task cool level as well as the emotional human experiential level.
And you know, it's not, it's not nothing to create an environment where people will tell truth to power and where people will be vulnerable and say like I'm feeling totally overwhelmed and not understanding what to, to do in this. So I think at the 0.25 you're trying to create a culture where information moves up and down. You know, the 360 review is an execution of that, but just a world where the CEO or founder's out asking questions, talking to your rank and file to understand what's going on and caring about them as humans so that you get back human information, exposing yourself as a human. So you created a model that we're not all monolithically strong, never made a mistake, never had a bad day I think is how you execute that in the early stages. And that culture becomes a building block for the whole thing. And so then as you go from 25 to 50, you're really trying to start to institutionalize that orientation. Now you're probably starting to put in more systematic performance management processes. But I think that kind of up down where people have a chance to talk about what's going on with their manager, where the CEO founder is popping in to ask people about leaders. When you see problems in the business, you're not just asking managers. You've got relationships and you can do that up to 50 with rank and file, you can have personal relationships to get information. You're now starting to put in a real finance system, I think accrual based financials. That's often the time when you got to start moving out of a cash based system to accrual because now this becomes very valuable data to understand how work's really flowing through the business. And then once you hit about 5:50, you have to start institutionalizing more systematic measures. And it's a simple thing. But the annual employee engagement survey is a powerful tool and if designed right, gives you, and I think once a year is plenty, gives you a very systematic snapshot of how people are experiencing work. And I think there's always two levels that employees are evaluating. One is sort of the day to day strum and drang. How was my day? How was my week? And then the second piece is periodically they stop and like what's my relationship with the company? And you can be like, oh, I had the worst two weeks in the world. Client was crazy. Two people on my team quit. It was awful. I blame, what do you think about the company? I love the company.
That's very realistic because things happen.
On the other hand, if you've systematically had been unable to fill positions on your team, you've been working 12 hours a day for a month straight. Nobody seems to give a shit. Like at some point that same person that loved the company starts to say, do they really care about me? Is this really a place? And, and so that, that aspect of that needs to be understood. So, so I think there's a, there's a thing called an ongoing assessment that's sort of a minor league thing and then a periodic assessment where it's like what's my real relationship with this company? And I think people exit business relationships just the same way they exit personal relationships. Eventually it starts sewing down. Eventually it starts, I describe it moving down the curve. Eventually what used to not bother you starts to bother you. And eventually you're shining up your resume and headed out. So an annual engagement survey can really give you a glimpse into the experience of employees have done at the same time every year done in systematic ways. You can begin to see very sensitive movements in what's going on with you. So I think this is where the psychologist in me, it's very, very, very specific and trying to measure these things starts to get under the hood. When the span of control gets out of the fact you can't, you can't see that. And then maybe the last fourth and fifth level and there's a lot of systems that do this now this kind of quick check in stuff that we'll call an employee pulse were on a weekly basis. It's really the equivalent of you walking around the office back when there were 43 people saying how was your week?
Just asking a couple of questions so that you could understand what's going on. And if you keep a rolling four week average on that kind of pulse question of how was your week? And we used to have a funny scale. Totally awesome, pretty good.
It was fine. Not great. Totally sucked. You know, put it in a language that people would answer the question. We could watch those lines on a team, and the top two were green and the bottom two are red. And when those lines would cross, was time for us to start talking to managers about what's going on over there. And then we could help leaders who were underwater, not because, guess what, they're not always equipped to be able to figure out what to do to fix their problem. So those are examples.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: I've also noticed too, I think in the corporate world, especially if you get into some sort of managed position, there's also a fear of, I can't admit that I don't know what I'm doing because then I'll get fired. Right.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: But that's the whole truth to power thing. So. Right. Having a direct line in the employees where they are able to tell you about their experience, bypassing managers is a very, very powerful tool. And then when it's wielded appropriately, because by the way, it can be wielded poorly, when it becomes wielded appropriately, it becomes a real force for man. And management really cares about my experience. Once a year they ask me a really detailed set of things and they're checking in on me every week. And I think you get pretty valid responses. And if all of a sudden you're getting that kind of valid information about how people are feeling and doing, you can really be able to adjust what's going on. Because as a leader, you've got to deploy your energy to the right kinds of places at the right time. And if all of a sudden an important team is underwater and the leader is doing their best and doesn't want to admit that there's a problem, and you go and you say, hey, I'm starting to think there's a thing. Let's talk about it. How can I help you? And the number of times we did that and within, you know, weeks could really, you know, take those lines and set them back the other direction. Did it over and over again, just treating people like people, you know, that answer is a simple thing to say, but when you start talking about being at 100 or 150 people, it needs more than that. It needs more than that. It needs a system.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: What over the years, having done the engagement surveys, is there one or two things from your career that jump out at you as you read it and you went, oh, wow, like, that is something I would have never thought of that an Employee brought to your attention.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: I'll give you a handful. One, the, the things that always matter most. What do I think of my team leader?
What do I think of my work call the quality of my colleagues and their commitment to what we're doing and what do I think about the work that I'm working on? Like those three things I could, I can almost guarantee you I could execute the survey in any successful business. Those three, three would be the most predictive of like who's really engaged, who's happy, who's satisfying. By the way, compensation and hours never predictive because by the way, services is hard. You're going to be working a nine hour, nine half hour day. Like clients can be tough. Like leaders make all the difference if you're doing good work. If your leader understands when they're asking a lot like, so leaders are incredibly predictive out of that, that data.
Secondly, I'll say insights on little symbols, which is we always would have open ends about, hey, what do you like? What do you not like? Anything that I should know. And I remember this story from, I mean, I don't even know who it was, but they were like, you know, the, the business had been around for 50 years and we still had powdered creamer in the little coffee ropes. And you know, a whippersnapper Millennial said, when I see that powdered creamer, it depresses me. Have you ever seen what's, you know, the ingredients in that and you know, like the, the powdered creamer was implemented there long before Starbucks even existed. And we had been in this habit of just doing it that way. And yes, having fresh milk is a little bit of an operational thing. You've got to get it delivered, you got to put it in the fridge, you got to throw it out every week, week. But I read that comment and I'm like, that little thing that will probably cost us, you know, 0.000001% of profits to solve is really symbolically saying something so you can get these little nuggets that you're like, ah, that's a great insight and such an easy fix. And then by the way, when you fix it and if people, you tell people that story in a meeting, they're like, and that guy's paying attention, you know, he really cared. He did something, you know, oh, that's fantastic.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: So at what point in your career did you start to mentor other founders? And then how did that lead into what you do today with your PSF accelerator?
[00:27:44] Speaker A: So the, when the business hit When I took over running the. The company In2010, I was immediately handed a very flat organizational structure with like 20 direct reports, every one of them older than me.
And as I mentioned earlier, I was highly unqualified.
So that began my journey of learning about senior individuals in a services business. It's not unusual to have kind of teams that own books of clients and work those. And so those, those senior people are very important. They're highly skilled, they're highly talented, they can deliver great work, they can lead teams, they can sell work. They're great with clients. Like, these are. These are impressive people. And now all of a sudden, they're reporting to me. And so I don't think I had much mentorship to give in those early days. But I, I started to learn and I started to be in a position that I, that I, that I had more insights for these folks that could help them. And so I would say the, the 2010-2013 was the training wheels version of that. And maybe at 13, I really started feeling like I had something to contribute. And from that point forward, I felt really good about my ability to coach and manage senior people. And that business was growing to 1200. So we had division presidents and a lot of complexity to that organization. And I developed that style and then launched the PSF accelerator after I left that business and started mentoring a couple, both of which I continue relationships to this day.
And, and so those. I was able to help one of those businesses.
And I say help, like what. What I found so frequently with so many of these folks is that, I mean, honestly, the founders have 90. They got 90% of it, maybe 95. And what they need is that last 5 or 10% or somebody on their shoulder to be like, that's totally the right thing. Go do it and do it tomorrow. You know, when there's a little indecision, I'm gonna spend a lot of money. Like just, just that little bit makes a lot of, a lot of difference for those, for those individuals. And so then once we started acquiring businesses, I got to test that out and saw that, you know, leaders just need. They just need a little bit of help in some key spots. You know, someone to hold up a mirror sometimes. Sometimes. You know, I always say, even Tiger woods needs coach, right? Sometimes, like you said you were going to practice putting for two hours a day, and kind of seems like you're not doing that. Have you changed your mind or do you just need to. And, you know, it's helpful. I mean, again, I, I'm I'm no gym rat. And so a personal trainer for me, man, does that, does that help me A, always show up and B, be way more productive because it's helpful to have somebody who, who's there supporting you.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So is there like, is there an ideal sort of company founder fit for, who would be good for like your ideal sort of like person to bring into the accelerator? If somebody's watching this and they go, I kind of want that like what?
[00:31:01] Speaker A: So, so I think again, I borrowed the accelerator concept from tech.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: And I did so very intentionally because I think it's the exact same issue the, the big difference with services business. So first of all, I think my expertise is in services. I could probably help other businesses. I'm just less confident and, and so I'm not really positioned to do that though. I, I, I'd certainly entertain it.
But, but back to my points from earlier, I think it's around 25 people which typically might be in the 5 million dollar revenue spot that, that that leader's really needing to start scaling and probably starting to feel less that they're in their wheelhouse that they were in for the years that it took them to get to that spot. And so I always describe the sweet spot as kind of 25 to 75.
I think I've got a lot to offer at 100 or 150. There's just not very many of those businesses where there's just so many. And it's funny you use the word. The working title of the, the, the book that I've been working on, slash not working on for the last few years is indeed stuck because that's my view is that so many of these folks have a great run and then kind of hit a spot where they, they try a bunch of stuff and it's not working and they get really frustrated and they're right down on themselves somewhat and they, they don't know how to unlock it. And, and I, I think the vast majority of them have it within them if they want to, if they want to. You know, some of it's put in the work, some of it's considered new ideas, some of it is shed some habits and make some changes for yourself. But I, I think it's quite possible and I think out of that a lot of value creation happens in this world. I think entrepreneurs are the, are truly the engine of change. They're the engine of, of, of America. I'm a, I'm a capitalist. I just believe so much in that creative destruction concept and so when, when businesses that are doing great work fall short of their potential, I think it's kind of, it's kind of sad for everybody. It's sad for those founders, it's sad for those employees and, and it's, it's kind of usually taking something that the world would like. They just haven't figured out how to, how to bring it to more, bring it to more folks.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: I love it. You know, when Trump in his inauguration speech, he said something that was interesting where he said America is one of the few countries where we make the impossible happen. And I thought, I'm like, when you kind of look at American history, you go that there's, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of truth behind that statement because, and almost all of that comes out of the entrepreneurial space.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: I was, I was laughing the other day because I was bemoaning the, the GPS on my, my car and it's a British made car. I won't, I won't do the brand.
But, but needless to say, I was joking. I'm like, let's see how many big tech companies originated in England.
And you know, you just recognize American innovation, you know, in the software space has just been unbelievable.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: When you look at the, the, you know, the magnificent Seven as they are right now, there's something about this, this culture, the creativity, the innovation, this western spirit, the creative destruction that I think is unique on the planet.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Now you have a new program coming out later this year. The founders, you told me it was founders. Something I forgot with that.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Well, the accelerator program really has two components to it. One of them is what I call the advisory program, which is where I operate really like an active board member. Because one of the things that's, that's a difference between tech and services is tech almost always hits a spot where they need some money if they've got a really good concept. And service businesses almost never have a cap table. They never have to raise money, they're always bootstrapped, they don't require significant upfront investments. And so because of, there's never a cap table, they never have to raise money, they never get any, they never get forced to have a board member that turns out to be really helpful. And so the, the advisory offer for the PSF accelerator is really just to be like an active board member supporting a CEO. And then I have a 24 month accelerator program that's really, after an initial assessment, a real systematic way to work through the seven systems and sort of a priority order to put yourself on a real pathway to sustainable growth.
And, you know, both of those are available now and, and ready to go.
And so, you know, that's, that's what, that's what's getting my, my.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: So someone's listening and they're interested in that. Where do they go to find more about you or to Explore your accelerator?
[00:35:52] Speaker A: PSF Accelerator, Professional Services Firms psfaccelerator.com Awesome. GoT, you know, information about what we do, information about myself, a little bit on our, our frameworks, and certainly the ability to, to reach out and set up time with, with me.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Awesome. Jeff, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. It's always fun to have the conversation and, and romp through some of these, these fun, fun memories of yesteryear.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Co.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Hey.
