Jame Healy - Thriving Together in Business Partnership

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Welcome to the Real People Real Business Show.My name is Stephanie Hayes, and I'm a business strategist who helps experienced business owners design asset-based business models that set them up for growth and exit.I love to speak with like-minded entrepreneurs to share their real stories and the gritty details on how they have navigated their own way through.On this show, you won't hear about the glamorized entrepreneurship journeys that you see online, and you won't be told how to make six figures in six weeks.Instead, you can expect to hear real vulnerable and inspiring stories that you can relate to that have helped create the foundation for each of our guests businesses.Today is a very special episode.This is episode 100.We have published 100 episodes, and I had to think hard about who I wanted to invite for my milestone episode and.I, there was, it was very clear choice to me.And so I wanted to welcome and introduce you to Mr.Jame Healy Jame is my, basically my lifelong business partner and colleague.We have been working together for over 25 years, and we have grown up together in the industry.We have developed similar skills.We have been through so much together and as entrepreneurs together,building businesses together, and building businesses separately as well.We have a lot to talk about and a lot of stories to share, but I wanted to invite Jame on the show, first of all,to tell his story and then, you know,to share some of the things that we've learned together as we've sort of grown up as, as entrepreneurial professionals.So, Jame, welcome to the show.Thank you, Stephanie.I, you said there's no glitz and glamor.I thought that was the whole reason I was here is to.Provide some of that.Are you, are you glitz and glamor now?Because I've never known you to be that, only from the waist down on video calls like this, but I try to keep it professional, otherwise, yes.Okay.So, okay.So first of all, you have to give everyone some context.So tell us a little bit about your story from the very beginning,from form all the way through to kind of where we're at right now.And then I think we're gonna dive into some of the experiences that we've had together and some of the learnings that we've had together.Does that sound good?Sure.Sounds good.I mean, I guess in brief, you and I have a similar background.We both went to school and I, I wanna say you, you got a business degree initially.Communication, actually.Oh, communications.Oh, okay.Yeah.New media.Maybe I should have known that.That's right.No, I remember that now.Yeah, so I, I started going down kind of a BComm route and switched into economics and went into graduate graduate program in econometrics and really nerdy stuff like that.Yeah, you gotta stifle a little bit of a, a dry heave there.But economics and mathematics,the really fun stuff.And following that, I, I actually, I.Did my first work as a consultant working with this organization that was sponsored by McKinsey and, and also the universities.And yeah, I got paired up with a team from McKinsey and started doing my initial work there, and then I ended up staying with them for a couple more years.And McKinsey is in case I know, you know, but in case your viewers don't know as a consulting firm fairly large one.So did that for a few years and,you know, for me, I guess suffering from attention deficit disorder I can't remember what the H stands for.I know it's a hyperactivity.Ah, yeah.Okay.So it's, for me it's just attention deficit disorder.Amongst all your other disorders.Yes.You know, I got a bunch of them.I put them behind my name on my LinkedIn profile if you want to check that out.But yeah, so I yeah, I did that,but I was bit by the bug and I think one of the compelling things about.The consulting world is a solving problems, but it's always new problems.And probably the way my brain works is I'm not really the person to come in and operate.Builder.Sure.Solver.Yeah.But the person who operates on an ongoing,sustained basis, not really my thing.And so, you know, I'm a bit of a bright shiny object person and I can say that confidently cuz I know Absolutely you are as well.So that's one of, one of the things that we have in common.Just one.It's probably the only one.Yeah, so I, I did that for a while and I ended up connecting with a guy that was doing some early integration work.We called it back then.This is now the mid nineties.And he had he had a business that was actually doing kind of backend integration of financial systems for, I don't know if you remember the.com era, late, late nineties.Of course I know what you do actually.But in late nineties everything was a.com.But there's all these financial trading platforms that were coming up.And so what we did was we integrated these snazzy front end, you know,all the snazzy azz, azzy of the day.Aren't we playing bingo?Like if you hit a word like that,you get to dab on, you know,that's right on the end snazzy.So yeah, we would integrate the front end of that to these backend massive clearing agents and call 'em clearinghouses in the us to process trades and that.So that's really where I, I kind of started in the technology area, so less involved in the graphics design, though we did have a graphics design frontend,but I got more involved with the backend.From that time, we actually, I ended up taking being asked to step up as the president of the company at the time.And I think at that point we were about 80 or 90 people, mostly in Vancouver, but we had offices in Boston and San Francisco as well.And we yeah, we fell victim to the.com crash, not because we were a.com,but about 85% of our clients were dot coms, and they were funded that way.And, and when the.com crash happened,I forget what the numbers were cuz that's now 20 goodness, 23 years ago.I wanna say that I was at least a couple million dollars in receivables that were not just at risk, but had very little likelihood of being paid.And our monthly run rate, or, you know, the monthly nut as they call it, is, was about a million dollars,just shy of a million dollars.So that type of thing kind of stresses you out.So we quickly sold that company into do a proper do.com.Not necessarily a a a credible.com,but it was a.com nonetheless,that had just gotten funding.Immediately prior to the.com crash.And so that was our escape hatch.And that is actually where I ended up meeting you.I think they brought us on, acquired us as an organization for the consulting services capability.And and I wanna say that we hired you originally to be a product manager.I, I don't actually know, think anybody knew what you were hiring me for.I had,I knew then, but, but looking back, I have no idea.So I was recommended to be hired as an H T M L programmer, and then you and I met and I'm like, what?H T M L programmer?And you're like, you're not an HTML program.I'm like, no.And she, he, so anyway, we we hit it off as he recall.Yeah.And I think I came on as like a, yeah, some type of program or product manager or something like that.I remember that now that because one of the principles of the organization was excited because he had a really good H T M L programmer and I said, HTML's not programming.Like, just to be clear.But anyway, yeah.So you and I had a bit of a laugh about that and somehow convinced you to come on and the interesting thing was even at that time, I don't know that we had a ton of confidence in that organization's strategy.Was there a strategy?I'm being generous actually.I mean, so I mean, without getting into it too much, they had an interesting approach.And so they were, it was in the early, the early days of e-commerce.Yeah.And there wasn't a lot of legislation around taxation of, of digital transactions, which was interesting.And so their whole business plan was to set up vast server farms and oh, I was gonna say Barbados.Where was it now?No, it was Antigua, no, somewhere down in the, somewhere down in the Caribbean.Yeah.Bermuda.Bermuda.Bermuda, that's right.Yeah.It was a B word.Anyway, so it was Bermuda they were setting up because Bermuda had, you know, advantageous tax legislation.So the idea was we're gonna put all of these servers in Bermuda, and because that's the point at which you could argue the actual transaction for whatever e-commerce good was gonna happen.That's the tax jurisdiction that should that should apply.Anyway, it was an interesting thing that was probably not terribly well executed, but we found, we found within about a year and a half, they approached they approached us and said, yeah, we're closing the doors.And you know, we probably only have a, a few months left at best, but if you wanna leave early, we'll be letting the staff know in about60 days that they have 30 days.And so a couple of us put our heads together and decided we're gonna buy out.The former company.The company that we sold,that they acquired of ours was called Form Consulting.And so we bought it and we launched within days we launched a company called Synaptic, which again focused on integration.And we were a Microsoft partner and we were doing really deep,deep integration for large sophisticated enterprise systems.But even when I describe it that way, I have to stifle a on.I get it.So well,not gonna lie though, I get a little bit of, now they get a little bit weepy thinking about synaptic.So talk a little bit about Synap.Like Synaptic was a bit of an like an entity, right?It was, it was a, like, it was a bit of an enigma, right?It, it had, it was successful, it had a brand and I think the reason that it was successful was due to the present company excluded.Excluded.Yeah.I think that it was due to the focus.And, you know, what's interesting about synaptic is how we, how the culture of the organization developed.And I think we got up to what, 60,70 people at one point in time.And those 60 or 70 people still like make an effort to see each other.Oh yeah, to this day, you know,20 years later, yeah, this past Christmas we all got together.Yeah, it's weird.Yeah.I mean, to roll the story forward a couple of years, we ended up selling synaptic so that would've been oh five.So it was founded in 2002 not long after the.com crash, like I said, a year and a half after selling the first company form.And yeah, so 2002 we started November,and by November, 2005, we were again acquired by, by another company.But in those three years, yeah, I would say the interesting thing was I, I knew there was some peers in our area, so working with Microsoft was interesting because Microsoft is an organization,they're obviously huge, but they're one of the few organizations that was, you know, I hate to use the term it's in their d n a, but they were built from the ground up as a partner oriented company.So it's, at Microsoft,it's all about partners.In fact, partners in some ways are treated better than some of their own internal groups, and I think of their services groups at the time specifically.Partners are, are really seen as an asset and supported as such.And so when we would go to events and we would be working with Microsoft,we happened to work with an area of Microsoft or a product set that really no one else focused on at all.And, and it was, it was very technical.It was kind of one of these boring things because it didn't have a visual interface really.It was something, it was a piece of software that was difficult to use.And what it did was it, it integrated big systems to each other, but you didn't see it.So there was not terribly sexy.Whereas when we'd go to these partner events and we'd meet other partners,and again, we weren't that big.Like you say, we were, you know, 50,60, I think maybe up to 70 people.We'd go to these events and they would say, oh yeah, we're a partner.We, we, yeah, we'd do that too.And I remember one of my things that I would often to say is, yeah,yeah, you do, but you've got 80people and you have 80 competencies,or, you know, 80 specializations.We've got 80 people and we have one.Like, it literally at the time made us the world's largest.So the product was called BizTalk Server, and it made us the largest BizTalk practice in the world.And that included the big practices like the Deloitte's and the EYs of the day, and Accenture and Avanade,which was pretty new at the time.So all of these guys too, but all of them would, would have a development center of maybe 20, 24 people, and that would be considered a big, but here we were, and we were exclusively dedicated to that one product, hyper-focused.That's all we did.But I think more than that, it was, it was less about Microsoft.I mean, that was very helpful because they really got behind us.But I think the real thing is,is that what we, what we, I always say what we sold was.Taking risk away from an organization.So they would look at some of these old antiquated systems, and some of them are shocking, like major infrastructure organizations, utilities.And they would have systems that would control huge, huge portfolios of infrastructure or assets like we're talking planes, trains, automobiles,like utilities, you name it.In, in a lot of cases it was run by a pc, an old PC on a piece of software that was written 15 years prior.The developer could have been retired,maybe dead, and it was sitting, I, I remember vividly one, one case, and this is a rail company, a big rail company, and one of their biggest switching apps was run on a pc.I wanna say something like 4 86 or, or,you know, one of the early Pentiums.And it was running underneath a desk in a cubicle farm, and it had tape, almost like that crime scene, do not cross type tape across this cubicle saying,don't touch, like post-it notes on it.Don't touch this thing.They were so afraid of anything happening to this pc.It had not been restarted in years,and they were scared to death that if the, if the power went out on this thing, their switching infrastructure would be finished.So what we did was we come in and we were able to integrate these old antiquated systems to newer systems to make sure it was seamless and it worked.And you know, they're able to deliver on their customer expectations and all these types of things.But it was not sexy work.It was just very complex,sophisticated, high risk, and a little bit of black magic.Yeah.Okay.So let's get back on track.So we an, there's something in there I actually really wanna talk to you about, but let's finish the story.So we, so you, you, we were acquired by the product company, which you haven't mentioned yet, but I'm gonna mention it.We were acquired by a, essentially a product company that was Oh yeah.Also building a services division.And we had built such a strong and well run services organization.They were wanting to plug us into their product company to build this sort of like, acquire and, and slot in this services organization.So we, I, I feel like we got kind of like mixed up in there and tried to align the, tried to align the purpose of, you know, our group with the overall group.So take it from there.Well, yeah, so I mean, they had a,looking back, again, it's one of these things where the idea was pretty good,the execution was probably lacking,and it's not because, you know,the, the people weren't competent.It's, it wasn't about any of that.It was yeah, it was just a matter of, sometimes it's about timing, market timing.I think they had a, a pretty good product, and I'm, I won't get into what it was, but it had to do with this notion of facial recognition.Like some pretty advanced algorithms around realtime live facial recognition or pattern recognition, that sort of thing.And what they were hoping to do is use our unique skillset to help them integrate their product into these ver very large you know police and, and you know, I guess police systems worldwide.So that was part of it.And, and you know what, that part of that really worked out.The difference was, is when we were marrying synaptic, which was, which was at its core a consulting firm,we would come in and we provide these solutions for customers.Highly technical, but very tight approach,methodology cuz we had to, we were very disciplined and we would execute in a very disciplined way against a plan.You marry that with a far more at that day, like it was, it was agile,probably gone wrong, but it was a very laid back culture software culture that lacked the discipline.Probably needed to really, you know, drive the customer solutions and implementations home.The software itself, hey, you can be laid back if you're hitting your, your software specs and,and delivery and, and deployments.But In front of customers you,you don't have the opportunity or the luxury of being so laid back.Right?Right.And so the two cultures,they didn't clash.It wasn't about clashing, but it was a bit of a miss in terms of the cultural fit initially.At least it was, it was it.And, you know, you could feel it.And I think that, you know, the,the lesson there is just that, you know, an acquisition is about so much more than bringing the technology and the business delivery together.It's, it's totally about bringing the people and the, like the alignment in values together.Right?Yeah,yeah, yeah.That, that's the off balance sheet stuff.Yeah,a hundred percent.Yeah.Okay.So there, so we were, we were there for a little bit,well, I was only there from the time that the acquisition closed.Because I was one of the, one of the two major partners and going in, I, I was required to stay for a year, and I did to the day, and then I, I actually exited.Which by the way, I mean, you basically stepped right in if I'm remembering right into that role.So you, you took over the role that I exited anyway.So you managed the consulting services group?And probably more, but that's what I stepped away.So I, I was only there for a year.Lots of learnings.Great experience.Overall, I have fond memories of the whole thing.Certainly synaptic, but this acquisition as a team when we were acquired.I've got, I look back, I mean,there was, there were some characters there, that's for sure.There's some stories there, but maybe we'll get into that after happy hour.But but the reality is, is that,you know, it was all in all, it was a good experience all around.Well look, I mean, and, and look how old we were, right?We, we actually were fairly young to be in some of the, the doing,having some of the responsibilities that we did and for having built what we had at that point in time.And I think what w what I, what I think happened coming out of that organization was, you know, we recognized, and, and so for our listeners, Jame and I are very much very much in like, not, but also very much the same person when it comes to our,you know, our motivations and our values and our structure in our brains and the work that we do and how we like to work.And we're both very much wired to be entrepreneurs.And I think coming out of that organization, I think that was what was missing, is that we just didn't have the creativity and the, the, like, the free,the free space to go and build again.And that's what we ended up doing, right.Yeah, I mean, if I was going to be self-critical for a minute, I, I went into that.I was pretty proud of what we had built at Synaptic because we were a very like a high performance, very disciplined team of extraordinarily talented people with very niche but very deep niche skills.And like you mentioned, I mean,we still get together regularly.Like I said, just over Christmas,this past Christmas, it was great to see everyone again.And, you know, people stay in touch, not just on Facebook and LinkedIn and that sort of thing,but getting together regularly.This is for a company that's nearly been 20 years now.Since, since we sold the company.I will say that I came in being young, as you mentioned, and I came in with a little more swagger and ego than I should have.The reality was synaptic was the profitable.Like we came in and we were generating great revenue in a very niche area.Our value, our market value was high.Our culture was great.I mean as disciplined and skilled and all those things, and it's all true.But for the most part we were pretty young.I would say for the most part we were right in the mid twenties to mid thirties kind of age range.Most of us for sure.So we would work very hard.We would do great work, but also we had a lot of fun together.So it was a, it was a great culture.And then we come into this software company that had really never earned a dollar.They were, they were pre-revenue for the most part, and they were certainly pre profit.So you know, it was difficult because as one of the so-called executive team And, and I say that because we were, we had a, about equal headcount together coming into this.And yet our executive team going into this acquisition was two.Their, their executive team was, I dunno, 10 I think.So we had, we're sitting around this executive in our very first meeting together and it was like 12 of us.And I thought half of these so-called VPs don't have a single person reporting to them.They have no p and l responsibility and yet they've got the loftiest of titles.You know, like chief of this and chief of that and senior, you know, s v p of this e v p of that.And I remember talking to my partner at that time who was the president of our company, and I was basically,as you know, the second command.I remember thinking, there's a lot of overhead here.They were pre-money, they were funded, and yeah, it, it seemed like just a spend spree.And so I, I walked into that with a lot more ego, knowing that not only was98% of the revenue coming from us and a hundred percent of the earnings, but we actually had the deeper skillset I felt like, and certainly disciplined.And you know, we, it felt like we were,our, our products, which were really just solutions were worth more, I felt.And so if I could wind it all back, I'd probably approach it with a little, a little more humility.That's right.Okay.So, you know, we left, right?You left, I left shortly after and we left to go and finally start up our own thing together.Yeah, I think, I think one of the things that we looked at is so I, I had been a lifelong long consultant, essentially.You were too.Though you did work in kind of high tech,you know, product management and that sort of thing and in management and and one of the utilities, so I, I, I know that,but I, I had always had this vision of creating kind of a, a new consulting firm.Like what, what doesn't work in the consulting industry?And one thing that I still to this day, rail against is the, is the standard that consulting firms have,which is billing by the hour, the,you know, the so-called billable hour.And that doesn't come from the consulting industry really, it's just all professional services, including accountants and lawyers and what have you.Engineers And I just, that doesn't work.I mean, the way I look at it is it fundamentally pits the customer's interests against yours because you are trying to deliver something of value to the customer, but you want to optimize your economic engine.And your economic engine is hours of effort.So you're gonna probably look to optimize or maximize the reasonable hours that you can bill for, for the product that you're producing for them,whereas the customer looks at it and they want to extract the most value out of you while repressing essentially the amount of effort that you're putting in, or at least challenging it.And it's just the wrong way to look at it.And, and I know some firms will say, yeah, we don't do that either.We do fixed fee.But honestly, fixed fee is, is a veneer on top of effort based consulting because what fixed fee says is, I'm gonna deliver you a product and it's gonna cost you X.But when it comes down to it for large scale projects and everything else, what ends up happening?Well, there's change control and all this sort of stuff.And it always, I.Comes down to billable hours.And so when we put our heads together to design a better way, it was always based on value delivered value realization is what we call it now.And the idea being what if you created a,a firm, and we called it consulting firm,but really that's a misnomer because the conventional sense of consulting, we, we apply those disciplines and capabilities,but the reality is we're not really a consulting firm in the conventional sense.What we are is a value delivery partner really at the end of the day.And so that's what we do is we kind of designed from the ground up because we could an organization that really motivated our team members to optimize the amount of value that they deliver to the customer.Net value.And when you actually focus on the net value to the customer, you're able to you know further work with the customer comes a lot easier.You know, you get recommendations and referrals from customer, word of mouth,all of which, by the way, in the consulting world, in the services world is gold, almost your bread and butter.Yeah, yeah.Yeah.So we, we did that and we kind of ashoo all of the conventional approaches,certainly the management structure.So most consulting firms of course, have the notion of partners and under the partners you have directors and, and other directors.You have managers and other like engagement managers and that sort of thing.It's pretty standard structure across just about every professional services organization.The one thing that we did, like much like every other professional services organization is that everyone has to be or represent value to the customer.In other words, we didn't have.You know, salespeople, salespeople who just sold something because every person, our litmus test is if, if you're sitting across the table from a customer, you have to offer value right.In that conversation and not just be what we refer to as the gatekeeper of value,which is, which is not a, not a great way of looking at the profession of sales.And which by the way,I respect quite a bit.Cause I will tell you, when I took a hiatus from from the firm I did, I go, I went and spent a few years at Microsoft and led their consulting services organization for a couple years and then was asked to take on more of a business dev or a sales, really sales leadership role.And boy, that was, I mean,I did reasonably well.Yeah.But it was tough work.It was 10 times harder than I expected.And also it, I was just, wasn't motivated.I didn't bounce out, you know?Yeah.The so-called bouncing outta bed in the morning that wasn't.I don't look to close deals.I, I know, you know, you don't either.So I wanna acknowledge at that point how lonely I was and how lonely I was without you in my life.And I hope you acknowledge and recognize how how you left being lonely.So, There's that.So like I can see his face right now if you're not watching on video, his face is just like, yeah,jot in the ground.So many, I just reeled it in.Okay,so, so you took a hiatus, which I think is a super interesting part of your story.And I, I, you know, I, I, there's lots of things we could talk about there,but you came back to, and I don't know why we ever, why we ever pretended that we, we couldn't be entrepreneurs because you came back to consulting and we're,you know, if we fast forward here today,We're back and, and, and you have been back for a while and I've been sort of flying in and out and, and now we're kind of just realized that we just need to work together for the rest of our lives.And, and that's great, but the, the maturity in the evolution of the current, sort of iteration of this company, I think is really exciting.And I think it's, it, you know,we have matured as individuals obviously, and we have, you know,you're turning 49 this year.I'm turning 48 this year.And we've learned a lot.Right.We've, and I think that the, the approach we're taking now is, Not dissimilar,but just a little bit more refined.And I think that we're, one of the things that Eve always been really good at is recognizing where there's an opportunity in a market and doubling down on that and figuring out how,you know, to create that focus within.And so we're talking about sort of high-end consulting.We're talking about, you know, high-end experts.We've never built a consulting firm that was like bench, bench resources, right?We've never built a consulting firm that was a body shop.We've always been known for the expert resources.And so tell me a little bit more about your thinking around how you ke build and keep that team.Cuz I, I have thoughts on this as well, you know, having been in that position to try and build and keep that team around myself.So what are your thoughts on, on building a, a, like a.An organization of completely expert resources and getting them to work cohesively together and to build a book of business,I think with, so, and how, I guess the,the, the types of competencies that we've led with like the really deep,they've tended to be more technical kind of in the engineering space.And this isn't specific to engineering, but does really hits the engineering archetype squarely.I think one of the things is, is a acknowledging, generously acknowledging the value that they bring to the table,but then also generously demonstrating that value in, in by, by paying them.So, and the reason I say that is because all too often in other organizations, you will get.You know, the so-called rockstar engineers.And what they perceive is they'll get the, Hey, great job, great work.But when they look around, they look at the bloat of the organization, they know that the work that they're doing is paying for everyone else, you know?And so we kind of built things backwards, if you will.We started with the, the people who deliver value, and we literally call it that the, the delivery share of,of every dollar that comes in the door, the lion's share of it goes to the people delivering value.And that's just, that's, that's the principle that has applied since what, oh seven, 2007.So, so that principle hasn't changed at all.And, and I would say that that's probably one of the, one of the best ways, and it's not just about paying the most, but I think what it is, is about acknowledging contribution generously.Like you know, always putting other people's contribution probably ahead of yours.And I think we do a good job of that.I mean, we, you know, if there's one thing that we, we look to as a, as a principal or a, a philosophy is, is when you're working with each other in, into an account or a client, you always talk up your team member, right?You, you give them more than their share of, of the, you know, the value or acknowledgement of value.And you take, you, you take less than your share of your own and, and maybe none at all.And, and on the flip side, when you know if there's a mistake that's made,you probably take more ownership of that and you give them less ownership of, of the mistakes and the, and the gotchas and that sort of thing.So I, I think that is a cultural principle has helped a lot over the years.And we went through some bumpy points as well.We had kind of a, you know, a partner that introduced a cultural dynamic that just flat out didn't work.We had a revolt on our team, and the result of which was that we spun off a different organization as a result of that because the vast majority of the team were out that had had it and they didn't wanna work in this culture of high driving, high pressure, high anxiety, sales, you know,deal, deal, deal and discounting and this,you know, just the craziness of it all.And while you were there,but, you know, you were one of the ones that were revolting.Oh, there's, yeah, yeah, yeah.So we, you know, we, we kind of pulled it all together and said,look, let's, let's do this thing.Let's continue the way we original.And I, it was you that actually said to me, promise me you'll never make that mistake again, of bringing on someone into the mix who doesn't fit our culture.Right, because it wasn't about the performance.It wasn't, it wasn't a performance oriented culture.It was this sales oriented culture and not sales in, because I think the sales is a, is a, it's a, it's a great profession.I don't happen to be very good at it.But I do recognize those that have the skills.So I don't wanna take anything away from real salespeople, but the slick and smarmy salespeople where it's about, you know, closing deals and kind of the ABCs of, you know, always be closing and,and kind of the Glen, Glen Ross, right?Yes.That, that's sort of mentality is just, it's sickening, honestly.And it just, it's soul destroying,it's culture destroying when that gets introduced, you know, when it's like a zero sum game between you and the client where we, we gotta get the better of them.This is war.This is sun zu, and I'm just spouting out all these things at this one person.Brought single-handedly into the organization that everyone just like immediately was on their toes and on their heels.So,because we actually recycled people, right?So we actually ended up having people working with us that had been with us at Synaptic as well, and had carried on with us and wanted to carry on with us.And I think there's two things, right?There's two things that come out of this conversation.One of them is, and I learned this when I was running the organization, was that,and I, I actually learned this when I worked in public sector, is that the,the people who we tried to attract, the people that we wanted to keep around us,the top of their game, the, the super curious, the the ones who are all rounders They weren't motivated by the money.Now you had to compensate them appropriately.They had to, it had to be, you know,when your compensation is sending a message to them saying, I value you.Right?And so the me, the compensation had to be appropriate, but it didn't have to be excessive because what they wanted is they wanted ownership involvement, participation.They wanted stimulation.They wanted to feel like their work was valued.They wanted opportunities for growth,and they wanted to be around good people.And so all those things had to be e even even if we didn't provide those and we tried to give them more money,it wouldn't be enough to make them stay.So what we had to really focus on was pro, was getting good work in the door, being known as expert resources,providing a other resources that they would respect and that like, we couldn't bring, we couldn't bring.Like someone in there that had no integrity.We couldn't bring someone in that didn't have the skills, and we would get rid of them really quickly if we had made that mistake.We had to provide them opportunities for ownership of their work and for,you know, building out new opportunities within their, like, they needed to feel like owners of their own work.So we had to do all of that stuff first rather than just try to, to send money their way.And quite honestly, we could have probably paid them less the market value and they still would've been very happy to stay because they could go, their options were to go somewhere else and be miserable, right?Because what, what they valued and what was important to them was something other than that.So I think that was one of the things.And then the other thing that I think is so critical to, that has been so consistent in everything that we've done over the last 25 years has been.Such a, a, a rel not a reliance, but such a focus on, and a recognition of the value of partnerships.And even when I talk to my coaching clients or I talk to other business owners, even to this day in any industry,like I re, I resell vintage clothing and it's like fun for me, right?It's a side hobby, it's a thing.And I have a lot of resellers kind of talking to me about business and, and running a business there.Well, we've started doing co-hosting shows and borrowing someone else's audience is mm-hmm.You know, the fastest way to build your own bus business.So we have very, very much focused on a partnership strategy,not going to partnership and saying, what do you got for us?But building those relationships so that they can know us and they can recognize us, and we can contribute to their community.And we've had a really, really strong focus on partner relationships.So within Microsoft and I, I, you,you're totally right I sat on the partner advisory committee for.Globally for the world, for our application platform group.And you got treated like gold right By, by Microsoft for being that expert resource.So although I think it's an interesting conversation topic, although we don't have a traditional sales team and we never had a traditional sales team,and when we tried it, it didn't work.That focus on building partnership relationships has been so incredibly important.Yep.Yeah.To be clear, we actually had some great salespeople in the synaptic days.We just never did in our current.I mean, we had people who could sell in the sense that they could sell themselves and their solution and their team.But not, they're not driven by the deal, so to speak.No quotas, no.Any of that.And in fact, we've got kind of a, a panel of partners currently that review, you know, proposals.And the very first thing is,is that, you know, what is the time to value for the customer?It's interesting, actually, our,our strategy at Alescent right now never mentions anything about revenue goals or anything like that.It doesn't mention margin, it doesn't, there's zero of that mentioned in our strategy.The, the, you know, the SOAP strategy on a page.What it does mention is, is benchmarks and milestones around value delivered to the customer, like net value that the customer realizes.That's what we focus on, like,can we achieve this type of value milestone with this customer?It's nothing about so-called billings and stuff like that.N none of that, because the, the philosophy is, If we can maximize value to the customer, our compensation will take care of itself.That's, that's your best sales tool ever.And it's the best sales tool.But I mean, we don't have to,we, we don't have to sell more.I mean, they will just invite us.And, and by the way, it gets to the stage.This happened just the other day,is where and senior executive C-Suite executive said, look, what you guys are doing is amazing.Can you please, like, our real problem is this huge operational thing we need.You guys, would you be interested in coming on and just running this for us?By the way, that probably would've been,I don't know, an eight figure a year.Value.And he said, no, no.And here's the reason is that we're fundamentally not geared for that.The reason we provide such value in this one area is because we're extremely deep in that very experience and have ex very deep expertise around that specific area.We do have competencies like, could we do it?Sure.But we're just not set up for it to deliver the same type of, of value.And besides, we love to do the really niche, high value stuff that we do.We love it.And going back to your, you know, talking about the team, and we could probably pay, you know, people as possible, but what I would say is like, It's about generously acknowledging people's contribution and their value to the team.But that has to be backed up by demonstrating it with the compensation.Cuz if you have an overweighting of either, I think you get like an, an imbalance where you get a lot of slaps on the back saying, Hey, fantastic job,but the pay doesn't, isn't commensurate with that type of recognition.Or you get paid really well, but, but don't get the recognition in both cases.That's a recipe for dissatisfaction at best.And possibly even just a poor culture or dynamic.But as you know, one of the things that we've always said is we don't hire for expertise and experience.We hire for attitude and aptitude.That's what we hire for.So you with the right attitude and the right aptitude that your, your ability to grow and learn and apply.I mean, experience just comes with time, simply comes with time and expertise is simply an investment.So experience and expertise we can take care of.And, and you know, we've done it right?We've, we've looked at, I think we're at that point in our lives where, you know, we look at a situation or we look at a problem in a business and,you know, we'll figure it out, right?And, and our clients hire us because of who we are, not because we have this certification or that certification or this, you know, particular technical skill.It's because they know that we're gonna solve the problem because of who, you know, who we are on the soft side.And I think that when, you know,it's, it's an interesting conversation topic because I have bounced around.I had a moment there where I did bounce around between, I was off on my own kind of freelancing and I bounced around between a few different little consulting organizations.And I was just floored at how poorly run they were and how frustrating it was to be part of the organization.But I think it's a, it's a really difficult thing for a business owner to.To do what we're talking about and to put people in front of them and say, go, go.You're like, this is yours.Please take it.Please, like, let me empower you because there's a lot of talk about that, but very, very, very little.Operationalization, right?There's still command and control.There is still this hierarchical thing.So I think what we've built is very special and it's really requires a special person.And so the question is does that scale and does it need to scale?That's my bigger question.Does it need to scale?I think, well, you and I have talked about this on a number of occasions and I forget where, who told me this or who's who mentioned this to me, but they said,you know, I only want this organization to get to the size where like when I start forgetting people's spouses or partner's names, That's an, an indication to me.It's bigger than I want it to be.I'm not talking lifestyle, you know,entrepreneurism or anything like that.I mean, maybe, but, but the reality is, is that why can't,why shouldn't you have, why?Like, certainly you should be fulfilled and what you do.Like people ask me what I do and if I was to explain what we do, I'd probably put 90% of people to sleep.Right.I mean, it's not, it's not exciting, but I will say I love it and, and we love it.Yeah.Like we do.Maybe we're odd that way, but.We should have fun doing it.We don't need to scale this infinitely at all.And in fact, we'd far, I mean we've,we've experienced over the years we've experienced those times where we've actually said, well, maybe now is the time to, to grow rapidly, or maybe now is the time to hire on sales,you know, salespeople who are kind of just gonna get the deals done.Versus the more structured, you know, consultative salespeople that are really professional sales, which we don't have either.But I mean, but you know, it's just for,for, I think, I don't wanna speak for you, but I think we're on the same page.We'd much rather just do very interesting work, but, but do like,work with the people that we want doing the things that we wanna do for the customers that we want to.I mean, there's, there's such There's so much value in that to me personally, to know that we don't have to take on work.Yeah.And I don't have to take a so-called deal from a salesperson who's trying to hit their quota this quarter.Right.They're trying to get a deal in, or else they're gonna be out on a bonus.And so they have to discount and you have to do the, I've lived that life in other firms, and that's just not you, you sacrifice so much to, to just get there.And we don't need to do that.No.And I think we've both come to that part in our lives where we're just,you know, could I have gone and been a c e o of a big organization and, you know, climbed the corporate ladder?Probably.I have that in me, but it never appealed to me.And the, you know, you have to know yourself and not everyone is like this.And some people will wanna do that, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.But I think getting clear on what we want, and we've always been sort of on the same page in that regard, but getting clear on what we want, I think that puts us in a really happy place.Like, I'm so satisfied with the work that I'm doing.It's interesting.It's new for work for me.It's, I'm constantly building a new skill and, you know, trying something new.And, and that's really important to me.And I'm, but I'm also getting good results and I'm able to,like, I'm a farmer, right?You put me into an, an account and I'll start building out and building out and building out just because we do good work, right?So, I don't know that, you know, What I want here people to hear is, it's okay if what you love is staying small.It's okay.Like we make great money, right?We make great money.It's very satisfying.Do we need to build it up and scale it out?Maybe there's an interesting challenge in there for sure on some of these programs, but I just don't think that we have to feel the pressure to do that right now.I don't think we're looking to scale the inter, like the, the firm so much as we are looking to leverage ourselves.In other words, we as individuals don't want to be so caught up in a single thing we want to leverage ourselves,which doesn't necessarily mean scale.And it's interesting because all of the.You know, contemporary, you know,sales and marketing and operations,everything is about scale, scale up, scale, hard, scale this, scale that everything is about scale.And yeah, I get that.I, I tend to look at it about more about not lean in the, in the technical sense of the word lean, but just be lean so that you can actually, I mean,we've got young families, both of us.You know, I, I don't want to be putting in the, you know, 60 to 80 hour work weeks that's, that's behind me.What I wanna do is I wanna deliver the same value that I would've, you know, putting in a 70 to 80 hour work week in a, in a major consulting firm.But I want to do it on the basis of, you know, like a three quarter.Time or, you know, 40 hour work week sort of idea.I think, I think that also means you have to choose your customers, right?Yes.And I think that's one of the things that we have learned too.We're coming up on time and I know that we could talk for another five hours and we'll probably talk again in five minutes, but there's a question.Second hour with wine, right?Is that Yeah.Another hour with more wine.Yes.I can't believe how, how like appropriate we've been this whole, this whole interview.Lot of character.Yeah.There's one question I ask all my, all my all my guests.And I would love to hear your interpretation of this, but what's the difference between what we hear out there in the business world and online about business and being a business owner?What's the difference between that and what's real about being a business owner?Oh gosh.So this is for the second hour.I, I mean, there, there's actually so much, and here's the, so I mean,I'm sure you do as well, but I mentor young, young folks in business school and, and stuff like this, and I find that, I mean, you can't, you, you, you go into any bookstore and you're gonna find just reams of books regurgitating the same stuff, stated different ways.There's always kind of a flavor of the month business thing that's gonna solve all of your problems.The reality is, is that there's really nothing new under the sun.Like it's just regurgitation of, of the same old tropes.But it is, there is work, and I'm not gonna adv advocate for, you know, find something you love and do that because,you know, and it's not about that.I mean, this is, I mean, there,there's probably things I would rather do, but I do really find fulfillment in what we're doing.It takes work.But you can, you can design, like there, like for instance, there's no easy way to, to develop business, like demand for your product or service.You, you have to, you have to reach out there, you have to get connected with the people who, you know, where there's express need and you have to make sure that it's ac, economic fit and social, all these different things.But, There's no like standard pattern for,oh, what you really need is this Twitter strategy with an Instagram strategy,you know, and Pinterest and Facebook.And once you do that, orders are gonna start coming in.I mean, if you've got the type of product where that works, hey, good for you.By the way, some products probably do work really well that way.Certainly not consulting services.Or the really advanced advisory services and, and portfolio services that we do.A social strategy is probably, you know, something that you, you can refine over time, but you're just not gonna get deals and, and orders online.That's just not gonna happen.It still comes down to,so there's no quick fix.Yeah.It comes down to relationships and it comes down to the work that you do and being able to have the right conversations with the right people.And we do very little in the way of marketing and we stay busy.So I think that there's, you know, there's, that's okay.Right.That's absolutely okay.Alright.I would say with the books, just one last thing with the books, I would say, instead of spending a fortune on books and reading those and trying to replicate something that some author who's actually not been a success in business but has rather just authored a bunch of books that are so-called bestsellers and we all know how to game that system.Instead of that, go and find someone who's doing what you do, maybe in an adjacent market or a different market or, or in a different way.Spend time with them and just, you know,like these types of podcasts where you're actually interviewing people and saying,well, what worked for you have those conversations and well, almost without fail, people are happy to help you.They are, I don't know, people that are so competitive that they see you as an instant threat.I take calls all the time and, and I make calls all the time saying, help me understand or, or bouncing ideas how form your own advisory council of sorts.Right.You know, or, or, or a, a peer group or a mentor or several mentors, whatever it is.But it's about people like you said, and relationships and different perspectives.And I think you've been really fortunate to have me as your mentor.Yeah,yeah.Yeah.You're the wind beneath my wings.That's right.Okay.I'm, we had, we gotta shut it down.I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.Can you tell our listeners where they can find and connect with you?Sure.I mean, I don't know, I guess I'm old school, but LinkedIn is probably the best way to connect with me and reach out and that sort of thing.But I've got a somewhat unique name, so if you do a search for Jame Healy, you're gonna find me.So go ahead and do that.I am on the socials, but I'm more of a listener than a talker on the socials, so I, I wouldn't necessarily promote anything like that.But the, the company that we work with is Alescent alescent.com.But again, yeah, just reach out on,on LinkedIn, have a real conversation.Awesome.And we'll put all the links in the show notes so that people can find you.So that is very generous of you.And definitely this will be the one time I say something nice to Jame's face.One of the most experienced,intelligent and kind people that you know, one of my best friends and one of my, and my colleague in partner in crime for a really long time.So definitely reach out and grab some of his experience.So we'll just wrap up the episode.I'm so happy that we had the opportunity to, Talk to Jame today and hear more about how his business came to be, his experiences along the way, and what the future of the business entails.And thank you for tuning into this episode of The Real People Real Business Show, where we get the real entrepreneurial stories and journeys that you can relate to.The show notes, resources, and links from this episode are available on my website and social media platforms.If you've enjoyed today's content,I would love for you to give us a review on whatever platform you're on to help us share these genuine stories with an even bigger audience.Until next time, keep building.Keep dreaming and keep being real.