Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back for another episode of the Unscripted Small Business Podcast. Today's guest is Georgie Fiedler, a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience in leadership, people, operations and talent strategy. She's the founder of Hire Train Inspire, a consulting agency dedicated to helping small and mid sized business owners align their vision, people and purposes, especially when planning their exit.
In this episode, Georgie shares her journey from being an accidental entrepreneur to a purposeful consultant. We dive into the specific challenges baby boomer business owners face in succession planning, especially the emotional ties to their business, the danger of undocumented tribal knowledge, and the importance of mentorship and preparation in developing the next generation of leaders.
Georgie breaks down how shared services, emotional intelligence, and intentional hiring all play a role in creating a smooth and meaningful transition.
Let's jump in.
Georgie, so wonderful having you in the studio today. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to chat with you.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: So, Georgie, just to kind of start off with, I was really excited when I was reading through your bio and I read that you had a lot of business ideas at the dinner table. And I think that that's kind of an important thing to note, right? Because when we think about entrepreneurship, oftentimes it's like this lightning bolt moment of I've just had this big idea. But yours kind of seemed to come from just having conversation and talking about some of the things that might have been going on. I want to hear from you what was kind of stored stirring inside of you to start having these conversations.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: So I would say that a lot of that was initiated by my husband.
He is a software engineer by trade, but definitely caught the entrepreneur bug early and always had ideas, like always had ideas. And that was so much of what we talked about around our dinner table was his latest idea. So he's a learner, constantly researching and looking at things.
And I am a planner, right? I like to make the plan to go and execute. I always say a dream doesn't turn into a goal without a plan, right? That's the transition.
So one night we were at the dinner table as usual and he's talking about his latest amazing idea. And they're good ideas too, by the way. I mean, these aren't crap ideas.
And I put down my fork and I said, babe, I love you, but I cannot listen to another idea where we have no intention on executing on.
And so he got the book get Shit Done and he read it. And then two months later we had four businesses. So that's what happened there.
I Called myself an accidental entrepreneur for years.
And I think that there's two different types, right? There's types like my husband, and they, from the time that they are entering in the workforce, they're thinking about how they can no longer be an employee. And that's, that's what they want. That's the dream, right? And freedom is what drives them.
For myself, I think that I. My path in, in my career is very much.
I call myself a generalist, right? I.
A lot of people go through their work life and they, you know, pick something and then they just keep going deep on that, right? That's. That's what they do. And they, they get the next job and it connects to the job before that and the job before that.
I had the benefit in my career to be able to do a lot of different things in a lot of different industries, from recruiting and hiring to business, office, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, finance, revenue, labor.
Then I quickly realized in my 20s that I wanted to make a lot of money because I think Everybody in their 20s, that's a focus. You want to make a lot of money. And I realized money's not here, money's over in sales. And so off I went.
Spent eight and a half years in sales in March, marketing and business development.
Then I went into operations and quality control and call center for a little bit.
And then I realized, you know, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you love it. And I started to really understand what I truly enjoy doing and how that aligns with my natural strength. I don't think that the school system or the workforce does a really good job of helping people understand what they're naturally good at. And it's really hard for people to understand what they're naturally good at because it's so natural for them. They assume everybody can do it, right? That's the assumption. It's just like breathing. It's super easy for me. And so they devalue it.
So I did a lot of work to understand here's where I can bring value. And ultimately, you know, that's what drove my husband and I to start one of our four businesses, which was my consulting firm, Hire, Train, Inspire.
We had, you know, Amazon business, a book reseller business, and then we launched a couple of import products on. On Amazon. But I think through Covid, right, I kind of toyed around with my own thing. And then I went back into corporate after a few years. But then Covid happened and everything changed for everybody, right? I mean, that Was kind of a one year that, that advanced us, or devance us, however you want to put it. It moved us 10 years, right? In one year.
And that's when I came back to my business and I spent a couple of years and it just grew organically through word of mouth.
And it wasn't until I was in the final stages of. Because I always intended to go back into corporate and I was in the final stages of an interview process and it was for a really sweet gig, you know, nice title, nice benefits, nice everything. And we started to talk about all of the logistics and the, you know, meeting this person and connecting. And I just in that point, like I had this gut response and I was like, oh, I don't want this.
And so that's when I realized, oh, maybe I'm not an accidental entrepreneur. Maybe this is on purpose now.
And that's really what the shift was for me.
Wow.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Oh my gosh. Well, you've had such an amazing journey and I love that you and your husband kind of have two different mindsets and how you approach entrepreneurship because he sounds like very idea based, creative and you've got the logic and that's so needed, especially in business partnerships. You need to have, have that balance between the two. But I also love that you have so much experience. I mean, you've had a corporate career that's kind of taking you to where you are now. And so you've learned so many skills along the way to be where you are today. What would you say are some of those main skills that you learned from corporate career that have transitioned into consulting?
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I think that's, that's a little bit tricky because a lot of stuff can transition if you choose it to be. But for, for me, like what differentiator is or kind of magic part, and this is going to be different for everybody, right. I go back to find your strength, right. And understand that. But for me, it has to go back to the generalist, right. I would describe myself as a generalist because of my career path, because of the different industries and the different functions that I've been exposed to. Right. That just gives you a really good understanding of just general business acumen. Like that's what it does, Right.
I think, I don't remember if it's, if it's McKenzie or Harvard Business Review, but they describe us as T shaped executives. Right? The T shape, right. You go wide in most areas and then you have deep knowledge in a couple.
And so for me, as a generalist, right, Like I'M an integrator, right.
That's the differentiator. I can speak vision to my, my clients which are my founders, right. Who are just out there squirrel, what's the next thing? All of these. Right. And I partly is because, you know, I married one of those, I get that, I understand that, that language. Right. And I enjoy that. I can speak that, but I can also speak operations. So I can zoom in and zoom out.
And I think that's what most founder led companies actually need during growth or transition. Right.
They'll reach certain stages and they'll have certain needs based on their industry and their go to market strategy that might need a specialist, but they need generalists during that growth and transition. So for example, in one week my team might coach a founder, a baby boomer business owner on his succession plan.
We might review with the head of product that we hired their strategy and help facilitate a roadmap session. We might write a position agreement for a head of growth hire. Right.
And that's not, not like some people can look at that and be like, oh my gosh, that's chaos. That's not chaos. It's the connective tissue, right. That makes a small business be able to scale from, you know, the founder is the business. Right. They have a job, they don't have a business yet to know. It's, it's truly a scalable business that can live and breathe without them. Right.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Well and I love too with, with consulting, you know, honing in on those elements of entrepreneurship that maybe the entrepreneur isn't thinking about because they might not know that they need to be thinking about that thing or it's something that they don't enjoy doing. And so you're like that glue to give them that, that edge of okay, you need to focus your attention here and this is what's really important for where you are right now.
So when you're working with a business, what types of businesses do you typically work with?
[00:10:10] Speaker B: So I, I like to describe what we do as kind of being the GPS for small to mid sized businesses. Right.
We work with founder led businesses. I, I really enjoy that. And, and a lot of that stems at one point in my career I worked for a company and their, their purpose was to help small businesses succeed. We did that through software as a service. But in that experience I got to meet with so many entrepreneurs.
We had a, you know, a belief that as we scaled, we didn't want to lose the focus on small business. Right. And so that required a lot of intention and through that Process.
I just really came to believe that founders are the lifeblood of innovation. Right. They have an amazing potential to change the lives of their teammates that they hire, of their family and of their community. Right. And I think that's so magical. And so for me, that's, that's really why there's, there's a focus on, on that founder and it's a lonely journey. That's the other piece. Like, you have everybody looking at you, asking you for the answer, and you don't feel like you could say, the hell if I know. I don't know the answer. Right. You'll feel like, oh, I got to come up with something. Right. And so I love being able to come alongside a founder and be like, hey, you're not alone. Like, real talk. Tell me the truth. And I'm going to tell you the truth. The truth that it might, you know, people might be scared to tell you because it might sting a little bit, but I'm going to tell you it, right? It's going to come from a really great place of positive intention. Right. Loving intention.
So I think, you know, that's why I describe us as a GPS for small businesses. So I want to guide founders through those people process and systems issues that help them turn the tribal knowledge into transferable value.
Tribal knowledge is, you know, the death of scale.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: And so I think being able to help those people who I think are the change makers and trailblazers, they've built something really meaningful and I want to help them see it thrive without burning themselves out in the process.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah. When you started working with these types of businesses, were there any specific niche or niche populations of business owners that you began working with that you were kind of surprised?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So I would say that the two, the two things that came most often for us is the, the friends and family conundrum is what I like to call it. So these are, these are founders.
Oftentimes in software as a service technology, I've done, you know, cpg, nutraceuticals, different industries as well. But they have, have big plans, right. They want to grow this thing, they want to scale this thing. But they're in the friends and family conundrum.
And what I, what I mean when I say that is when you're starting something, right, and you need help, it is very natural and expected that you're going to look to the people who are closest to you, right? And so they have built a business with their friends and family, and they're on that. Like those people are on that Ride for different reasons, right? Some of them want to do the scale. They want to climb that mountain. Some of them are like, no, this was, like, fun, and now it's not fun anymore. And you want to measure us and you want to have accountability. Like what? Right. And so that requires not just a process, right. That is very gray, and there's a lot of emotional, like, baggage that comes with that. And I don't say that in a bad way. It's just the reality of that. Right? And so it requires a lot of care and work, not just with the founder and not say, oh, well, just go replace this person or just go do this. Right? You have to walk through that with a lot of care and intention because we don't want to burn bridges and we don't want to ruin family dynamics and friendships, Right? So I think that that's something that we've had a lot of. And then the second this one is more recent for me, in the last three or four years is the. The baby boomer business owners.
A lot of people don't realize that over, you know, more than 50% of the small businesses in the US are owned by baby boomers. And they are.
They're getting ready to retire.
And they, A lot of them assumed that.
That their kids would take on the business. And their kids don't want to.
Not all of them, but. But their kids don't want to. And what we're seeing there is just the goals for each generation. And what each generation finds meaningful is very different. And so that's why we're not seeing that transfer happen as it had in previous generations. Right?
So I think the stat is like 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day. We're going to see that steady for the next 12 to 15 years.
And over 60% of those have absolutely no succession plan.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: And so if you think about that at a macro level, right, that's literally billions of dollars in enterprise value that we're putting at risk, not because of market conditions, but because of inaction or lack of clarity. And, and I don't say that again as a, as a, as a dig. It's just they've been in their business working for the last 30 to 40 years, and by the time they realize they're done and they're ready, right? Like, they don't even know that there's a problem until they're already ready to be done. And I think, you know, that's something that I'm so passionate about right now because it has the ability to be so mutually beneficial. Right. Like we can, we can create succession plans that are intentional and that, that hand off the legacy that this person has built over the last 35 years instead of, you know, risking it and letting it fall to the wayside.
There's something that feels so, so noble about that. Right. And I think that that's, that's what really excites me.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Well, and when you've created a business and you've been in it for so long, I can only imagine the emotional tie to that business, let alone, you know, thinking that you're going to give it over to your child. And now they don't, they don't want it anymore. What is that strategy like to help entrepreneurs with that emotional feeling towards their business? And also strategies for finding the correct people to hand off that torch to?
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that that's what a lot of the classic, like, deal people don't, don't get. Right.
Because the baby boomers are different than the other founders, the first ones that I talked about. Right. They're starting that business with the intention to sell it at some point. They're thinking about that the entire time. Right. Like this is that play for these baby boomer business owners. Like, they haven't been serial entrepreneurs that have started several things. This has been their baby.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: Right. And oftentimes I'm dealing with second generation business owners. Right. The baby boomer took it over from their parent. Right. And then, and then grew it and developed it. Right. So there is a ton of legacy and a ton of emotion there.
And what I've discovered with my clients that I've been working with is it's not even about the sell price or the money at the end of the day. I mean, yes, they want to be rewarded for, for that work. Right. And handing that off. But more importantly, they want to make sure that their team is taken care of and okay. Right. The team of the people that helped build their business for them and that their customers are taken care of and are okay.
And so again, that requires structure. And I know it sounds really a little bit in opposition, but that structure is actually what protects that freedom and that legacy. Right.
I think some of the lessons and the frameworks that I've really taken away from helping these baby boomers transition and retire is that tribal knowledge is the enemy of succession. So if it's in your head, like that's not delegation, we can't delegate that. That doesn't exist.
Successors aren't found. They are, they are. They're they're forged over time.
And that, that's that part where it takes time. Right. I can't be ready and retire tomorrow and just hand it off to somebody after a couple of weeks. Right?
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: I've been doing this thing for 35 or 40 years. The depth of knowledge that I have is, is going to be not able to be transferred in a matter of weeks. So there's a mentorship that needs to be put in place there. So we supported a, a brother and sister.
So I'll give an example because I think that's the, the best option here. But we supported a brother and sister baby boomer, their second gen. So their dad, when he retired, he split it off. He gave one location to the sister, one location to the brother. They've been in the business for, you know, 35, 36 years.
They've grown it, done amazing things. Right. I started working with the brother first.
I asked him in our intake call, what's your, what's your goal? What do you want to achieve? He was very non committal. Maybe in the next five years I could start to retire is what he said.
The reality of it is his wife was already like, hey, come on, we got it. Like, we want to travel, let's go. You know, what's taking so long?
So we got to work because, you know, when I, when I questioned his team of 35 people, everybody reported to him.
Not super scalable. Right. We had a lot of deep people who had a lot of deep knowledge but didn't really. We hadn't delegated decision making. Right. And we hadn't elevated them into, into a leadership bench. Right. So we worked over the next, you know, probably 22 months, I think it was.
And this year when we go into our, our monthly coaching call, he says to me, well, Georgie, I think this is the year we're going to do it.
So through walking through all of that, right, through getting rid of the tribal knowledge, through making sure that we identified a successor and we were intentional about creating a plan of what does this person need to know and what do they need to learn and how do we delegate to other people who have been there for a long time and helped him build.
He went from working 55, 60 hours a week in the office every single day to now I just kind of come in once a week and there's not really a lot for me to do.
And so, yeah, I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna retire. So we spent Q1 setting up a governance board and we I think he's. He's living full time at his beach house with his wife and are almost full time. And he has two to three meetings a week. And in the next quarter, he's gonna see that go down to one meeting a month. And that's. That's the mentorship coaching meeting with his successor, and then a meeting per quarter with the governance board.
So the sister sees this and she's like, man, I want a piece of that. So she grew in a different way. Very small team. Right. Not a lot of infrastructure, and she's looking at retiring as well.
She will be out of her business in the next two quarters.
But one of the early indicators was, can she take a vacation? Because she'd not been able to take a vacation without being interrupted. And so since we've been working together the last 14, 15 months, she's taken four. So she broke through. She was real nervous about the first one, but then she's like, oh, okay, we can do this. So now she's taken four, which has been really great to see and really rewarding to see that. But what was really nice is we created a shared services function within the brothers business.
And so with the development of an integration plan, the sister's business is utilizing that shared services structure so she doesn't have to build from scratch that infrastructure for her business. Right. And so it's that shared resource and then the governance board that's offering the oversight and the mentorship. Right. It's not. We're going to drop you, like, okay, we're out. Right. It's no. There's a commitment there. Right. And there's.
What we decided to do with them, instead of going through a traditional sell with a PE firm is to move what's called a Popeye plan. So it's a variation of an employee ownership program. So over the vesting period, the founders and the owners will get their money out, and then by the end of it, the very people that help build the business will own the business going forward. Which I think is such a beautiful kind of full circle.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Full circle. Oh, my gosh, I love that. What was the process like? And I'm sure it's different, you know, depending on just the design of the business. But what is the typical structure for getting an entrepreneur founder out of their business? Is it typically a couple quarters? Is it a couple years?
[00:23:27] Speaker B: I would say hugely. It depends.
Again, I think that it depends on have you. Have you had somebody kind of there that has shown high aptitude and high potential and they know a lot already. Right. And we can just formulate a succession plan. We can do a gap analysis, like, what's missing? And we can. We can formulate a succession plan. Right. In that case, it might be. It might be, you know, a year before initial handoffs, like six months to a year before initial handoff, but then we'd want to continue, again, the mentorship and the advisory through a governance type board and through regular coaching.
If we have to look for somebody and there's, you know, there's nobody that exists. Right. That's going to take a little longer.
My, my recommendation is if you are a baby boomer business owner and you are thinking about retiring in the five. In the next five years, you need to start now. Like, you need to start thinking about your succession plan now.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: Well, and it sounds like the succession plan is structurally kind of similar to a business plan when you're starting on the forefront, thinking about the logistics, your marketing, your employees, and just every aspect of it. And I think a lot of times, especially when you think about baby boomers, they're not necessarily as equipped with the technology that, you know, a lot of millennial generation utilizes. And so they might not have that structure or those systems in place to be able to transfer some of that information over.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. 100%. So I think we're dealing with the tribal knowledge problem, right? That depth of knowledge, we're dealing with the scalability, right. Oftentimes it all lives in their head and they have the depth of knowledge, and so they're approaching it in this way. But as we're transitioning to the next. To the successor, right.
That might need to be different for them. Right? And those are generational differences. Those are knowledge gap differences. And I think the third thing is just, just the, the ability to actually hand it off as much as they want to be done, right? It's. It is their baby, it is their life's work, it is their legacy. And there's, again, a lot of emotion tied to that. And so it needs to be handled with a lot of care and grace and, and needs to be talked about, right? Like that's a key part of it, right?
The emotion is a key part of it. And so we need to, we need to talk about that.
And again, I think the way that we've approached that is by continuing the expectation of mentorship and the advisory component, right? So it's not cut off cold turkey, right?
It's this gradual ramp down, right. As the successor ramps up. And I think that that, again, that reduces the risk as much as possible of the handoff that mitigates risk, but it also just honors the people, it honors the legacy and it sets the future up for, for success.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: Have you found any specific strategic tools that have been most helpful for, you know, those entrepreneurs where everything just lives in their brain and helping them get it out in, in a way that makes sense for the collective?
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's kind of different with, depending on the, on the industry and how they've grown.
So what we really start by is identifying what single points of failure we just say.
It's, it's the hit by the bus analogy, you know, as common as is if you got hit by a bus, right. Who, who else knows what you know? Right. And is there anything that you know that someone else doesn't already know? So that's the stuff that we target first is, is who, who, like what are the things that you are the only person that knows that. And that's the stuff that we need to, to get documented first. And it's not like it's not second sexy, right. Document. It's not sexy or fun, but it is the work. Right. You have to document to delegate. It can't be transitioned any other way. Like one day maybe with AI and all of the fun stuff, we'll just be able to plug in something to our brain and it'll be, you know, transitioned off, but it's not that yet. Right. And we do, we do bring in, speaking of AI, right. We bring in AI tools to help make it a little easier because I don't want them sitting there and like, oh, I'm just typing forever, right?
It's, you know, hey, let's get you set up with, with Loom and just start recording things as you're talking to this person, right? As you're having this coaching session, as you're going through this, turn on the camera, right. And, and then let's put that script into, into Scribe or chatgpt and then we can start to, to create some, some documents from that. So that's where we're bringing in a little bit of the, the AI and the, and the system tools to cut down on the, the length of time that that takes.
But yeah, I mean, it's still, it still has to ultimately come out of their mouth or out of their fingertips to, to get out of their brain.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: What advice do you give founders when they are trying to hire that person that is going to take over and run the business so they find somebody that's in alignment with their vision? And overall mission of the company.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think where we start is by looking at the existing team.
We are not going to find somebody who's well rounded that can do it. All right. It took them 40 years to be able to, to know that and do that. Right. So we're not going to find that.
I always say that people are not well rounded, even though we all want to believe that we are. Right. Because again, the school and our, our work teaches us, oh, well, if you're not good at it, just keep working at it and you'll get better at it. Well, that, that's somewhat true, you know, but really we should be working in our strengths. We should. Those are the things that we can do easy and those things that we can add value and we can 10x if we work in our weaknesses. Right. We maybe get a little bit of an improvement for a short amount of time before we return back to our default. But I always say teams can be well rounded. Right. Even though people can't. So I take a look at the team and again, that question, who else knows how to do what you're doing? Right. Like from the customer standpoint, I kind of look at businesses in the way of our. All right, there is the acquisition component, however you're getting the customer. There is the delivery component. Here's where we're delivering on what we promised you guys. And then there's kind of the innovation. Here's the new stuff to change and how we're moving forward. So we break it down.
What do other people know and what are other people good at? Because hopefully as their business has scaled over time, right. They all, even, even founders have things that they hate doing and they're not, they're not good at. And so they want to replace those things first. So there's likely going to be at least a few people in the business who are doing certain things better than the founder ever could already. Right. So we're going to take advantage of that. And then the gaps that are left over, the things that are left over again, those single points of failure, whatever those things are, that's what we're going to want to go find in the successor. Right.
And I think, you know, the other thing that's really interesting about that, especially as I've looked at some of the handoffs, I have some baby boomer friends around me that have handed off their business to somebody and it's been like, oh, here's your one month training and I'm gone. And it hasn't gone well. Right.
It hasn't gone great.
Is again, that resourcing. Right. So they might be great. Let's say, you know, you, you are, are, your name's John and you're handing off, you know, a pool service business, and you find somebody who is, is doing pools, and they, they know about pools. Maybe they only have three or four years of experience. They don't have 40 like you. But, you know, they seem like they're interested and they want to do that, and so you hand that off to them.
But they're a tactician that doesn't have the level or the depth of experience. And maybe they don't have all of the business acumen either for how to run all of the other parts, all of the other noise of the business. And so I think that that's the opportunity too, that my team and others, our network can help with is that back office shared services take care of that so that your tactician, the person who is your successor, can focus on learning from you. Right. And learning the customers and learning the actual business.
So those would be some of my recommendations.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Well, and I think that such a great thing to recognize, even if somebody's not wanting to exit their business right now, is just understanding that there are people that you can delegate a lot of those tasks to. So you're not the person that always needs to be in charge all the time. And you can take a vacation not every 15 years.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Right, right, exactly. I think, you know, it's, I always say if it's.
And this goes back to the delegation point, right. Like it's.
The documentation is a diffusion of responsibility. It doesn't mean that you're not the ultimate owner. Right. You're. You're starting to diffuse the responsibility. So decisions don't come to one bottleneck. You. Right. Like they're made elsewhere in the business.
And, and, you know, I think it's with, with, like, with that it's really about alignment at the end of the day. Right.
I think we make a lot of assumptions in that, in our hurriedness to maybe, you know, find somebody or hire somebody. Right.
And one thing that I've seen with founders time and time again is when there is misalignment, it isn't about malice, it's usually about assumptions.
Because as a founder, right, who's been doing this thing for 35 to 40 years, everything's obvious to you. And what's obvious to you isn't always obvious to the person that you just hired.
And it's not a them problem. Right. It's a Systems problem. So to your point, right, there are things that we can do from a people, process and systems standpoint that help set that successor up for, like, greater success, right. Than if, if we just put everything on them.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: So when you're working with the successor, have you ever had any businesses to where it's just felt like not a great fit to continue on the business and the business should just kind of end when the owner is ready to stop?
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Yes. So I, I always warn my founders when we're looking for their replacement, right. Whether that is they're going to buy the business from them or they're going to run it as a president, or they're going to be the new CEO, whatever that is. Right.
I have seen that go beautifully well and it has allowed the business to grow even beyond, you know, what the founder hoped for.
But I've also seen it implode. Right. And honestly, that comes down to the founder. Like, that comes down to their ability to let go, their ability to transfer the tribal knowledge and their ability to mentor that, that next person and truly set them up for success.
If they can do those three things, it's successful. You know, 99% of the time. If they can't do those three things for whatever reason, right. Then it isn't going to be as successful. Right. And I think the thing that I tell my founders a lot is hiring your successor isn't about finding the perfect person. It's about finding someone who makes the team more complete.
And the clearer that we can be upfront, the less frustration that we're going to create down the road.
Down the road. I think that founders oftentimes, because they're used to doing it all and juggling it all, they want to create these, like, unicorn searches, call them Franken rolls, and it feels like, oh, yeah, all the things.
But, you know, that's not efficient, right. We're thinking we're being efficient by putting it all together, but that is very expensive in practice because it does not work.
So really focusing on hiring for character, you have to find that. Right? You can't train character connection, right. This is a very trusting relationship. Right. They're handing off something precious. So that connection has to be strong, that trust has to be there.
And then contribution, right? That's again, going back to making the team more complete. What's their contribution going to be? So it's not just about their credentials, their competency, like what, like looks good on paper. It's really that next level of, of that character, that connection and contribution. And I Like alliteration.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: So there you go. The three C's. I was gonna say.
Awesome. Well, Georgie, this has been so insightful, and I. I love everything that you're doing. I can tell that you have so much knowledge about just business strategy.
Where can we find you if we want to hire a strategist? Where can we find you and your team?
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So we are.
You can connect with me at our website, hire traininspire.com and you can also find us on LinkedIn.
Again, you know, we work with founders who care about growth, freedom, and impact, and they are looking for, you know, people, process and system side of the business to run it. Like a true engine and not a bottleneck.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Yes.
Especially as somebody that's creative. Like, you're speaking music to my ears right now. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I need this in my own life. I need that. That structure.
Awesome. Well, I have two more questions for you.
One of them is one that I like to ask all my guests at the end. But before I get to that question, I just want to ask you, because we've been talking about legacy. What does your legacy look like for you and your business?
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I had somebody ask me this a couple, like, probably like four or five months ago when I was on a podcast, and I had a terrible answer for it. It was not good. So I have given it some thought since then.
And. And so one of the things that we just wrote a blog post on this. It's like, take your own medicine type of thing. You know, parents say, like, do as I say, not as I do. Right. We need to actually do as we do.
So I.
One of the things that I do with a lot of my clients is I take them through a vision workshop.
If anybody, you know, knows Jim Collins, good to great. Right? It's kind of. It's that blueprint, right? Purpose, values, mission. Right.
And so that's been a lot of the work that I've been doing for my own. For my own company. Right? What. What is the ultimate vision for the organization? Right. What's. What's the purpose?
[00:38:39] Speaker A: And.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: And what are the values? Because those things, those are core ideologies that don't change over time. And when you are a business owner, as important as that seems, like when I say that right now, right. There's nobody out there. That would be like, oh, no, that's not important at all. We'd be like, oh, my gosh, that's so important. Yeah, we don't do it. Right. We're so in the Minutia and in the thick of things and just doing this and doing that, we don't take the time to work on it and, and because we're in it. Right.
So I, I would say what I would love for this to develop into would be that we, I somehow and I again, I don't have the plan yet. I'm just putting it out there because this, this would be amazing. I would be able to have a meaningful impact and our team would be able to have a meaningful impact on this baby boomer transfer of wealth that's happening right now.
And you know, maybe there is a portfolio of companies that, that we can create where we are providing that shared service and we are helping find tactician and we are shepherding that process to make sure that that handoff right. Of that legacy is, is done with the care, with the intention that it deserves. And we're setting up the next generation for success over the next 35 to 40 years.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: That's so beautiful. And I think, you know, again, that's something that's going to be needed because baby boomers will be out, but more people will just continue to age. And so it's so important to have that in place. So you haven't thought about your exit strategy then?
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Oh, no, my kids are going to take it. I'm just kidding.
No, I, I know I'm going to be doing this for at least the next, the next 20 to 25 years. But again, I'm going to take my own medicine. When I'm five years out, I will most certainly start to look. And I already have somebody who I think of as my second. Right. And I think that every opportunity that I have to share something with her and teach her, I'm doing.
I also have taken my own medicine about documenting things. Right. Like what am I the only person that knows if you do that as just a lifelong practice of how you do business, it won't feel so painful and so overwhelming in the end.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: Yes. So, so smart, so wise. I love that. Well, I have one more question for you, and this is a question that I like to ask all of my guests at the end. And it's one of those mad lib, fill in the blank type of questions. So the question is you have to blank to blank.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: Yes. So I. You emailed us this and I gave this a little bit of thought.
I ultimately came to.
You have to release the plan to receive the purpose.
And I know that sounds really counterintuitive as someone who plans for a living. Right. Like that's my job. But if there's one thing that life has taught me, it's that while control is very comforting, it's not the same as calling. So between raising kids with unique needs, the kind of unexpected loss that carves out a piece of your heart, forever caregiving for my husband, who has a rare genetic disorder, and building a business through seasons of life that I never saw coming, they were not part of the plan. I think I've learned that truth over and over again. So I would say, yeah, you have to surrender your plan to receive the purpose, which is not easy at all, because I believe in planning. Right. I teach it. I build systems and structures for a living. And I know the power that comes from clarity and planning and preparation. Right. I do that for my clients, my team, my family.
But I've also learned through those hardest chapters in life that their real work is honoring the natural tension that exists between that structure and that surrender. So it's holding the plan while life kind of redraws the map around you.
So, yeah, there are so many things in my life that have shaped my purpose that were never, ever part of the plan. So I would say, yeah, you have to release the plan to receive the purpose. Purpose.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, that is so beautiful. Where do you feel like surrender comes from for you, or how are you able to tap into that? Because I find that to be so challenging, especially if, you know, you are that person that wants to hold onto the plan so tightly.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So surrender for me comes from. From my faith. Right.
You have to find that for yourself. But. But that's where it comes for me is. Is having that faith in something greater, knowing that there is a greater purpose than even what I had in mind. I've seen that happen as well. Right. When I do surrender sometimes, and this isn't all the time, and sometimes I don't see it as well, but it's seeing that sometimes what happened was greater than what I could have ever planned for or anticipated.
And when it isn't, because sometimes it isn't, it's having the faith that eventually it will be. Be.
Because if you have that faith that the purpose is greater than what you had in mind, somehow, even in the struggle. Right.
It's still it. You see. You see the potential and you have the hope. And I think that's the most powerful thing of all.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. So beautifully said. So resilient. Georgie, thank you so much for being here today and sharing a piece of your heart with us. It's been such a pleasure.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Abby. Loved it. Loved it. It.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening. If you found value in today's conversation, make sure to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And as always, don't forget to share this episode with anyone that you think could benefit. And for more information about today's guest, be sure to check out the show notes. We'll see you next time.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Sam.
