Adapt Or Die: Reflections On Resilience, Innovation, And Business Success With Thomas Douglas

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markell and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change.

Proof.

Hey everybody, it's Adam Markell. And welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof podcast. Today I have an amazing guest. His name is Tom Douglas. And I, I respect this gentleman quite a bit. I know you're going to enjoy this conversation, but before we get there, let me share a little bit more about him. Tom joined Jaymark in 1997 after serving in the Navy, where he was recognized multiple awards as a level one engineer. At Jaymark, he worked his way up the ranks before purchasing the company in 2001. He had to make some hard decisions and downsize the organization to only six people. But today, with over 120 employees, JMAR is a leader in its space, having hit Inc. Magazine's list of the top 5,000 fastest growing private companies nine consecutive times and has also been awarded the number one best place to work in Southwestern Missouri. He is a trusted technology advisor to global lists of clients and often speaks on topics such as culture, people, puzzles, technology efficiencies, and cybersecurity. I know you're going to love this conversation, so sit back and enjoy my discussion with Tom Douglas. Okay, Tom, you know, reading somebody's bio is always fun for me. I love it in a variety of ways, mostly because I'm thinking as I am reading it, you know, how it was put together and what was purposely put in and maybe what was left out and all that kind of good stuff. So my first question to you just out of the gate is, what is one thing that's not part of your introduction or bio? Let's say that you would love for people to know about you. Something that's not typically included in your bio.

Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is how many times I screwed up and failed before we were able to get anything right. Your bio typically is a summary of your successes, but it doesn't list the hundreds of things that you got wrong along the way before you were able to get a few things right. And so, you know, I'm, I'm just humbled every day that we have the opportunity to do what we do and work with the people that we work with because we screwed so many things up before we got it right. And so I remind young entrepreneurs and I remind young people that we're coaching that, you know, nobody at jmarc anyway gets fired for making a mistake. It's not learning from the mistakes that learn that lead to an exit. And so we want to encourage people to lean into that, make mistakes, screw up, you know, and, and then be better as a result.

Exactly. Look, I want to, I want to, I want to talk about failure for a little bit today and, but, but before we do that, I want to, I want to just get the origin story set up for people so they understand.

Yeah.

Who Jay Mark really is and how you came to be. So if you give us a little of that context and then we're going to dive into the, you know, what is that? That F word that people are. Do not. Do not dig.

Well, you know, it's a fun. It's a fun but challenging story, I think, like so many small businesses. So I, I actually went straight out of high school, I went into college, and I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I spent a couple of years dorking around in college and. And just didn't find my. My why? Didn't find my what? And. And found myself kind of floundering around and finally decided to get my life in order and join the Navy originally with aspirations to be a SEAL and figured out that that wasn't quite my calling. But I was given the opportunity to work with some incredible people. And candidly, I got to work with some people who were less than ideal as a leader. And so I learned both what to do and what not to do in a leadership role. Eventually I found my way into technology because I didn't like the way that we were managing some of the databases in the environment. So I decided to write my own around min max levels and stocking levels and financials and all the things. And just fell in love with this whole idea of data and data being able to tell a better truth and understanding the facts of an environment. And actually was going to reenlist in the Navy for another four years. And I had my Navy chief at the time who came to me and, and said, nope, you need to get out. He said that there is a lot of people that can do what you do in the Navy. He said, but you're going to go out and you're going to create a business or do something and it's going to have a bigger economic impact on our country than you can have sitting here in the Navy. And I was like, dude, whatever. I had no aspirations to be a Business leader had no aspirations to do anything like he was describing, but he was like, you're destined for it. And so. So I. I followed his advice. I got out and I joined JMARC as a level one engineer. And I thought I knew a lot about tech and all the stuff because I'd gotten certified and I'd done all the things. And I came in thinking I was all that in a bag of chips and figured out that I was. I was a chip that wasn't all that. Not.

Not the whole. Not the whole bag, but the whole bag.

Yeah. And. But I had some great coaches and some great mentors, and they helped me navigate through all of those things. And through my experiences in the Navy. Navy, I was able to put some processes in place and some repeatable experiences that. That led me to a service management role. And then the guy who formed the organization, originally, the founder, was a gentleman by the name of James Montgomery Jr. And he. He was at a place in his life where he needed to leave the business, and it was a little bit struggling. And so he. He said, do you want to. You want to buy the business? I was like, yeah, why not? So I put with my dad and family members, we were able to reinvest in the business. We actually had to downsize it to about six people in the company and then have rebuilt it from there, rebuilt the business model. And now we. We have 125 people in the company and going strong. So it's been. Been quite the journey, but it's been. It's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, exactly. All right, so this is the snapshot of, you know, success. And as you said at the beginning, you know, so often it is. We don't. We don't talk about the failures. So I want to go back to that for a second. And I'm not. I'm not suggesting. I mean, you could tell any story of failure you want. I'm happy to have you do that. You know, people, we're all a little, like, voyeuristic, I guess, when it comes to that. You know, like, tell us. Tell us the really ugliest thing that's ever happened to you. Right. And I'm fine with that. But I'm also more wanting to just sort of track from a leadership and a senior leadership perspective, you know, how important failure actually is, because it is a trope. It has been said before, and I don't know that people truly buy into the idea of just how important good failure is.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you. More. And I think what I would add to the context of failure is it's the impetus of wisdom. And I think that when we don't have failure in our life, we don't have the experiences, the times when we weren't good enough for whatever reason, we lost the business. We let a customer down, we let an employee or a teammate down. Like all of those circumstances, we've all done them. But it's through those situations, through those circumstances, that we gain the wisdom to be better as leaders, to inform others, to guide them, to coach them in the future. And if we can eat enough humble pie as we're going through, through those experiences to then carry it forward and to make better choices, to, you know, to avoid, you know, making the same mistake multiple times, I think it leads to an organization and a leadership style that, that focuses on kind of the gathering of wisdom, if you will, rather than just focusing on process and just focusing on, you know, do what I say and all those kind of things. When there's wisdom behind what you do as an organization through that experiential lear, then, then it leads to outcomes because there's a why and there's a story. And let me tell you how I came to this conclusion and that that method of helping people navigate through situations is, is incredibly meaningful and powerful for them.

And I know you're an author as well and got a recent book and tell us it does failure play an integral role in, in how you teach others how to lead?

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, that was the, that was really the foundation of why I wrote Adapt or Die is because one, I, I'm a big believer in learning from other people's mistakes and, and watching other companies and other leaders in terms of what they're doing. But, but also because we had had 25 years worth of incredible wisdom building or experiences, some, some good, some not so good. And, and if we can share that wisdom and pay it forward just a little bit and help an entrepreneur navigate through it, solve a financial problem, a people problem, a process problem, whatever it may be, then then we can help to accelera. And I'm a big believer in rising tides lifts all boats. And so if, if my book that I'm sharing with somebody helps somebody in Australia on the other side of the pond, you know, then eventually that's going to have a positive impact on the world.

So yes, and it's a driver for me, it's a motivation internally, intrinsically to write and share content. Because you're right, it, it is. I Mean, it's never a month goes by, I could say this truthfully, that we don't hear from somebody somewhere around that says this, that your book, you know, a book I've written or collaborated on has had an influence that made a difference, that helped, you know, create that ripple effect, as you said. And yet there's still, there's part of it that I'm, I just want to dig into still a little bit more because again, at the idea level, I think everybody gets this right, you know, that the importance of making mistakes, for example. And yet at a, at a visceral level, at a, a level of programming, we learn from the time that we're really young that mistakes have consequences, that mistakes often cause pain, and then we live the bulk of our lives trying to avoid experiencing the pain and the consequences of those mistakes. Right. And it's, and it's counterintuitive because, you know, let's call it for what it is. You know, from a financial standpoint, the majority of the world is not, are not living financially successful or in a successful, you know, what they would define as successfully. And from the standpoint of business, more businesses fail than succeed. And that's always been the case. So I really feel like if we're going to give people a bullhorn, you know, the wisdom of, of our age or our experience, we would say don't overlook the importance of failing. And it's not like I'm saying you should wake up in the morning and go, how do I fail today? It's that you have to recognize on a subliminal or, or subconscious or that at the level of programming, we avoid anything that might lead us toward failure. Whether that's somebody who's, you know, starting an, you know, business for themselves, an entrepreneur, or even people in, in mid level or senior level leadership roles within an organization like organizations either adapt or die, to use your words, or you know, I might say pivot or perish.

Yeah.

But they either innovate or, or they, you know, they evaporate. You know something.

That's correct. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

No, please pass the baton.

Well, well, I, I think, you know, when we go back to, you know, I'm a big believer that whether, whether it's, it's God, whether it's the universe, whether it's whatever is, is in your belief system that, that we, we are put in a situation to go through experiences so that it will lead to something positive in the future, a better outcome. And, and while we may fail today, while we may, may let Someone down in some capacity, even if that's ourselves, what we learn from that, if we, if we don't live in the past and we don't live with all of the regret and we say, okay, I learned this lesson, how am I going to play that forward and how am I going to pay that forward? Then, then it becomes that, that gift that keeps on giving and it creates an opportunity not only for us to be better for it, but for us to share that wisdom like we talked about. And so I think that to your point of living through those circumstances, like, you know, you, you, you don't get in shape, you don't do anything positive with your life without sweating a little bit. And, and I think that, that as a, as a society and candidly, I think in terms of ego, as humans, we have a tendency to shy away from having to work in order to, to get something we want. You know, the, the, the, oh, the, the kids that go through and they get the, the participation trophies. Whether you blame it on that or whether you just blame it on, you know, a parent who doesn want to see their kids suffer a little bit. All of those things, I think are challenges that we have to learn to overcome if we're going to be successful in business because it's the best teacher. Like, if you don't screw some stuff up, you don't know what risks you should take or you shouldn't take. And Kodiak is a perfect example. They thought they owned the market and they thought that nothing was going to happen. And they were the first with digital film technology. They had a digital camera and they squashed it because they didn't want to change their business model because they were too afraid. And they refused to think that they could fail because they hadn't gone through enough small failures along the way to recognize that it's a company made of humans. And ultimately look what happened.

Yeah, exactly. That's a great, that's a classic case study Kodak of. Yeah, they didn't want to cannibalize their own market. So they, I mean, the irony in that, that the technology they created is a technology that, that ultimately took them out of business is remarkable. I think I forget what the numbers are. It's been a while since I looked at that case study. But, you know, on the day that they were going bankrupt, Instagram was valued at like $20 billion or something. So, you know, it was literally on the same day these two, two things were, were coalescing. So, so I'm going to let this go in a second here. But I am a little like a dog with a bone sometimes. And, and so for me, I'll just back my life. Of course. If I went and looked at each mistake that I've made, would I, would I, if I had the magic wand to undo it, I, I would on one condition. That I wouldn't lose the lesson and, and what I learned about it in the process. Because sometimes our mistakes lead to hurt, pain, suffering of your own or other people's, which is worse, right? Because if you, you scuttle a business and people lose their jobs or you made a mistake as a leader and then you have to, you know, let go of a bunch, you know, you can't make payroll. I mean, the realities of business, and I'm not talking about a small business either, that happens all the time. But you know, we're talking about big, you know, publicly traded multi billion dollar companies that, higher up during one market phase. And then they, then they just, you know, they, they go through a whole different cycle, you know, when, when that market changes, which often involves the, you know, the pain of people losing jobs or, or you know, a whole bunch of other transitions, etc. So you know, there are consequences to these kinds of things. But I would never give up the experience of having been through that pain and that suffering because I know that to do that would mean that I wouldn't know now what I, I know now. And what I know now would never lead me down that same, that same path again. We'll make new mistakes, but the goal, as you said, it's an evolutionary process and things that don't evolve, they devolve. So anything that stagnates becomes at some point toxic and ultimately leads to death. It leads to disintegration. So even a company like Lehman Brothers, I mean, that's a great failure for you. They were the most highly regarded investment banking firm of their day and had been so for up like 100 years. And no, no one would have bet at the beginning of, you know, 2007 that, that, that that organization would implode. Nobody in a million years. You could, you know, whatever the odds in Las Vegas were, they were, they were, you know, a billion to one. And yet that happened. So organizations must continue to evolve. And, and to me there's a, there's a number of things that, that factors into that. I use the word resilience to describe this concept of, of sustainable persistence plus adaptability, you know, to use again the term that's really important in your book and, and, and the Sustainable is really key because you have to persist. People have heard that before. Persist, persist, persist, blind, per. But it can't be the kind of persistence or perseverance that leads to depletion, burnout, because if that happens, then the capacity to adapt, the capacity to, to as you say, take, take your, your licks, you know, have your humble pie and then move forward.

Right.

You know, they don't have the energy to do it. You know, that's why people just kind of quit because at some point you just, they've run out of steam. Right. So I want to get your take on, on any of that, including, you know, how it is that you've built resilience into the organization that you, that you lead and, and, and your own self assessment of how, of how you're all doing in, in regard to that. Because you, you came through the pandemic and your, your organization was essential at the beginning of the pandemic when people didn't know how they were going to get their business online.

Yes.

And work and work in a strictly remote environment. And you, J. Mark, stepped in and met that challenge head on while people, you know, while everything was literally in shutdown, lockdown. Right. So maybe, maybe that's a good starting point, I suppose.

Well, yeah, I mean we, we saw a massive shift obviously, as we all did through the pandemic. And at the beginning of the pandemic we, I mean it was literally overnight and here's kind of the, the ironic set of circumstances. We were in a building that, that we had had been in for quite some time. We love the building, but we had outgrown it. We were trying to find a new place and hadn't found one yet. The landlord wanted to retire, he wanted to sell that building, but he needed a long term lease. And I said I can't sign one because we've outgrown the building. He leased it out from under us. And right before the pandemic we had to go because we didn't have a home. We had to go to a full remote workforce. So we had just gone through this whole process of exiting a building and moving all of our team to work 100% from home temporarily while we tried to find a new home. And it was about at that moment that the pandemic hit. And whether you call it divine intervention or other things, we, we didn't have to pivot because we had just gone through it. And we had all of those lessons to learn from in terms of the challenges the businesses were going to face. And so we, we were able to really lean into it and help to move, you know, 100 and some odd businesses to work from home within a matter of weeks. And I mean, we installed more laptops, we installed more servers, we installed more whatever we had to do in order to facilitate that. And our team was incredible. They stepped up and they met that challenge and navigated through what it means. But, you know, in terms of what I think we're still learning in resilience is how do you refuel the jet while it's in the air rather than having to come crashing down and refuel and pause for a while and then keep going? You know, what we've been trying to learn from you in our own world is we have to be sustainable, which means that we have to be able to, you know, recognize what the tolerances of our people at different phases of their life with different priorities and sometimes conflicting priorities as it relates to kids and health and other things that happen in family dynamics. And so I think the gift that we're gaining an appreciation for is building that resilient organization that recognizes where people are, what's going on with the business, what talents, what skills and capabilities we have to build in so that we can let people breathe for a moment, so that even in the middle of the day, so that they can continue to do it. And so whether it's taking a walk or whether it's forcing people to use their PTO or whatever the case may be, just to help them to be in the right mindset, to navigate through the challenges of technology, business, life, and all the things that are thrown at us. So I would say that we are and will always be a student when it comes to getting this right, but I think we're getting better all the time in, in terms of helping our team and coaching our team through what it means to, to run a business that respects the whole human and, and creates an environment where they can be successful.

And how does your organization handle change, would you say? And. And where has it been strong in that area? Where has it potentially, you know, been something other than that?

Yeah, you know, when it comes to adoption of technology, you know, that's something we have to deal with every single day, because that's what we do. And so we're, we're really good at that. But I think, I think where we, we have opportunities to continue to grow is, is just like on, on the, on the people side and keeping our policies up to date and in our, you know, like how we manage and how we lead and and how we, how we think about PTO and how we think about paternity leave and how we think about those kind of things, you know, because we're always dealing with the shiny thing of technology. It's like this other piece of people stuff sometimes doesn't get the same level of attention. And so we as an organization, we've implemented in the last couple of years a team inside of our company that's called the Culture Crew. And their whole job is to surface these issues from the front line. It's a volunteer team and their whole job is to make sure that we're staying on top of these areas of business. Business. And like, hey, this thing is kind of stressing people out or this is something that I, I hear about that's worrying this group of people or this is going awesome, let's do more of this. And, and that team brings those things to the table and, and it helps us to lean into it. And instead of waiting for somebody to quit or have a blow up before we hear the story of how we, we let somebody down.

AI, I think came up, you and I just, when we were just getting ready to hit the record button on, on our conversation today. How has AI been adopted or is being embraced? Or is it, you know, what, what's your take on where it is inside a jmarc? And, and then because you are touching so many other businesses because you're their technology solution really. And yeah, and I'd love to get your sense of, you know, just, we're in the first inning here. The AI revolution. Yeah, the AI transformation. I would love to get your own assessment both internally and externally around that.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a big topic. So first I would say we are leaning into it and embracing it as an organization, but we're doing it with a lot of caution because there's a lot of unknowns around security as it relates to how that's implemented. So our current policy is that we don't put any customer names, we don't put our own name. Like if you're working on something on chat GPT, you have to anonymize all of the data before you work on it because there's still things untested and unproven as a relates to that. Now there are enterprise agreements that you can put in place with these organizations which, which give you more security, more, more control over that. But because it's, generally speaking it's undefined. We're, we're treading very carefully as it relates to sensitive data the, the other thing that I'll say is that most people don't yet have an appreciation for. There's kind of a public side of it, the OpenAI ChatGPT Bard, some of those kind of things. And then there's private AI. And both of these have been going on for years in terms of their development in the last couple of years, the last 18 months that there's been. The revolution that you're talking about is where we've gone from an environment where you had to be a developer in order to ask a computer to do something, or you had to be trained on how to interface with it. Now you can use plain language and it understands generally what you're trying to do with it. And the, the public environment, the chat GPT you can use for a thousand things, whether it's a blog post or whether it's, you know, job description, simplifying contracts, summarizing contracts, you know, finding new language to solve problems, you know, graphic design, there's massive amounts of accelerations. All those things kind of live in that public domain. But there's also an incredible capability technology that's available now that's more private, but it involves your own data. And so it's working with the Microsoft's, the Googles, the IBM's and those organizations. And you can actually take your groomed data and put it into some of these AI models to get the truth out of our customer sentiment. Or you know, in the banking environment, you can take as an example, you can take a three years of a trial balance for a business, throw it in there and then you can say, okay, now show me what would happen to this business if they had a 10% growth in revenue and a 5% reduction in COGS. Okay, well what would happen if they had inflation of 7% and in a decrease in cash flow by 5%? So you can run these models in plain language against the trial balance to test the risk tolerance of a particular business. Instead of an analysis having to spend hours and maybe days running these models, you can do it in a matter of seconds. So we're going to see incredible changes in advancements as it relates to financial management, when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to health management and troubleshooting, anything to include the human body.

Right. The lawyer in me, or the former lawyer in me, I should say still wear that hat frequently. I get it that we've got pretty good guardrails or at least companies are trying to build guardrails for this thing. And in the overall, on an organic level I'd say we don't have enough guardrails. I think there's a lot of people who don't believe that to be the case as well. But just, do you think people are ready to embrace this kind of disruption? Just this. A personal question, I guess.

Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag. I think that there are some companies that are going to really embrace it and they're going to do incredible things with it. And we're going to see, you know, they're forecasting that it's going to have a 13 trillion dollar impact on the, the world economy in a positive way and that is going to shift jobs. And so when you have the Kodaks of the world who hoard instead of innovate and lean into it, you're going to see some real disruption in those environments. And so I think we, we want to encourage people to get out of the fear mode and just start testing, start playing with ChatGPT, you know, go to PI AI and start having a conversation. I mean it's literally written to be an AI conversation bot and it's incredible. So start, start getting comfortable with it. I would, I would challenge people to think and to consider that if you had to run your business today without a calculator and without Microsoft Excel, you, you would find it troubling and a little more challenging to run your business. Five years from now, that's going to be AI. And so while, while we see some people like running for it, we see others that are like, I'm going to wait and see what happens in my industry. I'm not going to do anything. And I think that that's a very risky position because it's moving faster than the adoption of the Internet back in the day. And so when you think back to 2000, what was it, 97, 2003, 2004, when the Internet really kind of went boom in that period of time. And, and we're going to outpace it by probably 10 times in this environment. And, and so while some are shying away, I think, I think it's, it actually creates more risk to not embrace the technology than leaning into it and doing some initial testing and getting comfortable.

Yeah, I, I agree. I think it's, again, it comes down to mindset. You know, we, we spend a fair bit moment today talking about that and, and how it is that, that people are, are either sort of programmed to see threat, to see the, the, you know, what are, what are the. Yeah, threat is the, you know, I think it's a Good word. In the, in, in the space of, of security.

Yeah.

You know, tech, et cetera. But, but it's interesting because there has to be this harmony between both recognizing what, what are legitimate threats as well as at the same time having this openness to change. And without that openness to change, innovation just bottlenecks and at some point it gets choked off. And then as we said that just slowly or, you know, now or later, it leads, it leads to this, you know, sort of disintegration of a system. And so I appreciate what you said there. It's kind of a different topic. But I'm just curious, you know, you've grown the company and the company is doing well. J. Mark, that is, and you are, you are a young man, so I don't know that you are thinking about succession yet, but I'm sure there are people that are in there in the span of space of their careers where, where they either are not yet thinking about it, but will or they are already. I'm curious, just from a leadership succession standpoint, you know, what, what is your philosophy about that? And, and are you, or have you started to think about how it is that you train the, the next level of leaders that would, that would either bring jmarc to that next level, you know, when, when, when you might not want to be, you know, as day to day in the operations or, or even, you know, if you were to, you know, to, to have a transition yourself and see the company, you know, sold.

Yeah, I, I think it's an incredibly important question and, and one that I do spend a reasonable amount of time thinking about. I think, I think it starts with, with developing a value creation strategy for the business. So what do you, what do you want the business to be worth at the time that you do exit, whenever that may be. And, and I think I would encourage most entrepreneurs and, and you know, whether you're young, been in the game for a while to, to be thinking about your value creation strategy. Because if, if you know, the, the bad things happen, the, you know, you get hit by a bus, the, the major health event, whatever it may be, and your business isn't worth what it needs to be worth for you to be, for your family to be able to be in a place to continue the lifestyle, to make the decisions that you want them to be able to make in the future, then, then you've kind of let them down. And then, so I think it's a, it's an inherent responsibility of an owner of a business, an entrepreneur or someone who's responsible to those stakeholders to be thinking about what they want the business to be worth in what period of time. And it's that value creation strategy and that thought process that leads to understanding the need for growth, margin management, financial oversight, and ultimately the roles that you want to have in the business in order to make sure that those things are happening in a healthy way. Excuse me. I think I. So many business owners, and I've heard this story so many times, it makes me cry a little bit inside each time that people are like, okay, I want to retire. I've got this awesome business. It's got, you know, it does $5 million worth of business and, but it's been run like a lifestyle business and it's not worth anything on paper. They have nothing to sell. They have no secession planning. They have nothing going on in that arena. I think it's a major risk to the business. And, and they go to a business broker and the business brokers like, like, sorry, we can probably get a couple hundred thousand dollars for this business, but that's it. Because you don't have strong enough cash flow. You have, you know, you've not built a machine that churns cash to pay back debt services. So, you know, you're, you have to find somebody else who wants to buy a lifestyle business and you're not going to get much for that. Or you can spend the next three years, four years, five years of your life staying in the business when you thought you could leave when you're more tired and you don't have the energy to put it back on the rails or on the rails in the first place, so that it does create the cash to support debt services and creates an exit strategy so the business is, is worth something. This, this is an area that I, I knew nothing about many years ago and I had, I had the great fortune to work with some incredible coaches who were like, Tom, you got to start thinking about this now. I got to start thinking, you know, I'm, I'm 30 years away from retirement and they're like, nope, think about it today because you, you owe it to your family to put the company in a position where something happens to you that they can sell the business or that the business can continue to support them, whichever the preference is, and it'd be okay. And you know, the way my dad advised me, he said, you, you have to have enough cash, life insurance and future proofing built into the business for, for the company to go out and buy another CEO because you're not going to find somebod, you're going to have to go buy them, you're going to have to pay them top dollar, you're going to have to give them equity inside the business to bring them in. If your company is not set up for health and that's, that's not what you want. And so we constantly train our entire team about what does it mean to create a healthy business and create safety in the business so that we can make intentional decisions rather than having to make reactionary emergency decisions. And we proved that during the pandemic when we had the cash to navigate through because we had a lot of people that couldn't pay us for all that work that we did. And you know, our revenue dropped by massive amounts and our workloads increased. But we knew it was a period of time and we had to be resilient, we had to be able to persevere, but we had to have the cash in the bank to navigate through that. And I was able to stand in front of the whole company and say, hey, first, nobody's going to lose their jobs. We're good. We've been planning for this for years because I had been talking about safety in the business with the company for years. This is what we were preparing for. We knew winter was coming, it's here, we've got our coat on, we're good to go.

I mean, I can all. I'm just picturing what it felt like in that room. And I know you have some companies that are not under one roof, but the bulk of your people are in that one location that I was fortunate to come and visit. And I'm just putting myself in that room to hear, to hear those words and what it must have meant for people, playing every scenario in their head imaginable. Like, is this the moment when, you know, two thirds of us are being given, given our notice or whatever? It might. So, so yeah. Wow. And, and I, I also just want to, you know, I want to go back and, and, and say that in my, in my work, both now in, in the, in the consulting end of our business, and even when I was a lawyer for a couple of dozen years, it is often the case that, that people that are the founders of businesses have not really thought through their succession planning well enough. And I mean, some big companies, I'm not talking about mom and pop stuff either. And, and because of that, as you said, any number of things can happen, but, but often what happens is that that person, it's just got to have, you know, they they want to maintain control and they want to maintain control forever. It's so much baked into their identity and a whole bunch of other psychological stuff, right. And they just long until their energy and their ability to see or being, you know, see the field but also be open is, is altered in a way that doesn't, isn't accretive, isn't positive for the business. And then ultimately the business that they're forced to sell at some point, is it worth what it was worth even before as one, you know, one fact. But, but the other thing I wanted to ask you about was the, the way that you might in fact even be be training that, those, those people inside. Because if you're not going to go out and like you say, your dad said, you know, buy a CEO, which is expensive to buy a good one, and sometimes you could buy a bad one. It costs just as much to buy a bad one as it does a good one. But if you're going to train that success, you know, for that succession plan to be effectuated, you know, what does that look like internally? I mean, and, and say as much as you're comfortable saying. I just really curious, I imagine, you know, folks are listening to this going, yeah, that, tell me, yeah, well, how do we do that?

Well, I don't know that I got all the answers, but, but I'm happy to share at least the mindset of the, the process that we've gone through. And I think it starts by having a conversation with your leadership team to say, well, I may be at the helm today that the future of this business has to, has to survive past me. And it's our responsibility to build a business that, that has the capability to outlive Tom in, in the, the true success metric of Tom isn't what happens.

You're not needed.

Yeah, it's, it's that I can put myself out of a job and I can make the business, you know, that is future proof and it can sustain beyond me so that a hundred years from now people can still look and say, JMARC is a great company, great culture, takes care of its people and takes care of its clients. And if we can be successful in achieving the 100 year vision of what that is, it's like, okay, then what are the building blocks that we need to have as an organization to make it that sustainable and to have, you know, have the perseverance built into the company? So I have, as we speak, actually we're going through this exercise. My executive leadership team is meeting with just them without me in the room. And the exercise that I've asked them to go through is to say, if Tom got hit by a bus today, what would we be missing? What are the skills, what are the capabilities, what are the passions, the leadership aspects that we don't have, have? And then how do we build that into the DNA of the organization so that, you know, five years from now, if that happens, hopefully I'm still around, but five years from now, if, if I need to exit for whatever reason, it's no big deal. Like we've built it into the DNA of the company. And so I think that there are certain roles, there's certain skills and functions that need to exist within a business. And if I have time, I can train the right people to do about anything. So what does that group of people look like? And then how do we need to budget, how do we need to plan for those, those roles so that it's not the Tom show, it's the JMARC show, as it should be.

Yeah, that's such a practical step and an exercise. I imagine that people right now, you know, pull the car over or stop, stop, stop treadmilling for a second. Although people, I mean, obviously, you know, multitasking with the phone is like a, you know, it's almost like we've grown a sixth finger on a hand or something like that. So. But people are taking notes, I'm sure on that one, that that's, that's really practical. I was thinking just as, as we're recording this, just, just in the last couple of days, Charles Munger. Charlie munger passed away 99 years old, a couple of months from his 100th birthday. And for those that don't know that name, Charles Munger, you, I think you ought to know him. But you know, this is, this is Warren Buffett's, you know, right hand man, his partner. And Warren, as we know, is still around. But let's just say Charlie's was massively important in the growth of Berkshire Hathaway and of his own. Right, A genius. He would not call himself a savant.

But a pretty, you know, because if you wait until it's too late to have the conversation, you're dealing with probably a messy outcome or a challenging outcome. And I think the same is true through, when you're talking to your team about pay, when you're talking about succession planning, when you're talking about sustainability within a business, if, if you wait until it's too late, it's a whole big messy thing to deal with. And it's really not so much fun. So. So if you lean into it and you have that uncomfortable conversation prior to needing to have it, then, then it makes the future a lot better. And I mean, so you think about an employee. Do you wait until they come in and say, hey, I got an offer for 25% more, or do you make it a normal conversation to talk about pay? So it's like, hey, before you go out and start hunting, have the courage to come and have a conversation with me and say, you know what? I'm at a point in my life where pay has become more important and I need to make some certain investments or prepare for college or, you know, this isn't. This trip is important to my wife. Like, be candid with me. I'll be candid with you. And if we can make it happen, let's figure out how to create the value so we can. So let's have all of these conversations before it becomes messy and something that we're having to deal with instead of getting to deal with.

Indeed. You know, and just at the risk of blowing, blowing more smoke at you, I'll just say that my, understand, my read of J. Mark is that the culture includes transparency. And so when you said what you said, hey, you know, if you come into the office, you tell me I'm about to go into that college phase, I'm going to need to earn more. You know, that's a different conversation than somebody covertly looking for a job that pays more, and then they come to you and say, hey, hey, you know, sorry, boss, I, I found something that, that's going to meet my needs better. I, I think your culture, because it's, it includes transparency, creates transparency. It. It's like a thing that, that chicken and the egg kind of thing. But if it's not, you know, if it's, if it's not in the mixing bowl, it doesn't end up in the, in the cake. So my feeling is that because it's in the mixing bowl, transparency is part of the culture at jmarc. And you get people that will be transparent enough to say, hey, boss, this is an interesting time of life for me. It's a joy. You know, I'm gonna, you know, have my house back, but the kids are going to college, and it's 60k for a private school per year. That's my reality. Right, That's. But, but it starts with things like you've shared already today about how you're transparent with your teams, including about, you know, what, what the company might be like if you weren't around. Again, a lot of leaders keep those cards to their, to their vest. They, they just don't share them. They're not transparent. And in those organizations where there is that level of secrecy, which I think is more the norm than it is, frankly, anything other, you, you secrecy begets more secrecy. So, so kudos to you again, brother. When one person teaches two people learn. That's an old expression, but I just thought that's a good one, right? Because we're both learning. I have learned and I have enjoyed the conversation as always. Tom, thank you so much for being a guest today on our Change Proof podcast. And of course, there'll be show notes, full show notes, so that people can find out more about the work that you do in the world, the work that jmarc does. Your authorship and Adapt or Die is a wonderful book. I have that book. I've loved that book. So I'm going to recommend it to people as well. And, and, and of course you speak and, and are asked to, to do that on stages as well. So there's some great stuff there'll be in the show notes for our community. If you have a question, please feel free to go to AdamMarkel.com forward/podcast. Leave your question or your comment there for Tom or myself. We will not have any AI. There will not be a chat bot to answer that question. It'll be us. Okay? Simple as that. And of course, course, we love when you rate the podcast. So if you wouldn't mind, on whatever platform it is that you consume, this show, if you give us a rating, five stars, is lovely. It helps the algorithm to get this, this content out in front of more people, but your rating is, is totally up to you and we just appreciate the feedback. So with that, Tom, thanks again for your time today. It's been a blast.

Hey, thank you so much. It's been a privilege. Enjoyed it.

Well, as promised, the conversation that we just had, Tom and I went into a variety of different really important areas. I, I just have so much respect for this gentleman, not just as a CEO and, and for his title and as having been an entrepreneur and, and, and all that, purchasing the company and seeing it go through some really tough times and then ultimately being able to make the kind of changes that allowed it to grow to its current position, which is as a leader in that space, employing so many people and, and all that. But, but aside from all those things, Tom is just a, he's a true teacher. He's a teacher Leader. One of the things that came up in our conversation the other day is that when, when we teach, when any of us teach, there are two people that learn. And I think that's just so indicative of who he is as a leader, the kind of humility that he has. So he's always on the, on the path of learning at the same time that he's helping other people to learn through, through what he's learned, his own experience and his example. So I, I love talking to Tom about what it means to operate a business and, and all the, the pushes and pulls there. It, it is a very up and down road in a lot of ways. You really have to be truly resilient in, in so many respects, operating either a company of your own, a private company, or being involved, of course, at a public company level or in many other spaces, it's truly not for the faint of heart. So we talked today about value creation and creating, looking at the value creation strategy for those who operate businesses that want to think about succession, whether it's preparation of those that will succeed you, meaning those groups of leaders that will take your place, that will sit in your seat and be able to move the organization, move the team to the, to even higher and higher levels, as well as those that wish to at some point exit their businesses and maybe be able to, to, you know, create a financial event, a liquidation event, a liquidity event, I should say that is meaningful and maybe even generationally speaking. And, and I know a lot of us work in business because we are thinking about our families and we are thinking about the legacy that we leave for them, financially and otherwise. We talked about AI we talked about the role of resiliency and how it is that that resiliency is created. We talked about Tom's journey and his specific brand of leadership and the kind of culture that he has worked to cultivate and curate at jaymarc and what members of the team and how those members of the team have all collaborated in that one effort, effort getting everybody's oars in the water in synchronicity and, and rowing together to create this greater overall result that benefits more people internally and externally. So I just, I really just enjoyed quality, the depth, the conversation and the breadth of it as well. You know, we, we covered a lot of things. So if this is an episode that you, you learned something from, from, I would say in that light of when one learns, you know, when, when you teach something or share something, often two people are learning at the same time. My request is that you Share this episode with somebody, a friend, a colleague, co worker, family member, etc, somebody that might just benefit from some of the things that you heard today. We'd love to get your comments as always. You can go to AdamMarkel.com forward/podcast and leave a comment or a question there for, for myself or for Thomas and, and of course if you can rate the podcast, it's very helpful in terms of the algorithm that people take that moment to just, you know, give us a rating. You know, I love a five star. We'd always, our, our team would love that. We, we are empowered by that. But whatever the rating is that, that you feel is appropriate, we just appreciate you taking the time to give us that feedback. And it, and it is a collaborative effort. It's a community, big community now. We love that and it grows by people that care enough to take that moment sometimes just to leave their feedback. So we appreciate it and as a give back too, we'd love to give you something of value and that is to determine how resilient you are in those four specific zones of resilience in this moment. It's something that we offer without charge. It is a really wonderful three minute long assessment, but provides really deep insights into your resiliency in the moment. It's a snapshot in time and the resources that you gain access to as well are entirely complimentary things that you can just do immediately to start to increase your mental resilience, your emotional resilience, your physical resilience and even, even your spiritual resilience. Imagine that. So all you need to do is go to rankmyresilience.com rankmyresilience.com and three minutes later you've got yourself some, some new insights perhaps, maybe some answers even we don't know. But what we can tell you is that it, it never hurts. It never hurts. And it's only three minutes. So, so feel free to access that, take advantage of that as well. And once again just want to say thank you wherever you are in this moment. We appreciate you. Have a blessed and a beautiful rest of your day.

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