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 Markel 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 Markel, and welcome back Welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof Podcast. Today I have an amazing guest. His name is Tom Douglas, and I respect this gentleman quite a bit. I know you're gonna enjoy this conversation, but before we get there, let me share a little bit more about him. Tom joined JMark in 1997 after serving in the Navy, where he was recognized multiple awards as a level 1 engineer at JMark. 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 6 people. But today, with over 120 employees, JMark is a leader in its space, having hit Inc. Magazine's list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing private companies 9 consecutive times, and has also been awarded the number 1 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. cybersecurity. I know you're gonna love this conversation. So sit back and enjoy my discussion with Tom Douglas. Okay, Tom. So reading somebody's bio is always fun for me. I love it in, in a variety of ways, mostly because I'm thinking as, as I am reading it, how it was put together and what was purposely put in and maybe what was left out and all that kinda 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 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. I remind young entrepreneurs and I remind young people that we're coaching that nobody at JMark anyway gets fired for making a mistake. It's not learning from the mistakes that lead to an exit. And so we want to encourage people to lean into that, make mistakes, screw up, and then be better as a result.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits That will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. I wanna talk about failure for a little bit today. Before we do that, I wanna just get the origin story set up for people so they understand, you know, who J Mark really is and how you came to be. So if you give us a little of that context, and then we're gonna dive into the what is that That F word that people do not dig.

Well, it's a fun but challenging story. I think like so many small businesses. So 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 just didn't find my why, didn't find my what, 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 4 years. And I had my Navy chief at the time who came to me and said, 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 I followed his advice. I got out and I joined Jmark as a level 1 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 and a bag of chips. And figured out I was a chip. That wasn't all that.

Not the whole bag.

Not the whole bag. 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, I was able to put some processes in place and some repeatable experiences 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 was at a place in his life where he needed to leave the business, and it was a a little bit struggling. And so he said, do 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 6 people in the company and then have rebuilt it from there, rebuilt the business model. And now we have 125 people in the company and going strong. So it's been quite the journey, but 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 wanna go back to that for a second. I'm not suggesting, I mean, you, 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, 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, it's, 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, 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 those experiences to then carry it forward and to make better choices, to avoid, you know, making the same mistake multiple times, I think it leads to an organization and a leadership style that focuses on kind of the gathering of wisdom, if you will, rather than just focusing on process and just focusing on do what I say and all those kind of things. But when there's wisdom behind what you do as an organization through that experiential learning, 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. That method of helping people navigate through situations is incredibly meaningful and powerful for them.

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

Yeah, 100%. 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 watching other companies and other leaders in terms of what they're doing. But also because we had had 25 years worth of, of incredible wisdom building or experiences, some not so good. 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 we can help to accelerate their success. And I'm a big believer in rising tides lifts all boats. And so 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 is. I mean, it, it's never a month goes by, I could say this truthfully, that we don't hear from somebody somewhere around the world that says this, that your book, book I've written or collaborated on has had an influence that made a difference, that helped create that ripple effect, as you said. And yet there's still this part of it that I'm, I just wanna dig into still a little bit more. Yeah. Because Again, at the idea level, I think everybody gets this, right? The importance of making mistakes,

for

example. And yet, at a visceral level, a level of programming, we learn from the time that we're really young that mistakes have consequences, that mistakes often cause pain.

Mhmm.

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 counterintuitive because let's call it for what it is. You know, from a financial standpoint, the majority of the world is not, are, are not living financially successful or in a successful, 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, the wisdom 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 op— you know, a business for themselves, an entrepreneur, or even people in mid-level or senior-level leadership roles within an organization. Like, organizations either adapt Adapt or die, to use your words, or I might say pivot or perish.

Yeah.

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

That's correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, please pass the baton.

Well, I think when we go back to, you know, I'm a big believer that whether it's, it's God, whether it's the universe, whether it's whatever is in your belief system, that 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 while we may fail today, while we may have challenges, and we 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 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 don't get in shape, you don't do anything positive with your life without sweating a little bit. And I think that 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 get something we want. The kids that go through and they get the participation trophies, whether you blame it on that or whether you just blame it on a parent who doesn't let someone fail because they don't want to see their kids suffer a little bit, all of those things I think are challenges. is 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 the technology 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 it was literally on the same day these 2 things were coalescing. So, so I'm gonna let this go in a second here, but I am a little like a dog with a bone sometimes. And so for me, I'll just say that if I look back my life, of course, if I went and looked at each mistake that I've made, if I had the magic wand to undo it, I would on one condition that I wouldn't lose the lesson and, and what I learned about it in the process. Right. Because sometimes our mistakes lead to hurt, pain, suffering of your own or other people's, which is worse. Right? Because if 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 of people because 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 publicly traded multi-billion dollar companies that hire up during one market phase. Then they just go through a whole different cycle when that market changes, which often involves the, you know, the pain of people losing jobs or a whole bunch of other transitions, et cetera. So, So 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. Right. And what I know now would never lead me down that same path again. You know, we'll make new mistakes. Yeah. 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, there's a great failure for you. They were the most highly regarded investment banking firm of their day and had been so for like 100 years. And no one would've bet at the beginning of 2007 that that organization would implode. Nobody in a million years. You could, you know, whatever the odds in Las Vegas were, they billion to one, and yet that happened. So organizations must continue to evolve. And to me, there's a number of things that factors into that. I use the word resilience to describe this concept of sustainable persistence plus adaptability, you know, to use again the term that's really important in your book. And the sustainable is really key because you have to persist. People have heard that before. Persist, 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, as you say, take your licks, have your humble pie, and then move forward, you know, they don't have the energy to do it. 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 any of that, including how it is that you've built resilience into the organization that you lead and your own self-assessment of how, of how you're all doing in regard to that. Because you, you came through the pandemic and your organization was essential. Yeah. At the beginning of the pandemic when people didn't know how they were gonna get their business online.

Yes.

And work in a, a strictly remote environment. And you, J Mark, stepped in and met that challenge head on while people, while everything was literally in shutdown lockdown, right? So 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 he, here's kind of the, The ironic set of circumstances. We were in a building that we had been in for quite some time. We loved 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 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 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 were able to really lean into it and help to move 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 in terms of what I think we're still learning in resilience is, 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 and 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, 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 terms of helping our team and coaching our team through what it means to run a business that respects the whole human and creates an environment where they can be successful.

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

Yeah, when it comes to adoption of technology, that's something we have to deal with every single day because that's what we do. And so we're really good at that. But I think where we, we have opportunities to continue to grow is just like on the people side and keeping our policies up to date and our, like, how we manage and how we lead and how we think about PTO and how we think about paternity 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've, 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 frontline. It's a volunteer team and their whole job is to make sure that we're staying on top of these areas of business and like, hey, this thing is kind of stressing people out, or this is something that I hear about that's worrying this group of people. Or this is going awesome. Let's do more of this. And that team brings those things to the table and it helps us to lean into it. And instead of waiting for somebody to quit or have a blowup before we hear the story of how we let somebody down.

Yeah. 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 being embraced, or is it, what's your take on where it is inside of JMark? And then because You are touching so many other businesses because you're their technology solution, really. 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, 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, if you're working on something on ChatGPT, you have to anonymize all of the data before you work on it because there's still things untested and unproven as it relates to that. Now there are enterprise agreements that you can put in place with these organizations which, which give more security, more, more control over that. But because it's, generally speaking, it's undefined, we're treading very carefully as it relates to sensitive data. 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, and 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. And in the last couple of years, the last 18 months, that there's been this revolution that you're talking about. Is 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 public environment, the ChatGPT, you can use for 1,000 things, whether it's a blog post or whether it's, you know, job descriptions, simplifying contracts, summarizing contracts, you know, finding new language to solve problems, graphic design. There's massive amounts of accelerations. All those things kind of live in that public domain. But there's Also incredible capability technology that's that's available now that's more private, but it involves your own data. And so it's working with the the Microsofts, the Googles, the IBMs, 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 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 ten percent growth. in revenue and a 5% reduction in COGS? Okay, well, what would happen if they had inflation of 7% and 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 analyst 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 and 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.

Yeah.

I get it that we've got pretty good guardrails, or at least companies are trying to build guardrails for this thing. And on, in the overall, in the, 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, you know, 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 impact on 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, you're going to see some real disruption in those environments. And so I think 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, it's literally written to be an AI conversation bot and it's incredible. So start getting comfortable with it. 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, Well, you would find it troubling and a little more challenging to run your business. 5 years from now, that's going to be AI. And so while we see some people 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 1997, 2003, 2004, when the internet really kind of went boom in that period of time, and we're going to outpace it by probably 10 times in And so while some are shying away, 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 agree. I think it's, again, it comes down to mindset. You know, we, we spent a fair moment today talking about that and how it is that people are either sort of programmed to see threat, to see the What are the— yeah, threat is the, you know, I think it's a good word in the, in the space of security.

Yeah.

You know, tech, et cetera. But it's interesting because there has to be this harmony between both recognizing what are legitimate threats as well as at the same time having this openness to change.

Yeah.

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 now or later, it leads to this, you know, sort of disintegration of a system. So I appreciate what you said there. It's kind of a different topic, but I'm, 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 were thinking about succession yet, but I'm sure there are people that are in their, in a span of space of their careers where they either are not yet thinking about it, but will, or they are already. I'm curious just from a leadership succession standpoint, what is your philosophy about that? And, and are you, or have you started to think about how it is that you train the next level of leaders that would either bring JMark to that next level when you might not want to be as day-to-day in the operations, or even, you know, if you were to have a transition yourself and see the company, you know, sold?

Yeah, I think it's an incredibly important question and one that I do spend a reasonable amount of time thinking about. I think it starts with developing a value creation strategy for the business. What do you want the business to be worth at the time that you do exit? it whenever that may be. And I think I would encourage most entrepreneurs and, you know, whether you're young, middle, or have been in the game for a while to be thinking about your value creation strategy. Because if the bad things happen, get hit by a bus, 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 you've kind of let them down. And so I think it's an inherent responsibility of 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 is 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. I think 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, 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 succession planning. They have nothing going on in that arena. I think it's a major risk to the business. And they go to a business broker and the business broker's 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 You've not built a machine that churns cash to pay back debt services. So 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 3 years, 4 years, 5 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 that the business is worth something. This is an area that I knew nothing about many years ago, and I had the great fortune to work with some incredible coaches who were like, Tom, you got to start thinking about this now. You got to start thinking. I'm 30 years away from retirement. And they're like, nope, think about it today because 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 have to have enough cash, life insurance, and future-proofing built into the business for the company to go out and buy another CEO because you're not going to find somebody like you. 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. 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 our, 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 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 in and visit. I'm just putting myself in that room 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 2/3 of us are being given our notice or whatever it might be? So yeah. I also just want to go back and say that in my work, both now 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 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 because of that, as you said, any number of things can happen. But, but often what happens is that person that's just gotta have, they wanna maintain control and they wanna maintain control forever. It's so much baked into their identity and a whole bunch of other psychological stuff. Right? And they just hang on so long until their energy and their ability to see or being, see the field, but also be open is all 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? Is one fact. But the other thing I wanted to ask you about was the way that you might in fact even be training that those people inside, because if you're not going to go out and like you say, as your dad said, buy a CEO, which is expensive to buy one. To buy a good one. 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 gonna train that success, you know, for that succession plan to be effectuated, what does that look like internally? I mean, say as much as you're comfortable saying. I just really curious. I imagine, you know, folks are listening to this going, yeah, tell me.

Yeah.

Well, how do we do that?

Well, I, I don't know that I got all the answers, but, but I'm happy to share at least the mindset of 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, the future of this business has to survive past me. And it's our responsibility to build a business that has the capability to outlive Tom. And the true success metric of Tom isn't what happens.

You're not needed. Yeah.

It's that I can put myself out of a job and I can make the business, you know, that is future-proof and that can sustain beyond me so that 100 years from now, people can still look and say, J Mark is a great company, great 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 it, 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? And then how do we build that into the DNA of the organization so that 5 years from now, if that happens, hopefully I'm still around. But 5 years from now, 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 any 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 roles so that this, it's not the Tom Show, it's the J Mark Show as it should be?

Yeah. That's such a practical step and an exercise. I, I mean, imagine that, that people right now, you know, pull the car over, stop treadmilling for a second. Although people, I mean, obviously multitasking with the phone is like, it's almost like we've grown a, a 6th finger on a hand or something like that. So, but people are taking notes, I'm sure, on that one. That, that's really practical. I was thinking just as we're recording this, just in the last couple of days, Charles Munger, Charlie Munger passed away, 99 years old, couple of months from his 100th birthday. And for those that don't know that name, Charles Munger, I think you ought to know him. But you know, this is Warren Buffett's right-hand man, his partner. And Warren, as we know, is still around. But let's just say, you know, Charlie 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—

yeah, pretty close.

Pretty, pretty, yeah, exactly. Smarter than the average bear, maybe for sure. And so in any event, he was talking about succession. His last interview, which was 2 weeks before his death, he was asked about succession planning as well. And so I'm glad you answered that question. You know, even a company that's worth, I don't know, half a trillion dollars or whatever Berkshire Hathaway is worth these days, succession planning is not an easy thing. And thinking about the qualities of the person or persons that will lead an organization beyond its founder or beyond its visionary, in your case, is Really big deal. When I was a lawyer, I wasn't an estate attorney, but I could tell you one thing. Most lawyers didn't have wills. I would say to— I would make the statement that most lawyers do not have wills to this day. Most, not whatever most looks like. Yep. And most clients that you talk to, if you ever said, hey, by the way, do you have your estate plan worked out? You have your will and all that good stuff together? And they're like, no. And it's like, well, you should talk to my partner, or you should talk to somebody else, right? Because it's not a topic that people really, they want to wake up in the morning and go, hey, I want to think about my death today.

Yeah.

Or my retirement even. So, I'm glad that this came up for those that needed this, maybe this little goosing, you know, to say, hey, start thinking about these things. Your exercise, I think, is brilliant, Tom. You are a teacher. I've said this to you privately. I think your heart, as if I, I was describing you as a leader and I was in that room with your executive team and saying, you know, if Tom was gone tomorrow, what would we need to replace To me, you need to have a heart of a teacher. You know, somebody that, that really cares enough to get into the weeds about how you teach, how people learn, how you create an organization that educates, because that's a part of what is required for growth. And if people aren't growing, then the organization isn't growing. Does that resonate with you?

Yeah, absolutely does. I, I appreciate you saying that. And I would say I'm as much of a student as I am a teacher. I think that I'm always learning and I love learning and, and our conversations have fed into that. And I know that many others do. You know, one of the things that you were saying there that made me think back, I like to use the analogy in family dynamics of when you have the conversation about sex with your kids, 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 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 you wait until it's too late, it's a whole big messy thing to deal with. Deal with and it's really not so much fun. So if you lean into it and you have that uncomfortable conversation prior to needing to have it, 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 important and I need to make some certain investments or prepare for college, or 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 more smoke at you, I'll just say that my read of J Mark is that the culture includes transparency. And so when you said what you said, hey, 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. That's a different conversation than somebody covertly looking for a job that pays more. And then they come to you and say, hey, you know, sorry boss, I found something that's going to meet my needs better. I think your culture, because it includes transparency, it creates transparency. It's like a thing that chicken and the egg kind kind of thing. If it's not in the mixing bowl, it doesn't end up in the cake. Right. So my feeling is that because it's in the mixing bowl, transparency is part of the culture at JMark. 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 to 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? Right.

That's—

but it starts with things like you've shared already today about how you're transparent with your teams, including about 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 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— secrecy begets more secrecy. So kudos to you again, brother. When one person teaches, 2 people learn. That's an old expression, but it's 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 J Mark does. Your authorship and Adapt or Die is a wonderful book. I have that book. I've loved that book. So I'm gonna recommend it to people as well. And, of course, you speak and, and are asked to, to do that on stages as well. So there's some great stuff that It'll be in the show notes. For our community, if you have a question, please feel free to go to adamarkel.com/podcast. Leave your question or your comment there for Tom or myself. We will not have any AI. There will not be a chatbot to answer that question. It'll be us. Okay? Simple as that. And of 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 could give us a rating, 5 stars is lovely. It helps the algorithm to get this content out in front of people, but your rating 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 just have so much respect for this gentleman, not just as a CEO and for his title and his having been an entrepreneur and all all of 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 all of that. 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 we teach, when any of us teach, there are 2 people that learn. And I think that's just so indicative of who he is as leader, the kind of humility that he has. So he's always on the path of learning at the same time that he's helping other people to learn through what he's learned, his own experience and his example. So I love talking to Tom about what it means to operate a business and all the pushes and pulls there. It is a very up and down road in a lot of ways. You really have to be truly resilient 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 even higher and higher levels, as well as those that wish to at some point exit the their businesses and maybe be able to create a financial event, a liquidation event, a liquidity event, I should say, that is meaningful and maybe even generationally speaking. 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 J Mark and what members of the team and how those members of the team have all collaborated in that one effort, getting everybody's oars in the water in synchronicity and rowing together to create this greater overall result that benefits more people internally and externally. So I just really just enjoyed the quality, the depth of 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 learned something from, I would say in that light of when one learns, when you teach something or share something, often 2 people are learning at the same time. My request is that you share this episode with somebody, a friend, colleague, a coworker, family member, et cetera, 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/podcast and a comment or a question there for myself or for Thomas. 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 give us a rating. I'd love a 5-star. We'd always— our team would love that. We are empowered by that. But whatever the rating is that you feel is appropriate, we just appreciate you taking the time to give us that feedback. And it is a collaborative effort. It's a community, big community now, and we love that. It grows by people that care enough to take that moment sometimes just to, to leave their feedback. So we appreciate it. And as a giveback too, we'd love to give you something of value, and that is to determine how resilient you are in those 4 specific zones of resilience in this moment. It's something that we offer without charge. It is a really wonderful 3-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 your spiritual resilience. Imagine that. So all you need to do is go to rankmyresilience.com, rankmyresilience.com, and 3 minutes later, you've got yourself some new insights, perhaps maybe some answers even. We don't know. But what we can tell you is that it never hurts. It never hurts, and it's only 3 minutes. 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.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com. To get your own free resilience assessment, go to RankMyResilience.com. Thank you.