When A Clients Dreams Happen

So, yes, if you know me, if you know me well, you've probably seen me get choked up over the years, and I get emotional when I hear just really good News. And so 2014, I started coaching a company. And I remember standing in Vancouver, pacing on the sidewalk. It was freezing cold. And I had the CEO of this company trying to convince me to coach them. And I wasn't quite sure. And they only had about 30 or 40 employees at the time, and they were a smaller business, but they were in a digital marketing space. And he convinced me to coach them. So I said yes. And it was Ben Kirschner from Elite SEM, and they're now called Tinuity. But over the next four years, I coached Ben, the CEO, and I coached Zach Morrison, his coo. And then I coached four other team. Chris, Chang and Jesse and Patrick and Abby coached a couple of other members as well, on and off, but really coached those four in depth. I also led four of their strategic planning meetings for them over the years, to the point that they called me Uncle Cameron and we laughed a lot. They had all come to my home in Arizona once for a dinner. Just got really, really deep with the company. You know, I would travel to other cities to work with them. Zach was the founding member of the COO alliance. And even just to kind of tease him, I gave him member number three because just to bug him. But even though he was the guy who told me to start it. And my core purpose has always been to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. And at our first strategic planning meeting, their North Star was really about helping their employees make dreams happen and really caring about their employees. And they really obsessed about it. And we worked hard at it. And at one point, they ranked as the number 2 or number 12 company to work for in the United States. On Glassdoor, they won year after year being ranked as the best company to work for. And they obsessed about their employee engagement, obsessed about customer engagement. And about two years in, Ben told me he wanted to position the company to sell. And I remember having number of calls with Ben pacing around my yard, pacing around my yard, telling him that I thought they could sell for more than he thought and kind of convinced him to push for it. And they did. And they did sell the company and became a company called Tinuity. And. And they all left some money in, and they left some significant money and went for a second growth phase. And they got the company up to about 800 employees. And Ben has recently. And Zach, they've sold the company a second time. Zach is now staying on as CEO. Chris is still there and Jesse is still there and Patrick is still there and Abby was there until last year. And Ben has been able to walk away and not have to stay with the company. But the good news that I just heard was 25 of their employees became millionaires because of the exit. And I'm just, I'm tap dancing. I was talking to Zach or to Ben this morning over Zoom and I got choked up and got tears in my eyes. My hand was shaking. And yeah, I'm just pretty happy because not only for Ben, because he's built this company for 16 years, and for Zach, who's been with him for probably 14 of those years and, but also, and not even for the four key employees that I got to know and work with, but that so many people ended up doing financially really well with this transaction and that they care about their customers and care about their employees. I had sent so many companies to them over the years for digital marketing and I'm going to still be able to refer to them because they've still got the great team. But it was just super awesome news. I don't even know why I'm sharing it publicly. It's just that I'm vibrating and I needed to share it with somebody because my kids are still asleep and my girlfriend's down in Arizona. I'm up in, in Vancouver right now. This is the view, by the way, in Vancouver. I don't know if you can, if you can see that, but this is where I work from. So, yeah, my, my whole thing has always been that if you obsess about employee engagement first, and build a company where your employees are really, really happy, and then you obsess about customer satisfaction second, that the profits and revenue come from that. And these guys are. Case in point. The profits came, the company has grown, their employees are still there. I even remember one of the things that at one point when I was coaching them, Ben had told me that no one had ever quit working for the company over a nine year period to leave and go work for a competitor. And, and they had a huge wine rack in their office and if anyone ever quit or got a job from a recruiter, got a call from a recruiter and they turned it down, they would get a free bottle of wine and they kept turning jobs down because they would never leave. So anyway, congrats to Ben and Zach and Abby and Chris and Jesse and Patrick and even Matt, one of their coaches who came on to coach them after I left about three years ago. Just super, super happy for you guys. Super proud of you, Zach. Thanks for helping me start the co alliance. And Uncle Cameron, man, proud of you guys. Take care, everybody.