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Eric Siu hired multiple CEOs and GMs after acquiring companies in 2021, and most failed. One poached a $2M client and staff. His lesson: stay involved as chairman or CEO, verify everything, and don't hand off the business to someone else.
Eric Siu hired multiple CEOs and GMs after acquiring companies in 2021, and most failed. One poached a $2M client and staff. His lesson: stay involved as chairman or CEO, verify everything, and don't hand off the business to someone else.
You hear all the sexiness about going out there and hiring a CEO and hiring a GM to replace you, but thinking that you can outsource your thinking to someone else is naive. And I learned that the hard way. And so, you know, we did these 2 acquisitions in 2021. I had already hired like 3 GMs/CEOs that didn't work out, and this was the 4th one, right? What ended up happening was they poached a client of ours that was paying us maybe $2 million a year. This individual moved on to another agency, While they're still employed by us. This person went to another agency, brought a couple of Single Grain employees with them, and then tried to do the same exact thing to the other agency. And so all this to say is that I trusted, but I didn't verify. Always hire amazing people, but what you can't abdicate is your responsibility to stay involved and grow the thing. Whether you're a chairman or you're a CEO, you should stay involved, and that's how you're going to grow the thing.
