Writing Out Your Culture - Adi Klevit - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #45

This is Leadership in Action, and I'm Mark Stiles, your host. Join me as we delve deep into the passions, expertise, and experiences of Boston area innovators. Sponsored by the Boston chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization, this is Leadership in Action. Hey folks, welcome back to Leadership in Action. This is an EO Boston chapter podcast. Today, I'm pretty fired up. Someone I met at an EO event who is a prospective EO member, who now informed me he is an EO member. So we're welcoming to EO Boston, but he's also passionate about helping organizations improve their performance through the intelligent use of data. He's worked with Power BI since its launch and has a deep expertise providing management and strategy consulting to Fortune 500 organizations. Principal at Collective, please meet Ryan Sullivan. What's up, Ryan? Hello.

Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. Cool.

You ready for question number 1? Fire away.

Ready as I'll ever be.

What is a common misconception about leadership? Running a business and being an entrepreneur?

I think the biggest misconception that I have run up against is this idea that I have to have everything perfectly figured out and ready to go before I'm going to start, before I'm going to do anything. I've heard like a couple different versions of this kind of Oh, well, you know, I'm putting together a business plan, but I don't have like what my unique differentiator is. Or I have this really good idea, but I just want it to be great before I start. Hey, you know, like even if, you know, you get into my world with data and stuff like that and people are kind of like, oh, well, you know, we're really excited about having a data initiative, but we have to figure out what artificial intelligence means to us. And it's, I think this kind of like 10 miles down the road thinking means that I can't start walking right now. And my experience with anything entrepreneurial is that it starts with motivation to take one step. Like that's, I think, what makes an entrepreneur. It's that person who has the courage and the idea to take that first step, that leap into the unknown and make something happen. I don't know what it's going to look like in 5 or 10 years, but I'm going to do it right now. So if you have something that you're excited about, go after it and try to kind of build the plane as it's going down the runway and take it from there. Start. Yeah, start.

Basically start, right? Looking at the obstacles, my friend Simon Sinek, he's not a friend, but I do like him a lot and listen to a lot of what he says and take it to heart. But he talked about the folks that will always see the obstacles and not see through those obstacles to that goal. That's really interesting. I love the analogy with the plane too, right? I mean, how often are we like, give me a wrench quick. I need a wrench. What? Where'd that come from? Is that a lawsuit?

Call the attorneys.

What do we do now?

Right?

And keep building it and building. We're getting ready to take off. Are we ready to take off? I love it.

Such a great, my, my favorite one is like, all right, yeah, so we need to, uh, we need to tie this, this wing back on, but, uh, because of X, Y, and Z, we're actually going to have you do that with both hands tied behind your back.

Yes.

You can't just learn how to do anything one way. You got to learn how to do it a couple different ways. Got to get used to wearing a lot of different hats and coming at the same problem a couple different ways depending on where you are.

But that's, I had a friend who, what's exciting about it to me, I had a friend who talked about, he was kind of an educator and kind of a motivator and video out in front and iterations, right? People iterate, iterate, iterate. It's gotta be perfect. I'm gonna sharpen that pencil right to the top. And he used to say, done is better than perfect, you know? And that's so kind of relieving, isn't it? Done is better than perfect. Yeah.

I heard another similar version. I think I may have even mentioned that in the intro, right? Great is the enemy of good. And I remember when I first heard that, this was early in my career, and the person that said it, I didn't end up being a huge fan of, but his words have kind of stuck in my head and their wisdom has kind of grown over time. When, you know, I was first starting a career, I went into business. I was working in someone else's business and I was just an individual contributor there. And at this point, right, I had a little bit more time. I wanted to make everything well, and there was kind of like this work ethic and pride that wanted me to make everything as good as it possibly can be. But then as I've started, I moved into leadership positions, and now as I'm running something that I'm an owner in, the crushing reality of opportunity costs when it's kind of your baby is just so much bigger. And the idea that I'm going to focus and do absolutely everything that I touch perfectly, not only can I not do that, I don't want to do that because it's like, okay, well, what's the incremental return on taking something from 80% to 100%? It's like not very large and it's going to take way more time than the 0% to 80% took. So if I just take that time and I reallocate that on what's the next big change that I can make happen for my business. That's going to be a way better allocation of my time. I'm going to see much better returns, right? There's always, always massive opportunity costs when you're looking at the picture of a whole business instead of kind of my original perspective, which was just, you know, my role writing programs at someone else's company.

So now you're in the position of ready, fire, aim, right? That's the other good one, right? Ready, fire, aim. At what point do you say, It's not working. However we're doing this, we need to either iterate on it or we need to flush it.

Yeah, that's a really— excuse me— really good question. I think even though like a lot of these phrases go together really well, that particular version is one that has always kind of been— yeah, I'm a— I try to avoid being a nitpicker, but sometimes, you know, it's that kind of math brain that I have. And I try to just balance that, the aiming and the firing at the same time. So like if I'm, if I'm like just blindly aiming around the room, okay, like we're 100% going to end up in situations where we need to iterate a lot sooner. But for me, and a big part of this, right, not, you know, just plugs for data all over the place, but I think a big part of this is having at least rudimentary automated data reporting. So like I'm getting feedback from the company and that doesn't take me doing manual labor to see that. So then I can focus on building these other things. And if any of my key metrics, right, like cash flow, the P&L, right, like performance metrics for us as a consultant, the big one is utilization, right? If any of my key metrics start going higher and it's like, okay, big alert, you know, stop, stop being over here in the proactive fun building area. It's time to do maintenance and check in on where we're at. So I like to be looking and building at the same time, but a big part of facilitating that is having a system where you can get the information that you need without it taking a ton of time.

That's really interesting. And I love how you were so kind about saying, I don't love ready, fire, aim, because that's reckless, right? I mean, I always talk to one of my kids who is an extremist and And I've talked about the difference between risky and reckless, right? And you come in as kind of a Sherpa to say, hey, reckless shooter, let me help you with some aim here. You know, you could do it fast. You can get the aim and the scope right faster than you thought you could. So let's aim too. Yeah.

Yeah. Shoot with your eyes open. Right.

100%. So, so help me understand that. So what, what exactly is your company doing? Power BI, what is that platform? Help me, help me understand what it is that your consulting firm does. Sure.

Absolutely. And I'm going to, I'm going to do this as best I can without going super nerdy deep in the weeds. So the very, very high level is that it's a business intelligence or kind of data visualization tool. It has some really neat technical elements under the hood. It does do a little bit more than that. It's fancy. You can actually use it for more than just making pretty pictures, but it competes in a space with kind of, you know, Qlik, Tableau, Looker, like a lot of these other tools that people have probably heard of at this point. What our company does is really facilitates everything that goes into making those reports and ultimately, more importantly, the decisions that those reports inform better and faster. So that can be as far back as, hey, we're thinking about undertaking a data initiative, but we either don't know what that means or what it looks like or what's involved or what the cost is or time. So we can come in and we can help people at the strategy end. Then the next phase is kind of, well, we have things figured out, We need some help actually doing it so we can help with execution. Then lots of times once stuff's built, you need the team to know how to use it. So we have training and then ultimately we have support. So really strategy, execution, training and support for really the entire Microsoft data stack. So Power BI is a Microsoft tool and then you have Azure, which is the cloud, this whole stack of tools that can kind of all facilitate making data stuff happen. We help with all of those.

That's really cool. That's really cool. So how did you get into that business? Where did— give me your evolution of what brought you to Collective.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So I was like, I'm sure, you know, everybody, I just wanted to be a big fancy pants doctor when I went to college. I had always been a huge science nerd. And I wanted to be a doctor and, you know, I got in, I was having trouble with the classes, right? Like I aced orgo, like I love that stuff. I'm a huge nerd, but it ended up just kind of not really being as much of like my thing as I thought. You know, especially, you know, you get into college and there are just like so many opportunities. There's way more classes than you can ever take. And I started getting really excited about a lot of stuff. So I, I started saying, oh, okay, well maybe not medical doctor, but maybe I'll, you know, go, you know, become a, a chemist or a physicist or a biologist or something along those lines. And I started reaching out and taking a lot of classes. And then all of those classes, they had you taking math along the side. And I started realizing that even though math had like really never been a favorite for me, right? In fact, like some of the lowest grades that I got in high school were some of my, my math classes. I almost failed pre-calculus. And I just kind of like, it clicked for me and I had a couple really good professors and I just jumped full tilt into math, which was like my high school self would've been baffled to hear that. So I was like, you know what, like I'm going to get a PhD in math and I'm going to be a math professor and I'm going to like grow my hair out and like live in the ivory tower and be a nerd. And I absolutely love that. And then You know, so I'm like second semester senior year. I start like looking at, you know, okay, like, what does this look like? You know, I bet I've been doing the research. I've been doing all these things and I start looking at these programs and I just kind of like, I hate to say it this way because it sounds so dollars and cents, but I like looked at it was like, I will 100% unless I'm like Stephen Hawking smart or I end up somehow turning this into like a, you know, like a YouTube sensation or something like that. Unless I'm like somehow on the fringe. I'm going to struggle to like really provide for a family in the way that I want to. And so I decided like, you know what, Brian, like maybe you should cut off here and get a real job. So that's, that's, that's kind of what I did. Like I, I went and instead of just getting to like live this life that if I were like born off well-to-do, like I probably would've continued, you know, undoing, like I decided like, no, like I want to like, jump into business with both feet. So I did that and I got a job at a telecommunications company right out of college and I was doing originally FP&A for them, which is pretty close to BI. FP&A for anybody that doesn't know is financial planning and analysis. It sounds fancy, like those are the people that generate your kind of like quarterly reports and, you know, sometimes budgeting and forecasting and all of that stuff. Like they, they're basically the people feeding all the good stuff to the CFO. And I did that for a little while. What that really meant was I spent 90% of my time turning Excel into PDFs and the other 10% doing those kind of reports. Yeah. So needless to say, yeah, I could tell from your face that wasn't, it was just as uninteresting to me. So what I did was I—

Did I make an uninterested face there? I was actually more surprised with taking an Excel spreadsheet and making it a PDF and somebody Up high thinking, wow, thanks for doing that. You know, that saved me an hour.

Well, so it wasn't quite like that. So it was like, it was basically pricing proposals. Yeah. So we, we had like a large sales team and, you know, for, for obvious reasons, letting the salespeople decide on the price of what they're selling is like not a recipe for high margins. So what they had to do was they had to like submit, here's what I want. And they would send us in this template and I could basically like open that and put in some passwords and formulas and stuff like that. And it would, generate the margin that we need. And then I could return to them the pricing proposal they were allowed to give to the customers. So even though there was a little bit more to it, this was needless to say, not super interesting to me. I wrote a program that automated it. Cool. And you know, I clicked run on that one morning and at like 8:05, my work was done for the day and my phone's ringing off the hook because IT is like, somebody just spammed out 450 emails. Like what's going on? So this kind of actually got me my first BI job. So they were like, we're gonna—

So hang on, I gotta cut you off. So let's back up. So hop right in. In a job that you weren't really enjoying, you weren't passionate about it, didn't feel purposeful, you found a solution to make it super easy and automated. Obviously it took you the coding to create it, right? And then you hit send And in 5 minutes, that job was complete for the day. And the IT department was like, what is going on? They all went out at the same time. And, but it's done. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Code's powerful, man. I'm telling you, these computers are going to be huge. You don't say.

You don't say. So wait a second. Help me understand what happened next. You kind of glossed over it. So what happened next? So boom, you're done. You could say, I'm done for the day. Now what? What else can I conquer here? Or I'm out. Yeah.

So my original plan hadn't really been to like work myself out of a job. Like it had just been to like, I wanted, so like that 10%, that like actual thinking portion. And this is like a theme that continued on for me. And I realized was I became the person that was like later my target demographic, like I mean, now maybe not so much, like we do tend to target maybe like my manager or my manager's manager at this point, but like I was the people who I now target. Yeah. You know, like these are the people who are doing the actual work. So that pain point of I have a brain, I want to use this brain. When this brain is getting used, it means mountains of value for the company. But because there are things that just need to happen, I end up getting saddled with like a really unfavorable percentage. So like to clarify from before, I wouldn't say that I was like totally unsatisfied in this job, right? It was just like, this was kind of the price of admission. And then it was only that 10% of like creating custom reports and doing investigations into the company and driving new ways to make value. Like that was really, really like exciting. It was just this other stuff needed to get done and someone to do it and they had to be in our department and it's just kind of the way that things went. So for me, it wasn't so much that I wanted to be like, oh, I'm just going to like loaf around and like, you know, read articles all day. It was just kind of like, I'm going to free myself up and then I'm like immediately going to go ask for like more of these other assignments. Like I want to keep driving the company and like finding little places where we can be more efficient or, you know, just trying to make more money or make people's lives easier. That, that was the goal.

Cool.

But I think it drew a little bit more attention than I had anticipated. Like I thought everybody, like I thought it would just be like a couple of sales guys who were just like, wow, yeah, the turnaround's gotten way better with this. Like I didn't think that it would like involve like, you know, phone calls and like department heads calling one another, but like it ended up like kind of blowing up and being a bigger deal. So they were kind of like, hey, so like we're starting up this new business intelligence team. It's been like these two guys just kind of like working in the shadows over here. So why don't we don't really like how did they do, but you like seem like you fit with them. So like, we'll, you know, put you over with them for now. And that was really exciting.

So great, so grateful that the opportunity was there, right? I mean, how many companies would even have like that department to move you over into, right? I mean, it's like how many, how many founders, how many business owners would be frightened and like, oh my God, like we're not worthy. You know, you gotta go, go work somewhere else. But you had another department to land in and, and stay with the company, mindshare with these other people doing what you're doing. They found the square hole for the square peg. They were pounding the square peg in the round hole. 100%.

Yeah. Which is like one of those reasons why I like kind of feel like very grateful to this company that like, you know, a certain amount of it was like, I was the right person at the right company at the right time. But also like, that's still pretty cool, right? I'm still pretty lucky to have had that, you know? So we started up and because it was kind of so new and because like not really everybody, like they knew that we would just like, excuse me, like every couple months just be like, hey, yeah, here's like a couple million to the bottom line because we like found some stuff we're paying for that we don't need to, or like we figured out that this is unnecessary. So they were just kind of like, yeah, like whatever you're doing, just like keep doing it. Like they would kind of like throw us a goal here or there so that we could like get a bonus and stuff like that. But it was, it was especially for like that stage in my career, like how recently I was out of college and like how large the company was, like it's extremely rare to have as much unilateral control as we had as a small team and like how little oversight, like there was, there were people there to make sure that we weren't like doing anything crazy or bad or costly, but like in general, they were kind of like, yeah, here you go. Like they gave us our own database and they gave us like this small little group of IT people who are kind of doing their own thing on the IT side. And we kind of had this like really neat team of like 2 or 3 people in finance and 2 or 3 people in IT. And we just like, you know, crushed it for a couple of years. It was amazing. Like what I would say my kind of crowning achievement there was I had this vision of building like a giant like margin cube for the entire company. Like what I wanted was like not just like a structured financial statement. I wanted every like line item level of detail on the cost side and on the revenue side. To be able to match to one another and not just like at a gross profit level, like net income level. So I wanted to be able to take, here's how much you paid in rent for your buildings. I wanted to be able to option that out and say, well, these people did this support and these people do these jobs. So we're going to take this portion and this portion and this portion, then we're going to allocate all of those to every single line of revenue. So that you could pick up an individual phone line and say, this is the net income generated by this one phone line. It would be one of the most comprehensive, at least financial ordering tools that like I at least had ever come across. And so this, this was in a, like a long-term vision and there were many like wins along the way. Like we were able to like take certain parts of that idea and show that they could be useful on their own in the interim. And use that to get buy-in in order to build it. And so over the course of a couple years, we, we built that and it was— I ended up finding, it may not be best for me to say the exact amount of money, but I will just say if I could get even 1% of the amount of annual recurring money that I found for their bottom line, I would not have to work anymore. Wow. I still would because that's how You know, I think most of the people in EO are hardwired, but I, I, I wouldn't have to. So that, that'd be pretty cool. But I, I ended up in a position where I was just kind of like, this is awesome, but I also don't want the rest of career being like slightly modifying this giant model and having it kind of be like this giant anchor around my ankle. Like I don't want to just be the maintenance guy on this one thing that now everybody's super excited about. I built it, I will like train people, I want to hand it off, but then I want to go do this for as many people as I can. I want to do this, like the super fun part, like the building and the meeting people and the finding out what's important. I want to do that over and over and over again. So I left and I got into the consulting world. I worked for another consultancy for a little while doing that same kind of stuff. Then I struck out on my own. And now, you know, here at Collective.

Did you learn some consulting while you're at the consulting firm? Because that's a whole different animal, right? Like you are going from one role, the builder, to the next role, the teacher. Did you get the training you needed to strike out on your own, as you say?

Yeah, undoubtedly. That first consultancy that I worked for was just a rocket ship. Wow. For me, uh, professionally, uh, even personally, um, like some of the relationships that I crafted there, the lessons that I learned, the opportunities that I was given were just over the moon. Like once again, like right guy in the right place with the right people. Like I just, I had such an amazing time there and I'm like so grateful for the opportunities that I've gotten really at both of those places. They 100% fully set me up to be able to do what I'm doing. You know, that being said, I do think there are, you know, certain elements that are critical to being a consultant, which I, I, some can be learned, but a lot of them are innate, right? You kind of have to have a little bit of teacher mentality in order to be able to not just talk about the technology, but you have to be able to distill that and be able to communicate that to people at a number of different technological levels. So I need to be able to explain this to, you know, data engineer level 5, but then I also need to be able to explain this to, you know, payroll analyst one who is not going to be interacting with this stuff, but like the data that they're inputting is critically important. So that kind of aspect was huge. And then also I think, you know, you got to have, and this I think is the crossover to being a good entrepreneur, you have to develop that ear for like hearing when something is bothering somebody else, hearing a pain point, hearing a market opportunity, hearing that they, Okay, there's a gap here that we can fill, I think makes good consultants. And I also think that's a big part, you know, one of the big parts that makes an entrepreneur. I mean, there's grit and discipline and all that stuff.

So that's, I mean, is that, is that a sales ability to, to hear that pain, to hear that understanding? So you, so you're doing the outreach also, you're bringing these clients in or there are salespeople who are bringing these clients to you for the technical 'Cause now you're going from builder to implementer to sales. And tell me what else you're doing at your company. Yeah.

Well, I mean, in typical entrepreneur fashion, just kind of like whatever we need to do today is what we're doing today. Yes, I do play role in our sales. Obviously I have connections from my time working in the space. You know, this kind of little part of business intelligence is a somewhat small world. So that there is that. The way that Kollektiv is set up is we actually have 3 partners. So I'm one of 3 partners. Here, and so one of them handles marketing, one of them handles sales, and then I handle the consultants and, you know, systems and kind of backend stuff like that. So, um, we do have another one of our principals that handles a lot of sales, but that's really just for kind of net new clients. So for all of our recurring clients, it makes much more sense to have the person they're forging a relationship with on a day-to-day basis, their consultant, to be the person that kind of sells them that next deal. Yeah. Professional services are sold on trust, you know, so you want the person that they trust to be the one talking to them.

So have you been able to create that golden product you were talking about right down to the phone line? Is that available for people to really dial in? And if so, who's the client who's asking for that typically? Sure.

So to be clear, that was a specific project for a specific company.

Got it.

We were able to do that. It was really, really exciting. But the main reason why I saw that as such a goal, aside from the fact that it was ambitious and kind of technically prestigious for the time is that I would argue that, that, that company's primary challenge data could address was understanding the matchup between their revenue and cost sides. Just for a handful of different reasons, the way that that particular business operated, there could be a very, very large disparity between the revenue side of the operation and the cost side of the operation. Because they were technically like reselling services. So they were very, very separate sides of the business. And so long as the kind of top level matched out, like everything was cool and the ship kept sailing, but we started realizing that like underneath the water, there could be all sorts of discrepancies., right? Like a client could, for instance, like sign up lines with us and then they could shop those phone lines to other competitors and then they would just cancel the low, you know, lower or higher margin ones for us. And then we'd be stuck and we might have, you know, our margin on a particular client or in a particular area might be lower, but overall, like it might not be so. So that was a big, I would say area that that company could have improved at the time. So that's what made that analysis so useful. But I would argue data projects, you know, there are dime a dozen standard things that you need to do, right? Especially for like, you know, we're talking to EO for small and mid-sized businesses. A lot of these are can't, right? We're talking about let's get basic cash flow statement off the ground. Let's get basic accounting things off the ground, you know, P&L, balance sheet. To make sure that all the data that's feeding those things is actually clean and all that, that stuff. We're going to need some sort of, you know, operational reporting. How am I matching, you know, how am I turning cost into revenue? At what percentages am I doing that? How does that compare to my competitors? Those types of reports are standard for small and mid-sized businesses. Those are critical to get off the ground. And a lot of those can kind of be canned, right? So like somebody coming to me saying, hey, I need to get a P&L off the ground. Okay, cool. You know, we know how to do that. That's an easy, you know, plug and play. The flip side is for most of our target markets over the $100 million in revenue, those are our target clients. Many times, like the standard run-of-the-mill reports, like they have those hammered. Now there may be some sort of, you know, data integration problem on the backend that's causing those numbers to be inaccurate, but usually we're being brought in to help them with something bespoke to that business. And I think that that's actually one of the areas where we can deliver a high amount of value, especially a high amount of value per dollar compared to most other people in the market. Because what most other people in the market are looking for is they're looking for that canned report. They're looking for that thing that I've already built 10 or 15 times already, and I know exactly what's going to happen, and I've already connected to that source. So I know all the idiosyncrasies. We're positioned a little bit more at, at the premium end of the pricing spectrum. The reason for that is because we're the people that you call when you have a problem that not too many people have seen before, when you're doing something at the cutting edge, or like we talked about with the plane analogy earlier, you need to do something that people have done before, but for business or technical reasons, you need to do that with one or both of your hands tied behind your back. And so you need to find a new way to do it. Like we're the people you call in those situations. 'cause we're gonna be able to come in, figure out what's specific about your business, what's specific about your data sources, and then still get you to that same end zone as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

And you're doing that with their help, right? So you're not implementing the data for them, right? This is $100 million companies obviously are, you know, they've got CFOs, they've got all sorts of financial teams. So you're meeting with those teams scratching into it in an area that they're not necessarily looking potentially.

Yeah.

So almost forensically.

Indeed. Yeah. So there is a, there's for sure a spectrum across which, you know, the, our clients vary as far as like how involved they want to be. Yeah. It also can depend upon a project. So Many of our clients have, have and will do multiple projects with us. So they may have one where, hey, this is highly technical and we're bringing you in because of all of the reasons that I just talked about. We have something special and we need to give you all of the business subject matter expertise that we have and we need all the technical and financial subject matter expertise that you have and we form a really good team. But then Typically, like after we've done one of those types of engagements, they trust us and they recognize, oh, okay, well, you know, these, these people can really get things done. We can, we can trust them. Like when we tell them, hey, we need X, Y, and Z done, they just show up with X, Y, and Z done. So as a result of that, one of the other big things, and this is not just for our line of business, I think this is for all professional services, you know, there is typically seasonality or fluctuating demand to what people have. So they may just hand off something to us and be like, hey, like we just need you to do this because we don't have the bandwidth. Like everybody's too busy. Like we're doing a quarterly close or, you know, we have this big project push, but we're having, you know, political pull in a different direction. We don't want to lose traction here. Can you take that? So in some of those instances, they'll just kind of throw it over the wall, be like, hey, here you go. Like, here's what we need you to build. Go build it. We trust you. But then in a lot of those kind of bespoke, more custom projects, yeah, absolutely. We, we are developing right along those people. Like we will never understand their business as well as they do. And, you know, no offense, but they'll never understand, you know, this kind of tech as well as we do. It's just like everybody has their area of expertise.

I love it. I love it. That's so great. I'm looking forward to digging deeper into your company and learning more about it when I see you next. I saw you, as I mentioned earlier, at Matt Bromley's conversation.

What a talk. That was awesome.

So like TED Talk worthy. So great at our venue down at Rexicana in Marshfield on the South Shore of Boston. I saw you, I met you, and we started talking about your youth and, uh, Narragansett, getting out into the ice cold water. Yeah. And surfing.

You—

that's kind of savage-like, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, it was. I mean, I think I like I've never been a good surfer. I tried, I was moderately hard, like never like really hard. Like I had some friends and like they were, you know, they were out there after school. They would wake up in the morning and go like they every day on the weekends, you know, and like pretty much just like kind of April or May until November, it was just like every day and that, like, that just, that just wasn't me. Like, I enjoyed kind of the culture and the, the, the people and, you know, I still have like a huge love for the ocean and kind of trying to like protect it, like, you know, clean up some of the plastic and do stuff like that. But I just don't know that outside of kind of the, the culture or the vibe and the mentality, like I connected with the, the actual physical act of surfing. So like, And at the time I was just kind of like, you know, what's the way to do the most savage thing I can? So like, you know, you get all the wetsuits all out when it's snowing. You know, I remember there was one day where I went, you know, skiing at this little ski hill and surfing in the same day. And I like thought that was so cool.

That is so cool. By the way, that is very cool.

Yeah.

So you grew up in Narragansett where there's a point too, right? Like there, that's a surf spot for the Northeast coast, right?

I— it— yeah, yeah, for the Northeast Coast, which is, you know, I, I don't want to like put our little neck of the woods down, like, you know, it just, you know, we can't really compare with, you know, a lot of like the really heavy-hitting surf places where people are like making the crazy surf movies. But, um, as far as New England goes, yeah, I'd argue Narragansett's probably one of the better spots. You 'cause we're far enough away from Long Island Sound and Long Island that you can actually get swells outta the Atlantic. And then you're not in kind of the bay protected by Cape Cod. You know, there are certainly places in New Hampshire and Maine, but you know, my experience with Narragansett growing up was that, you know, there was some pretty good surf. You know, you could get, could get, you know, double overhead with a good storm, you know. So, so good stuff there if you're into it.

If you're into it. What are you into now?

I kind of, I kind of traded the sea for the sky a little bit. You know, when I was growing up, I swim team and sailing and surfing, like everything was around the water. You know, being in, you know, Southern Rhode Island, it's kind of what there is to do there. But I, I had always been terrified of heights, like, like laughably terrified of heights, like 4th, 5th story of a building. Couldn't be near the windows. Scared of heights. And I had always wanted to conquer that. And I was at a friend's house and we were tossing a football in the backyard and we saw parachutes coming down. And I was, you know, I had just, you know, gotten somewhat settled in that first job out of college. Like I had a couple, nickels to rub together for the first time. And so I was like, you know what? Like, let's do it, man. Today's the day I'm going to conquer it. For me it was just, oh, I'm going to do this one time and that's it. You know, I'll be, I'll be good, right? I'm going to conquer my fear and I'll go back to being kind of a normal person.

Kind of a normal person. Yeah.

Yeah. Fully normal. Wishful thinking. Wishful thinking that I, I would be there, but you know, we did it and it was, this is not an experience that everybody has, but like in skydiving we talk about people, you know, some people just have the bug and I had not even landed. Like as soon as the parachute opened and I like came out of like the crazy adrenaline hole that I had been in, I'm like breathing, you know, deep gulps of air and just even before I have my wits about me, like, and I, the first thought in my head is I need to do this every day before work. You know, I was, I was hooked. I was just hooked up like a tow truck from the first time. And so I, I chased that pretty hard. I mean, it, it, it, the beginning, it moves kind of slowly cuz there's a lot that goes into it. You gotta get into the class and that takes some time. And then, you know, in the very, very beginning, like there are very strict parameters around like when you're allowed to jump and there have to be two instructors there and the wind has to be good and it, has to be an hour before sunset and yada, like all of these things which make it kind of hard. If I could get like one jump in a weekend, that was like a great weekend. And I, you know, so I did that. I got my license, I kept on motoring. I have at this point, so there are 4 skydiving licenses. I have the first 3. I'm qualified for the last. I just haven't gotten around to taking the test yet and I've done, you know, all of the, you know, I fly a wing suit, I fly in the wind tunnel and I fly on my head, or excuse me, not on my head. That's the one, one type of dynamic flying I don't do. I fly, you know, head up and sitting and on my back and on my belly. And I fly with groups and, you know, I, you know, do a, jumped at night, done, done all that off of helicopters, all sorts of that stuff. And I, I also am currently finishing up my pilot's license. I've got about 45 hours, so I gotta buckle down and take my tests and make that license happen. And, you know, I think I'll probably try out a paraglider at some point in the near future. I mean, we'll see. I'm gonna stuff as much in as I can before I have kids.

So there you go. There you go. Ryan, question for you. If someone were to want to get in touch with you, whether to work with you or connect with you in any way, what is the best way for them to connect with you?

Sure. Absolutely. So I think the, best way to reach out to me is probably through LinkedIn. We use LinkedIn quite a bit. We're pretty active there. I'm checking it all the time. It is just, you know, Ryan Sullivan. You can be looking for Collective. I have some social media stuff, but that's mostly personal stuff, not professional outside of LinkedIn. And then, you know, if anybody wants to within EO, you can reach out to me via email as well.

Awesome. My man, I appreciate you very much. I am looking very much forward to seeing you at another event in the Boston chapter of EO. I am looking forward to learning more about what you're doing because I'll tell you, one of my Achilles heels is definitely data and analyzing data. So looking forward to chatting you up a little bit more, but really excited to make your acquaintance, my man. Thank you for coming.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was such an awesome opportunity. I'm super excited to be a part of EO and hopefully, you know, get my name out. Hopefully something that I said was useful to somebody, but if for nothing else, it's a great way to hopefully get to interact with some of the new members and try and network with everybody a little bit. I'm excited to kind of learn and contribute and do everything I can to make EO great here in Boston.

So a new member of the EO audience. So if you see him at an event, make sure to walk up and say, hey, I heard about that. Good stuff. I like what you're doing.

Yeah, I'd love to meet everybody.

Yeah, folks, thanks for listening. That's it. If you learned something today or you laughed, tell someone about this podcast, send it to them, get them engaged, have them learn about Ryan and EO Boston. Ryan, thanks again, my friend.

Thank you again so much for having me, Mark.

This has been another exciting episode of Leadership in Action. We'll see you next time. Leadership in Action is sponsored by the Boston chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization. As the world's only peer-to-peer network exclusively for entrepreneurs, EO helps transform the lives of those who transform the world.