Elevating IT: How Earl Foote Built a Culture-Driven Powerhouse at Nexus IT

Summary

00:00 - Introduction and Technical Challenges

01:16 - Nexus IT: Growth and Vision

04:06 - Motivation and Team Culture

09:33 - Team Evolution and Milestones

14:19 - Coaching and Development Programs

18:08 - Breakout Moments and Personal Growth

31:34 - Advice for Aspiring CEOs

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Full Transcript

Jeff Holman (00:01.302)
Welcome back everybody to the breakout CEO podcast. This is Jeff Holman. I'm your host today. I'm here with Earl Foote. This is actually Earl's second time on the show. Not because the first one went well, but because we did what we after the fact labeled a trial run. But Earl is gracious to be back. Thank you so much for joining me again, Earl.

Earl Foote (00:14.232)
Thank

Earl Foote (00:24.224)
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Jeff. I appreciate the invitation.

Earl Foote (00:31.04)
In all honesty, we had a lot of technical difficulties last time, right?

Jeff Holman (00:34.858)
Yes, we did. We did. So that's what happens, right? Startup land, podcast land, it's all kind of blends together sometimes. yep. But we're back. And, you know, I have to say, out of everybody, all of my guests so far, that stuff that I can have IT issues with, of course had to be you. You run quite the expansive IP company at this point.

Earl Foote (00:43.01)
things go wrong sometimes. It's the reality.

Earl Foote (01:00.588)
Yeah, I guess if things are going to go wrong, it's when the IT guy's rounding.

Jeff Holman (01:08.421)
Yeah, or at least on the other end of the video here. So, but with that, know, tell us a little bit, I've got some question to ask you, but tell us a little bit about what you're doing with Nexus IT, since we're kind of at that point.

Earl Foote (01:22.698)
Okay, yeah, for sure.

Earl Foote (01:41.526)
nationwide out of more than 100,000 total MSPs or MSSP's. We typically land somewhere between the 50th to 80th fastest growing MSP in the nation. And we've built a really fantastic team that are super aligned to our mission, which is to elevate IT and to our vision of becoming a top 10 MSP MSP.

throughout the nation in regulated industries. got a really just a great team, you know, that we've been able to build. We've done some significant things, you know, in recent months and years. We are one of the only MSP founder-owned, founder-led &A platforms in the nation, having now completed eight acquisitions and fully integrated those state MSPs or teams.

founders, clients into Nexus IT. We're continuing with that strategy. We grow very well organically. We forex about the national average of organic growth per year.

Jeff Holman (02:58.307)
You said you said Forex just to make sure I got that right.

Earl Foote (03:01.592)
Forex on the organic side. Yeah, and managed services, the industry typically grows at about 10 % per year. We're growing at about four organically, and then we're growing at another, sorry, 40 % organically, I should say, and then another 40, 45 % with our M &A practice, adding in revenue clients, team members through acquisition.

We recently brought in a three-year structured debt facility. The first time that we're aware that a managed service provider nationwide has been able to raise a minimally dilutive instrument of the magnitude that we just closed, which is 60 million in a three-year structured debt facility for us to, specifically we raised that capital for us

be able to execute our &A strategy and continue to invest in our organic growth engines in new markets where we're picking up. We're asking our colleagues to come join us and build with us in other markets. Anyways, some of the ambitious things that we're working on here, Jeff, a team that's fully aligned on board with Mission Vision and the purpose behind it.

and having a great time building day in and day

Jeff Holman (04:29.229)
Yeah, there's a lot going on clearly. And I wanna get into some of that, the structured debt. I wanna get into the team. You and I had a preliminary conversation around your team. A lot of that's very impressive. So I wanna talk about that a little bit. But before we dive into some of those details, I wanted to ask you, what is it, cause you're a busy guy. You've been doing this, you said 27 years this month? Yeah, do you know the day? I'm just curious, is there like an anniversary date?

Earl Foote (04:56.568)
You know, I've tried to find that date and I'm not exactly sure. It was somewhere September of 1998, if I'm guessing, mid-months, know, when my brother and I, we launched our first e-commerce site, you know, and it was right about then, mid-September of 1998. But I don't have the exact date. I should have, I wasn't like looking forward, you know.

Jeff Holman (05:19.735)
That's okay.

Earl Foote (05:24.972)
back then and like really thinking and I was not an experienced entrepreneur by any means. So it's not like, you know, I thinking, we need to document this so that, you know, we know in the future, but I do know it's September of 98 when we started.

Jeff Holman (05:38.03)
Hey, that's good. I was asking because it's my birthday month. So I'm just going to co-opt it and say that it was started around my birthday. Yeah, we're the same age. Give or take. I actually just had my 30th year high school reunion. So I can't claim 27 years old anymore very easily. no, what a milestone. And with all that.

Earl Foote (05:44.888)
Yeah, you're only 27 years old anyways, right? You're the same.

Earl Foote (06:02.347)
Alright.

Jeff Holman (06:07.305)
And that's a ton of work. We'll get into some of that ups and downs, teams growing, maybe shrinking in there. don't know. Expanding rapidly, getting finite, like all this stuff happening, keeping clients happy. What is it that motivates you from day to day? How do you keep how do you keep your energy up? Because I know you're really involved in the community. You're you're I don't know if you'd call yourself high energy, but I know you play rock and roll like in the after hours. So you got energy for stuff after after that. So what is it that keeps you motivated?

Earl Foote (06:35.511)
I have less energy after hours of using it.

Jeff Holman (06:40.84)
Ha ha ha.

Earl Foote (06:58.031)
Today, I'm far more mindful about my pace. I just hit my half centenarian mark this year.

Jeff Holman (07:07.533)
Congratulations.

Earl Foote (07:08.983)
Yeah, yeah, the big old 5.0. And over recent years, you know, my...

You've got to be more mindful about the pace and prioritize wellness, prioritize rest. So I'm sorry, I totally blinked on your question, Jeff. What motivates me? Yeah. what I was telling you is, when I was younger, well, I've always wanted to build a business that had a meaningful impact beyond the business itself, right?

Jeff Holman (07:30.223)
Just what motivates you, what keeps you going? Yeah.

Earl Foote (07:46.937)
Of course, as a younger entrepreneur, I was more financially motivated than I am today. Today, what really gets me up is our mission. It's a purpose. Our mission is to elevate IT, to elevate our clients and their experience, to elevate the impact, the value added impact we have on their businesses, to elevate our people. That's one of the big things that gets me up every day.

You know, I really enjoy the way that we have the opportunity to bring awesome professionals, awesome engineers, and other professionals through our other teams and functions and departments into the organization and have influence in their lives to help them become better professionals, better leaders, better people. You know, I talked to our team here at Nexus IT about our mission to elevate IT revolves around building people, right?

helping people become a better version of themselves. And we have, you know, well formulated development, know, and coaching programs throughout the organization to fulfill on that, you know, that mission. Beyond our clients and our, you know, our people, certainly we're looking to elevate, you know, the results for the organization, for the shareholders and our community. As you mentioned, you know, we are outwardly minded, you know, as an organization.

We do seek to try to have a positive impact in the community around us. Transparently we're not in a high margin industry. We don't have some of the luxuries of some of the, call it what B2B SaaS had under, being VC funded and stuff like that. don't have the same deep pockets.

Jeff Holman (09:37.133)
You're not bringing in three meals a day with car service and everything else,

Earl Foote (09:43.008)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't have the same deep pockets that some of those fantastic ventures do, but we still believe in trying to support good causes in the community, particularly those that align around our values as an organization.

Jeff Holman (09:58.284)
Yeah. Well, so you mentioned you and your brother started this 27 years ago and now you've, you know, it's cool because we've talked in other times about this team culture that you have, but how have you seen your team evolve over the years? Like what's the, what are some of the major milestones for your team over those last 27 years?

Earl Foote (10:17.399)
Yeah, very

Earl Foote (10:25.399)
the size of the team.

Earl Foote (10:31.319)
day.

most proud about is.

new facility, you know, this new capital.

We have brought on a few new executives. We're starting to announce those executives. So we formulated a more well-rounded executive team that is really well poised to execute on our strategy here over the next several years. getting to that point as a bootstrapped organization who we've always been very scrappy, had just a few executives wearing multiple hats, every executive.

Until recently, really, was CEO, CMO, CRO, and to an extent COO because our lead ops was kind of a mid-level manager. And then some of the other executives were wearing multiple different hats. So today, one of the big milestones is we've built out kind of a full executive team now so that we can really execute on our upcoming strategies. Beyond that, you know...

Earl Foote (11:42.082)
getting leaders who are well poised to execute on our mission of elevating our team at a higher degree. So, you know, the new leaders we've brought in are firm believers of developing people and know how to build programs to do that and to have, you know, to have outsized impact as they work with their teams, you know, help them build career paths, help them, you know, get new certifications or degrees and, you know,

upskill their knowledge, their capabilities, so that they can have promotion opportunities and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think that's one of the recent ones that I'd say we're really proud about around here. Other than that, it's the milestones of going from five people to 10, and from 10 to 20, and from 20 to 50, and from 50 even onward. so those size kind of milestones and others would be...

just other milestones of how we build leadership and how we grew leadership throughout the tenure of the organization is part of our commitment to help build people. A lot of our different leaders throughout the organization, whether those are frontline team leads or mid-level managers or executives, have been coached up through the organization, even some of them being engineers that have become

you know, now mid-level managers, right? So they started as frontline contributors or individual contributors and have had the opportunity to grow, you know, to upskill and to be promoted throughout the organization. So I think those are things we're proud of because they, you know, they fulfill our mission and give us an opportunity to make a real world impact in our circle of influence,

Jeff Holman (13:33.015)
Yeah, and I think anyone listening to this, they'd say, man, how big is this organization? That sounds like there's a lot going on. I coaching programs and promotions and helping career planning. Like, just for reference, how big is the organization at the moment?

Earl Foote (13:47.039)
Yeah, very good. I think you might be surprised. I would say we are very finely refined.

Earl Foote (14:02.964)
including

Earl Foote (14:08.728)
Yeah, we're not talking about hundreds or thousands of people here, you know over the next three to five years here You know with this facility we brought in You know, we should like likely get to three to five hundred employees here over the next three or four years You know, that's kind of the game plan here but You know, we've done a lot with a very scrappy bare-bones team, you know that believes in lean methodologies

And at the same time, you know, being able to build out a lot of really sophisticated programs within the organization. We try to keep things simple, you know, not overcomplicate things, but build out, you know, great infrastructure that enables the success and empowers the success of our people. So, yeah.

Jeff Holman (15:01.421)
No, that's I mean, I think it's a I'm glad to know at 75 there's a little bit of like, wow, that's that like that's a ton of a ton of resources that you've put into your team, which I think goes hand in hand with what you said, right? Team is important for you. Grow your team, cultivating that team correctly. Like you've clearly made that a priority. And I want to hear a little bit more about the coaching program in just a second. but first, I reminded of when I was early in my career, I think I was

an engineering intern at a local, you know, engineering services company here in Salt Lake. And I talked with the owner there. think at the time we had 40 or 50 engineers on staff. I don't even remember. was, I was an intern. I was just kind of, you know, during the headlights in a lot of ways, but, um, but I was chatting with him one time and for whatever reason, he liked to throw out these kind of entrepreneurship tidbits to me. he said, um, you know, growing, growing from five.

to 15 engineers was really pretty easy. And then growing from about 25 to the size we are now or at the time was really pretty easy. But I tell you, getting from 15 to 25, that almost killed us. Like that transition was so difficult. Did you see anything like that as you built your team where there's just like, there's some obstacles or maybe some kind of unmarked.

landmines where you're like, why are we, why can't we get like, the team is functioning so well, but it was a real struggle to get, to kind of get over one of those plateaus. Did that happen to you at all?

Earl Foote (16:42.326)
Yeah, to my knowledge, you know, most...

in terms of revenue and team size, our industry most definitely does. It's interesting because, and I forget the name of the, what is it, the Venn diagram, I think if I'm not mistaken. The orders of magnitude of exponential human dynamics and relationships that happen as your team grows.

Jeff Holman (17:02.021)
yeah.

Earl Foote (17:14.968)
you know, it becomes exponentially different. you know, it's like over 50, you know, there's this massive change in the amount of relationships that are within the organization. Over 100, you know, it's another massive change. And so, you know, as you're trying to build culture around the behavior of people, right, ultimately the more variables, you which are people, you know, that you introduce into that equation, the more unique.

Jeff Holman (17:27.949)
Yeah.

Earl Foote (17:43.235)
personality, get more unique work styles, get more unique perspectives that you get, right? And that all, you know, while we are firm believers that diversity of perspective creates a thriving organization, it can also create some feuding, right? It can create some disagreements or people who don't see things the same way. So, you know, building teams who really know how to have constructive conversations.

right, is really important. In fact, who know how to step into, whether it's an executive meeting or a leadership meeting, and not be afraid to share their real opinion, right? But to do so in a way that doesn't tear down the culture, that doesn't tear down the organization, but offers an opportunity for everybody to form a more holistic perspective.

so we can formulate more holistic solutions, right? So yes, you're right. The orders of magnitude of human dynamics that happen in an organization at those thresholds, 10 to 20 people, 20 to 50, 50 to 100, exponentially they increase and there is more complexity in building a culture that continues to thrive. And we've been through some of those, some of them have challenged us more than others. None of them have killed us, so we're still here.

Jeff Holman (19:10.957)
Clearly doing well. So you've gotten past them if they've been there. Tell us just a little bit more about the coaching. I'm sure a lot of people will be like, hey, I'd love to see a coaching program implemented for my team of whatever size. Give us just a taste of that before we get into your breakout moment.

Earl Foote (19:29.752)
Yeah, very good. know, again, we.

Earl Foote (19:38.232)
We are keeping people off.

Good job.

please.

Earl Foote (19:54.393)
more leaders within the organization. And then ultimately I brought him on in a fractional chief people officer role to oversee all of our people operations performance and development of people. so Jeb has run Fortune 100 organizations globally. he was GM of Asia Pacific for HP before retiring and had run.

you know, billion dollar divisions for Kodak for OG had been a startup CEO multiple different times and happens to have a doctorate in organizational psychology and the behavioral science behind high performing teams and cultures, right? So we brought in again, somebody who punches above their weight, who helps us punch above our weight, you know, to start, you know, programs of coaching myself and other leaders within the organization and teaching us how to.

so that we can coach our direct reports and then they can coach their direct reports and then they can coach frontline contributors, right? And so, we have formalized development programs throughout the organization. Again, formalized career paths and specific trajectories to advance from one tier to another or from one function to a different function within the organization. So, on engineering teams, we have five different engineering teams.

And generally more entry level sorts of engineers are going to start on our service desk and then they're going to advance into escalation and then they might advance into projects or into knock or into stock or into technical account management. And so there's opportunities, you know, for these people to be able to have upward mobility within their career here at Nexus IT. And we've built out that roadmap for how they get there and then leaders.

are working with people in their one-on-ones on a weekly basis to help them achieve what their goals are and help them be able to advance within the organization. Beyond that, of course, the coaching for leaders revolves around building good people leadership capabilities, building good business acumen, good critical thinking skills, good managerial skills. And beyond that, course,

Earl Foote (22:20.345)
As a business leader, if you're not working on becoming a better individual, a better person, a better human being, you're going to cap out your ability to be a really fantastic business leader. our coaching, to the extent that people are open to it and want it to be, can delve into the personal side of life, right? It can delve into where they've got hangups, limiting patterns, limiting beliefs.

can delve into areas where they feel stuck, right? And reframing and helping people find more constructive ideas around how to solve problems in life outside of the workplace so that they can show up better in the workplace as well, right?

Jeff Holman (23:07.129)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I as a small business, the personal and the, mean, I'm sure for you the first 15 or 20 years, personal and business probably, probably merged quite a bit. So for our employees in small businesses, the same happens to them, you personal impacts. And I was just, it was making me think as you're explaining that, what a different perspective shift it probably creates for your team when managers

Earl Foote (23:21.315)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (23:35.34)
are thinking of themselves more as coaches and maybe a little less as managers and employees or reports or whatever we want to call them are thinking of themselves more as, you on a team with their coach, their manager, as opposed to, you know, some type of otherwise antagonistic type of relationship. So it's got, I bet you've seen a big, I bet you've seen instances where that has made all the difference in the relationship.

Earl Foote (24:03.14)
totally. mean...

Earl Foote (24:09.016)
we're dealing with intelligent, capable, autonomous human beings that don't want to work in old command and control structures. That does not work in the modern workplace. There may be specific types of industries or specific countries where command and control still works.

Personally that that does not align with my values, right? My my values is to empower people to be the best version of themselves, right? Empower them to do the best work of their career And you do that by Rather than you know, course we measure, you know, of course, there's performance of there's KPIs. There's okay ours, right? There are initiatives that we're all working on together and we have you know, one of our core values here is absolute ownership

Which means there's no path in the book, there's no excuses, right? There's no finger pointing. Like, you know, if something doesn't go as planned, then we first look in the mirror and we ask ourselves, what was my role? You know, what did I do? What did my team do? How are we going to do better next time? But, you beyond that, you know, yeah, you're absolutely right. Coaching versus command and control. It's far more constructive in today's workplace. It creates better people, know, better professionals, creates better outcomes.

for businesses.

Jeff Holman (30:04.195)
Roll.

I honestly don't even know how this is possible.

Earl Foote (30:10.136)
holding crap.

Jeff Holman (30:11.782)
Like my internet, like, stopped.

Earl Foote (30:16.044)
Ha ha!

Jeff Holman (30:18.343)
I swear, like I've done like 12 others, these 10 or 12 of these? None of them have done this to me like this. I do not know what it is. Like I did a speed test right before we got on and like, I mean, we're gonna cut the middle out here.

Earl Foote (30:37.944)
We're good, yeah.

Jeff Holman (30:44.306)
Great.

Jeff Holman (30:48.53)
So thanks for sharing that. The question I want to ask you here on the podcast today, and all this context is really helpful because everyone's kind of building up to these, do we push past these difficult moments in our career, right? And when you were able to do that, I call that a breakout moment or for a breakout CEO. So I know you and I've talked before a little bit about it, but I'd to hear one of your...

breakout moments where something you ran up against a wall, you hit a plateau and maybe had some insights or persisted through some actions and were able to overcome that.

Earl Foote (31:54.956)
or to save my egg.

Earl Foote (32:06.221)
you know, young at the time, was not even 30, you know.

Earl Foote (32:11.673)
like that one that'll happen and that was that in and of itself was tough enough you know making a decision of how to move forward and to do so with grit and resilience but I think you know really the biggest breakout you know for for me and for us you know my brother and I well we did start the business together we made a decision in 2012 to separate the business right to divide it down the middle and to each go our separate way with

50 % of the assets, 50 % of the client book. As brothers, it was a very friendly negotiation. was no problems. We wrote the legal documents, had them reviewed and signed, and it was an amicable dissolution of the partnership. But predominantly, the reason that we dissolved the partnership is we had two different visions. I had always wanted to build a high-growth tech organization.

He liked the lifestyle game plan and there was you know, nothing, you know What I must say positive or negative about either one it's choice, right? Just different visions different choices. And so You know as partners, you know, we had been kind of building two different things and so it just made sense You know for us to split it down the middle and separate in our own ways, you know our own separate ways, but

Jeff Holman (33:14.139)
Yeah

Jeff Holman (33:22.075)
Yeah, just different visions.

Earl Foote (33:40.217)
You know, that moment where I took over the helm of sole ownership and operations of Nexus IT, you know, I had to make a decision of if I have this vision, how am I going to fulfill, right? How am I going to build it? How am I going to set these goals and actually meet them? And so that's really where, you know, my journey of personal and professional growth and leadership.

really took off and granted, up to that point, were 14 years in business or something. I had had some good trajectory already of development on those fronts, but I doubled down. I got new coaches on the CEO side, on the life coach side, started going to leadership and business boot camps, I started going to sales and marketing boot camps and really started to teach myself how...

be a breakout leader, right? How to be a breakout CEO and build a high growth business out of what is typically a low growth industry, right? And so that moment, know, that transition point in 2012 was really kind of the catalyst for me and for Nexus IT where, you know, while we had kind of done this, or, you know, our 14 year trajectory, that was the hockey stick, right? That was where things really started to change.

Part of that was, well, Jeff, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I am really introverted. I'm a reasonably capable ambivert, but the truth is I don't like being behind camera. I don't like being on stage. I don't like being on the news or in the radio. I'd rather...

Jeff Holman (35:26.951)
I some people would say your jackets might say otherwise. Maybe your jackets are more extroverted than you are.

Earl Foote (35:30.648)
I mean, that's the rock and roll you go that, you but yeah, you know, I would prefer to be behind the scenes, but you know, I made a decision at that point that, you know, in order to grow the business, I had to build relationships of trust at scale in the market. And that required me to become a known trusted, you know, thought leader and advisor.

And so I started investing a lot more in PR, in media, in social media, and creating this personal brand that supported the professional brand that supported the growth of the organization. Today, our revenue engines are a little bit different. And while they don't squarely ride on my back, I play a part in those.

But that was a decision I had made at that point, know, that phase of our growth needed me to become the public face and to be, you know, and to build those relationships of trust, of trust at scale with the market. And it was very successful for us, right? You know, throughout the tenure where I kind of, you know, led that charge, the last few years as our growth has, you know, accelerated, you know, I've had to spend more time.

leading leaders, you know, and more time focusing on the vision, the strategy, and the execution of what we're doing. So our revenue engines have evolved quite a bit to be, you know, less dependent on me. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Jeff Holman (37:08.647)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, mean, there's, there's a lot in there. I mean, from the bankruptcy, which is its own thing, and overcoming that as an early stage when resources are probably limited, that's, that's huge. Working with family, aside from, you know, dissolving the relationship with family, just working with family is its own thing. That's, that's maybe its own success right there. Right. I, I've worked with family. I've seen family work together. I've seen other clients work with family and it's, it presents its own issues.

Earl Foote (37:20.759)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (37:36.924)
But then dissolving that relationship and doing it successfully, amicably so that you should have relationship, that's a big deal. I can relate to that a bit. had my brother, I was working with my brother on one of our side businesses that we do. And we had to end that relationship at some point. And he and I still, I saw him this morning at soccer. We still play soccer. We're great friends. We just don't work together. So the relationship has changed, but I guess, like you said, the visions were different as to what was being built. So, but it's, know.

Those are some of the twists and turns in getting there. I'm curious though, for other CEOs who are maybe on the path that you're on or behind you on a similar path, when you make that move, when you decide, hey, I've got to break out, I've got to be a part of the community, I've got to invest in myself, what are maybe the one or two top things to do, especially if they're

that we'll call it skilled ambivert but true introvert. What are the one or two things that they would do to follow the success that you've had?

Earl Foote (38:45.207)
Yeah,

Earl Foote (38:59.714)
business or every industry, it happens to be one that works quite well in our industry. sophisticated executives do not outsource their IT and their cybersecurity and their compliance to you unless they implicitly trust you. And so typically in our business, cell cycles can take months or years in order to build a relationship and trust. So for us, building again those relationships and trust at large.

with a larger audience is a very effective method to go to market. Now, in terms of getting to the core of your question there, I think it's important for all entrepreneurs to know and understand that we all have our own personal ceilings. And if we want to transcend those ceilings, we have to be willing to grow.

We have to be adequately humble and grounded to admit that we don't know what we don't know and that we probably have some blind spots and some faults that are holding us back that we need outside perspective on, right? And so if you really want to be a great business leader, you've got to get very comfortable in making yourself uncomfortable, just stretch yourself all the time. And you got to get very comfortable in

looking in the mirror without distortion, You know, stepping away from your ego and, you know, looking in the mirror and

my hand toughing the organization, right? And how am I going to solve that? What do I need to do to evolve as a human and as a leader so that my team and the business can evolve with me, right? That's why you see commonly, you know, lot of startups and businesses, and I'm not discounting in any way. Again, there's a decision to be made whether you want to build a business long-term, like I have, 27 years, or whether you want to...

Earl Foote (41:10.296)
typical three to seven year cycle, know, build a startup, you know, sell it, take a year or two off, startup another startup, you know, do the same cycle, right? But that often happens because as entrepreneurs or business leaders, we cap out our ceiling, right? And so, you know, for a lot, you know, getting from like zero to five million revenue a year, they can get there or getting from zero to 10, 10 million a year revenue, they can get there. But

Jeff Holman (41:18.897)
Yeah.

Earl Foote (41:39.693)
They have a hard time getting past those thresholds, right? And then 10 million to 25 and 25 to 50 or whatever, right? You know, there's each one of those inflection points. You have to evolve as a human being. You have to evolve as a leader if you want to continue to be able to build and evolve and grow the business, right? And so, you know, my recommendation is, you know, surround yourself with the right advisors, the right coaches, the right people.

you know, mentors, whatever it might be. and surround yourself with people who aren't afraid to call you on your bullshit, right? Like people who will say, Hey, you know what? what you just did there, you know, like undermine the psychological safety of your team and, like you're destroying culture, you know, or whatever. Right. So, it's important and that's our chief people officer is not for me. You he still is my, you know, today, my CEO.

Jeff Holman (42:17.169)
Yeah.

Earl Foote (42:38.072)
meet with him weekly to be coached. I'm accountable to him on that front. And he doesn't hold punches, right? He observes me in our meetings. He observes me in interactions with public. And he comes back every week and says, hey, here's my critique. Here are the things where I feel like you can refine your approach, And you've to get really good at stepping, emotionally regulating, stepping away from the emotion, stepping away from the ego.

in those situations and going, you know what, that's fantastic, you're absolutely right. I see how what I did produced an outcome that was not what I intended and now I have an opportunity to be more intentional, now I have an opportunity to be more mindful about the way I show up, about the way I lead. Anyways, hopefully that's helpful, but I think that's one of the that founders, leaders,

entrepreneurs you you have to be aware of and you have to make conscious decisions about how far you want to grow or not and if you don't know if you say I'm a zero to ten million person you know entrepreneur cool that's fine there's no problem with that as long as you know it but if you want to go beyond that and you want to go beyond that you just have to know you have to be willing to develop yourself and to develop your team you know at a pace that keeps up with the pace of growth of the business

Jeff Holman (44:03.815)
Yeah. And why not develop yourself at any level, right? If you have that opportunity, what a great resource to be able to have that additional lens, that additional perspective saying, hey, I saw you looking in the mirror today. I know you thought you looked pretty good, but your collar's a little off. Your tie is not quite straight. Just want to let you know in case you want to fix that next time. what a valuable... And I love how, again, getting back to what we talked about at beginning, you've really taken that...

Earl Foote (44:26.476)
Yep.

Jeff Holman (44:33.541)
beneficial aspect of how you've developed as a leader and you've essentially passed that along to your team and said, Hey, let's make some form of this available to the team because it's good for everybody. Good for the team. Good for everybody personally. And so it's, I mean, again, it comes across clearly that you've made a very intentional effort to, to be an asset, not just your clients, not just to build a business, but to your internal team members and your, your stakeholders. So.

That's what I'm seeing from this conversation. So I just wanted to share that with you.

Earl Foote (45:07.019)
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Again, you know, if you want to be able to grow the business at a pace that it can grow at, you and your team have to grow at that same pace or beyond it. And so for us, it's a strategic decision. I don't want to be turning new leaders every 12 months or 18 months because, you know, we're hitting, you know, revenue and team size milestones and...

profit milestones and we need to evolve to the next level but we don't have people that ready to do that. It's not sustainable. What's more sustainable is to develop people that are ready and willing and coachable and humble and that believe in their own abilities to grow and to learn. So that's one of our other core values here is the practice of a growth mindset. We specifically vet talent.

and hire for, you know, looking for people that have growth mindset. And if they've got a fixed mindset, they don't cut the bar for us. They don't end up on this team, right? If we can pick that up in the interview process of, you know, there's a lot of limiting self-talk, right? And, you know, they set thresholds for themselves. They won't survive in our environment. We can grow too fast, right? So we try not to hire those types of

Jeff Holman (46:29.351)
That's really insightful that you've identified that as one of your qualifying criteria for hiring, that it aligns with the growth speed of your business. Well, Earl, I really appreciate you. I appreciate your patience. I appreciate you coming back on. I appreciate your patience while we're on here. We're gonna cut out any technical difficulties we might've experienced during the middle of this, but it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. I love hearing your insights. I could sit here for hours.

Maybe I just need to get onto your team and like sit in on your meetings and get a little coaching to you know experience more of the the Earl effect So but it's been a pleasure having you on today. Thank you again so much for your time

Earl Foote (47:11.384)
Yeah, likewise Jeff, I appreciate the image.

Jeff Holman (47:15.301)
Yeah, thanks so much. And for our audience out there, thanks for joining us on the breakout CEO podcast. I'm Jeff Holman with intellectual strategies. Glad to have you and we'll see you next time.

Earl Foote (47:28.217)
man.

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