Craig James - Build Your Business Value with the Help of Your Peers

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 442-22. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions. So you can be well planned and don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you're just joining us, uh, my next guest is Craig James, and Craig is a visage worldwide chair, and he's gonna join us, we're, we're gonna have an interesting talk now. Now, if you don't know, if you're a business owner. And you're looking to get an advantage and maximize the value of your business. That's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the power of pure advantage in maximizing your business value through a group called Visage. Worldwide, so Craig is what's called a chair, and a chair leads groups of business owners through a fascinating experience. That's all that's we're going to leave the rest up to him. Craig, thanks so much for joining me today and welcome to the show. Bill, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Oh absolutely my pleasure. I've been looking forward to this interview, and we have a lot of ground to cover, so I guess let's get right into it, Craig. Let's, why don't we start off, if you would let our listeners know a little bit about you and your background and, and tell us what a chair does at Vistige. Sure, so I was born and raised in outside of New York City and currently live in Boston. For those of you who are familiar with the region, you'll know that that's a pretty toxic mix from at least a sports perspective. I spent 10 years in financial technology, sales and sales management. I had founded a sales performance improvement business which included training, coaching, outsourced, sales management, and what I dubbed a sales roundtable. As an alumnus of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, I've been a member of the Boston Alumni Club's board for over 10 years and had founded and continued to facilitate a monthly breakfast meeting that I dubbed the Business Exchange where we discuss and debate current business trends. We bring in speakers. We share events that are of interest in town. We exchange leads and make business introductions, and it was that experience bill that led me to Joined Visage 5 years ago. So as you mentioned, I am currently a chair of two Visage Per Advisory groups. One is for owners, CEOs, and company presidents of businesses under about $10 million in revenue and fewer than 60 employees, and another group that is for professional service providers. So these are the folks who serve the broader community of small to medium sized businesses. Uh, which comprised Visage's market, which is, uh, up to a quarter of a million dollars in annual sales and hundreds of employees. And the role of the share is really to bring the group together, uh, facilitate the group, uh, make sure everybody in the group is having, uh, enough airtime that we're getting deep into issues. As I'll talk about later in our conversation, I also provide one on one coaching to members between group meetings. I've also been a member of the Exit Planning Exchange and was a board member for 3 years for the New England chapter. Great, great. Well, you're, you're in the right place. I've got the right guest on the line here. I'm, I've been fascinated by Visage also for many years, and I've been a member for many years, and I know from the statistics I've heard there's about 22,000 CEOs. That are belong to this immense group, but an individual group like you're talking about that that you chair consists of of about how many CEOs. So an individual group typically has about 12 to 16 CEOs in it. We have determined over the 60 plus years that this has just been around that this is the optimal number. Any fewer than that, there aren't enough brains, as it were, a perspective, but once you get beyond 1618, 20, uh, it becomes a bit of a mob, and, uh, you can imagine that many type A personalities in a room, a little bit difficult for people to get airtime and be effective. Makes sense. So, so fill us in. What are some of the key attributes of a vestige meeting? What's, what are the rules of the road, if you will? Sure, so the key attributes of a, of a meeting. Uh, first of all, just to back up, we're very selective with who we invite to join these groups. Not everybody is a good fit for visage. We look for people who are lifelong learners. They're looking to continuously improve themselves as leaders, grow their business. They're not content with the status quo. Once we have that group pulled together, the meeting follows a fairly standard format where we Come in. It's a monthly meeting, so we come in, we have a little kind of breaking the ice, get to know one another, have a little breakfast, and then we have a process that we call a check-in which each member will kind of give a quick little update on a numerical scale of 1 to 10. How's their business going? How are they doing personally? Uh, and how is their, how they're doing health wise. Uh, and they'll also jot down a particular issue that they're wrestling with or might want to run by the group. Uh, the reason we do that is we've been apart for about a month and things have happened in that month. We want to come together and it's a nice way to get the meeting off to a good start. Once we go through that, there's typically a host presentation where whoever the member is who is hosting that particular meeting, we'll give a little update on his or her business 30 to 45 minutes. It gives us an opportunity to learn that member's business in greater detail or if it's an existing member who's been there for a while to kind of get some updates on where the business is today. And from that we go into the meat and potatoes of the meeting, which is a process that we call issue and opportunity processing. And it's where a member brings a particularly challenging issue he or she is facing or a decision of big consequence which if he gets it wrong, there can be significant ramifications, negative ramifications both financially, personnel wise, image wise, and so they want to get the group's input and feedback, have that decision stress tested, or just get some clarity on an issue that just might not be clear to them. And we have a process which is a very Socratic process where we ask a lot of questions and peel the onion before we start tossing out recommendations, which unfortunately is where many CEOs default to it's their nature to solve problems. The final step of that is we make the um we have a list of recommendations and suggestions that are provided by the members. The member who's brought the issue or decision is then required to pick one or two of those recommendations and commit to taking action on it. We call it an action promise and by a specific due date. We do that because we need to make sure that this doesn't fall off the CEO's members' plate once he or she leaves the meeting. So there's a level of accountability that makes all the time we've invested in working that issue. Pay off. Perfect. You explain that perfectly, and you and I could picture each of those steps from the many visits meetings that I've been in as you went through. That's exactly how it happens. That's the formula and there are some other attributes, and one of the key ones is the confidentiality of all of this, that everybody's sworn to secrecy that this this does not leave this room, and most business owners are kind of lonely in that way. They don't have many people to talk to, right, correct? Well, that's very true. Uh, if you think about it, where, where can a CEO or business owner go and feel comfortable letting his or her hair down, baring his soul, uh, being vulnerable without fear of being judged or feeling embarrassed. There aren't too many places that I know of. But in a business group, in a peer group, that's not only acceptable, it's expected. It's the one place that they can go to let it all hang out without fear of being ridiculed or embarrassed or judged. Absolutely. Yeah, and it allows for the the discussion of things that might otherwise be very private topics like you mentioned exit planning, you know, I found that that's a very private topic. Nobody wants to say, hey, I'm thinking about when I'm going to get out of my business or what my plan's going to be. They sure don't want to go to a public seminar on that. They might run into a competitor and a rumor gets started, right? Right, they certainly don't want to be discussing it with anybody in the house. Right, right, right. So, so we talk about this power of peer advantage. I've heard you say and, ah, it's a peer advisory group. It's also, I guess, called a private advisory board. Ah, how does participating in one of these help a business owner become a better leader and make better decisions in your opinion? Sure, so let me take one step back in terms of how this also contributes to a higher valuation of a business. Any M&A professional, mergers and acquisition professional will tell you quite properly that there are a host of drivers that determine the market value of a business when it's about to be sold. Uh, there are internal drivers such as the accuracy and cleanliness of your books, uh, the degree of customer concentration, the depth of the management team, uh, written HR policies, and so on. And there are external drivers. There's industry and macroeconomic trends. There's competition barriers to entry, the regulatory environment in which you operate. These are the observable organizational drivers of value. The increase in enterprise value provided by participation in a peer group bill is in the development of the members' CEO's leadership skills and the improvement in his or her decision making skills. Let me explain what that means. Very few of us who have run companies learned how to be a great leader in college. There weren't very many leadership courses. Very few of us went to leadership school. Uh they become better leaders, uh, in a peer group in part by learning best practices and behaviors from others around the table, which they then bring back to and implement in their businesses and the impact of that better leadership is company-wide. It's more engaged and productive employees, it's raving customers, it's greater profits, as well as community-wide, more employment in the community and better wages. And because the decisions they're making on big impact issues and opportunities are being stress tested and vetted. By smart, experienced, and unbiased, that's important, peers who over time get to know each other and their business is inside and out, the decisions they make are safer. They're less risky. They're made with greater confidence and conviction, and therefore, more often than not they turn out to be correct. And this was borne out, Bill, empirically year after year in surveys done by and Bradstreet which compares the 5 year compound annual growth rate of small to mid-sized businesses whose CEOs are members of Visage groups with those who are not. And in the latest survey, which was conducted in 2017, The research showed that companies led by CEOs who are Vis members outperformed companies led by CEOs who are not by a factor of 2.2%. That's, that's, you know, the other thing about that, um, ah, research is that visage is becoming a tremendous source of business research because members are more likely. To participate in the surveys and they're they're gathering some incredible data I've been noticing over the last few years. Now, Craig, there are, we're we're both, we both have drunk the Kool-Aid, right? We, we like, we both like visage, but for someone else out there they might be saying, you know, I've heard of other groups. There are lots of groups out there that are springing up, it seems like I can think of 3 or 4 of them off the top of my head at least. That that say well we're we're like visage, but we're maybe we don't cost as much or maybe we don't have full day meetings, but the visage formula works for a reason. What is the reason? That's a great question, Bill, and I think there's really, there are a number of reasons. I'm just going to focus on on two right now, and they're both somewhat related. Number one, I alluded to earlier in my introduction is that these groups are formed, facilitated, and led by a trained professional chairperson. We refer to them as, you know, as a chair, uh, who is a seasoned business executive. He's got the battle scars, uh, to prove it, uh, and he can relate to the members themselves. Uh, and that's important because in other types of situations where you don't have a professionally trained, uh, and continually educated because there is continuing workshops and such, um, it's a skill like anything else, and the quality of that meeting and really digging through the issues and keeping people on track, um, doesn't happen by magic. It happens because you have a trained person leading the group. Secondly, that chair provides individualized 1 to 1 coaching to each member in addition to the group meetings. Why is that important? Well, again, many times the CEO or a business owner, they've got people coming to them left and right complaining customers, employees, investors. They all want a piece of that owner or CEO. This is the one time a month where the CEO gets to sit down and get stuff off his or her chest. So it's it's a great opportunity for them to talk about what's on their mind that day. Uh, sometimes we'll work on some very specific things like KPIs or strategic planning, but very few other organizations out there do offer that 1 to 1 coaching which supplements and complements the group meeting. That's very important. So it's, it's all of the components, and there's they also have these, I know there's one coming up in my area here in Southern California. There, there are several across the country where there are large forum type of events that have fantastic speakers and breakouts and other chances to see and commune with other like-minded business owners, so they have a tremendous resource in that area as well, right? Yes, we have these are referred to as the executive summits where we bring together all the members. In a community, for example, Orange County where you are or Boston where I am, for a day of learning, a day of socializing, a day of networking, in addition to that, Visage has about a year or so ago launched another program which we call Visage Networks. Think of these as affinity groups, so we have a manufacturing network, we have a deal network, we have a wine network, a golf network, and this brings together again members both in a community as well as nationwide. who have similar interests to collaborate, get to know one another and support each other both from a business perspective and frankly from a personal perspective. Yeah, and I find those to be very valuable, especially there, as you mentioned, several. There's a family business network which deals with those issues. There's just a ton of great resources there. So you know this all sounds great, but I'm sure some CEOs just declined to join groups. They're by nature they're, they're loners, they're lone rangers. So what do you think are some of the reasons that business owners would, would not join a vestige group? What, what do you think holds them back? Well, you're right. To some degree it's, it's, it's, it's the personality and, and again, a peer group, whether it's vestiges or anybody else's, is not for everybody. Part of our vetting process is to make sure that we're attracting and working with the right people. The most common objective, objection or pushback we get is time. I, I don't have the time for this. I'm too busy. I'm going in 6 million directions. I don't have time to go to lunch and you're asking me to spend in my case, 4 hours because I've got a small business group, but in many cases, most cases, a full day. And it's a valid concern, but when you take that concern and you put it back on the prospective members, and this is something that we do in our groups and have to really think about what they're saying, Well, how do you spend your time? And you literally have them tell you how they spend their time. And in, I would say 75% of the cases, the one thing that you don't hear them say is time to think, time to reflect, time to innovate, which quite frankly is a core. Responsibility of any CPO. So taking a day away from the office, away from the distractions, away from the fire drills to work on your business, to think, test your decisions, OK? If you aren't willing to invest a day, I would suggest that you're doing your company a disservice, and that argument will fly with some folks and it won't with others and with the ones that it does, we generally have them join the one that it doesn't. They go their merry way. Yeah, for a lot for a lot of people that, that's one of their first issues is I, I must be doing this wrong because I don't have time to turn around and, uh, you know, it's maybe that's an issue that they would want to process right out of the gate is what am I doing what we find is that by virtue of participating in these groups. Members learn techniques. They learn strategies for gaining back time, not putting out fires all the time, delegating more when possible, running a smoother operation so that they can create time, as it were, to work on the big picture, to work on strategy, to meet with important customers, things again that CEOs really ought to be doing instead of staying there and responding to 57 emails an hour. So Craig, how can a CEO who's intrigued by this idea get a more tangible feel for it? Well, the most direct way is to connect with a local chair in your community and attend a meeting. There is a process that we have which precedes that, as I said, you know, these are very confidential environments and so what we try to avoid very diligently to avoid is a merry go round where people come in and out. Trying it out as it were and some say and some don't. So there is a process that we have, uh, where, you know, a member would connect with a local chair. Those two would have a conversation if there's enough meat on the bone as it were, but typically they would either with another member of the group so that the chair can get a different perspective. A prospective member can get a member's take on the chair and the group dynamic, and at that point, if all things go, the potential member would be invited to attend and participate in because this is not this is not a come and watch situation. Come and participate in the group meeting. Right, and you know that's a really good point. Um, Visage is not for everyone and not everyone gets into visage, and it's very important that there's a process so that for instance, um, the, the chair of, you know, so that that a competitor of a member doesn't show up and make it awkward for the member. There's a whole, ah, there's a lot of thought and process and quality behind this organization. And part of that quality is having someone like Craig James as your chair. You you've put a lot of thought into everything you do, and I can tell that by how we prepared for this interview, Craig. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all the great attributes. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they're, if they'd like to talk with you directly about perhaps joining one of your groups? Well, I'll give you uh my contact information and for most of your listeners who will probably not be in the Boston area, uh, feel free to contact me and I can put you in touch with a local chair in your community, but my phone number is area code 781. 269-56 90 and my email address is james@vistisha V I S T A G E.com. And one more thing I would just like to plug before we wrap up here, Bill, there is a wonderful book that I'd like your members to consider getting. It's called The Power of Peers, and it was co-authored by a former CEO of Visti and a gentleman named Leo Battery. How the company you keep drives leaders, growth, and success, and it goes into more detail than we could in our 20 minutes here as to what these groups are all about, how they work, what makes them tick. So it's a pretty quick read and a valuable one in my opinion. Well, you've certainly given us a lot to think about and, ah, some great information on the power of peers, Craig, and thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you, and I look forward to, uh, following up with you and, and, uh, and talking again and seeing how everything's going maybe in a few months. OK, it was my pleasure as well though. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.