S9E03: Creating an employee-owned business, with Graeme Strachan (CEO, ViTL Solutions)

Richard Medcalf
Graeme, Hi, It's great to see you today.

Graeme Strachan
Thanks, Richard. I'm super excited. Actually, I love this.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, it's gonna be fun. We're gonna dive into you know, you're the founder and CEO of, of ViTL Solutions, which we'll get into what that's about and I know that you've had an interesting story of how that business came to be and I know that you've got quite an interesting vision for where you want to take the business. I'm looking to get into that today. What do you start just by explaining a little bit about what is ViTL and how do they scottish giant ended up in middle America?

Graeme Strachan
So, but ViTL was well, first off, I wonder three factors want to correct that before I get in trouble from the other two. Yes, I'm CEO, but I'm one of three founders. ViTL Solutions is a management consulting firm that specializes in services around mergers and acquisitions. So I own the it site it due diligence and post deal. It separation or integration work. We do we help companies build or improve their project management offices as well, or transformation management offices, etc. That's called our ex mo services and then lastly, we help our clients select and implement solutions, software solutions. So those are the three main areas mergers and acquisitions, ex Mo and system selection and implementation. Okay. We're a smallish company. We're not enormous but we do have a quite a big footprint just because of the way that the company is designed and built. We work a lot with partners and independent contractors, as well as our employee owners and I know we'll want to dive into the, you know, the kind of business model and why we do it that way and why we have employee owners as opposed to just employees.

Richard Medcalf
Right, got it and, and where are you based?

Graeme Strachan
Oh, sorry. Yeah, so the company is based in Denver, Colorado. I personally am based up in Silverthorne Colorado next to all the fantastic ski resorts that we have here and the hardline boats got to look in the silver lining of things, you know, all this new work from home stuff definitely enables us to, to live and work closer to where we actually want to be and you know, for me that's in the mountains.

Richard Medcalf
I need to ask you, right and what's wrong with Aviemore? Right?

Graeme Strachan
I do remember driving up to Aviemore years and years ago that you would you would see the cars coming the other way. You'd be like, Oh, no, it's rained out again. It's Snow has been rained off the hill or whatever. So yeah, a little bit more snow. Sure here. Yeah.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, if people listening anymore is where I learned to ski. It's a ski resort in Scotland. I spent a weekend there and I learned in a blizzard. Very cold.

Graeme Strachan
I have nothing against anymore and I say it's fantastic but no, I left. I left Scotland quite a few years ago, I started my career and back then it was Anderson Consulting. Now Accenture back in the late 90s. Done in London, met an American woman who's now my wife. We met in Paris on a project sounds very romantic. But if anyone's ever worked on a consulting project, you tend not it's not the most quite, it's often not the most glamorous buildings you end up with. We were in a little town south south of Paris, which wasn't very glamorous at all and, you know, kind of windowless offices. That's that's where we've met. So it's not quite as romantic as it sounds and being sometimes not very aware of myself back then I never one day even thought that I would move to America, American American movement, or even really thinking about the possibility of moving to America wasn't like it was a dream or anything but my wife is from Miami, from Florida and at some point, she wanted to move back to the States and I thought I could do that but I don't want to go to Florida. So like two good management consultants, we drew up a list of spreadsheet. Oh, yeah. It was a big spreadsheet of things that we wanted to get out of, you know, wherever we're going to live and it was a weighted scoring like we she had her waiting on my waiting on and then scored various cities around America against this. Denver came out on top and in 2018 to Denver, and taxes. So the proof is in the pudding. Right? It worked.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so tell me about it. You know? What, yeah, why did you decide to co found this right? Well, yeah, Satori there.

Graeme Strachan
We had, I would say it was it was a case of turning. It was a case of making lemonade out of lemons. If I'm being honest with you, myself and the other two founders were to another consulting firm, which was primarily owned by one person. It was a single founder. He still owns the bulk of the company. I mean, a large majority of the company The company was doing really well. At some stage, he'd asked me to take over CEO, we continue to do really well. But I don't think I realized there were some, probably some person wishes going on there, it certainly wasn't for me to dig into, he decided he needed to be gone out. And even I think having that ownership of the company not being involved in the day to day running made it very difficult for him. So he decided that he didn't even have time to sell it, he wanted just to go in. So he decided to shut the company down, not wanting our employees to have to go find new work, etc, we actually ended up buying the contracts from the old company. So we did an asset purchase agreement. But those contracts, being a percentage off the top for a certain amount of time. And we're able to offer employment to the vast majority of people who are at the other company. And so in a way, we lucked into it, we say we lucked into, I'm not a big believer in luck, you know, you make your own.

Richard Medcalf
You make it happen. Yeah, you made it make it happen. Yeah, you could have walked away and got another job or whatever, right? But you,

Graeme Strachan
Yeah. It wasn't like we had this big dream to go find a company, the opportunity presented itself to us and we jumped into it feet first a little bit scary, because we basically went to the bank and asked for a line of credit. We showed them our performance and everything in our projections and in a one hour meeting, we walked out with a handshake for a $300,000 line of credit, which was between the three owners on our own personal properties, etc. Because you know, the company is off at that point. So the only collateral is, is our own property. So having a personal wine to set up that that company was a bit scary, however, we had contracts. So when you find well, we'll be able to pay things back but that's the only funding that we've ever had and we paid that loan off pretty quickly and we're able to grow the company, the first six months or so was just okay, let's get everything set up. Let's run it like we were running before and then that was about July 2017 at the end of the year, or in q4, we'll do our strategic planning, and we'll decide what it is we want to be when we grow up. Right? What kind of company is it we're building? What do we want to achieve? What does it what is it going to feel like to work here? What culture? Do we want all of those questions? Because, honestly, the setting of the concealing of the company, we did it in a weekend and the whole thing took a week. It Right. crazy fast, Right? 

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, cause there was a transition to be made. Right? You can have...

Graeme Strachan
Kind of clients. Yeah. And it's interesting, actually and it was a good reminder for is that in the services world, so when professional services such as consulting, and probably many others, it really is all about your people, and how they serve your customers. Because we went to talk to our, you know, our customers and almost down to an individual, you know, the conversation went along the lines of hey, there's nothing to worry about. However, you know, this old company is going away, there's a new company, and all of our clients said, Well, I have the same team and Monday. You know, from Friday to Monday, we said absolutely no, like, I don't care what it's called. Because your team, the people that deliver for us, we love them, they're doing great work for us, as long as I get the same service and the same team, the same people. Yeah. And that's fantastic. Now, that gave us quite a strong indication about some of the values and some of the focuses we need to need to spend on the new company.

Richard Medcalf
Got it. So let's fast forward all the way to now controls the whole journey from where you were until now, what I wasn't keen about in this in this season is to really understand what's the mission that you're on. As as a leader, obviously, you've been an accidental entrepreneur, you know, you you kind of ended up as a business owner, you wasn't your plan. I've even found to be in the states who ended up marrying somebody I'm sorry, right? To be in France for 20 years and right. So so how would you describe the mission that you're on? Now? You know, as a business leader, what are you trying to create?

Graeme Strachan
There's a few, there's probably two or three things there. And our mission statement, I know that's not what you're asking about our mission statement as a company, is we exist to help business leaders achieve their vision. But then there's three, there's kind of three things we look at there. When we say business leader, obviously number one, we're talking about our clients. The reason a consulting firm, like us exists is to help them do something that they can't do on their own or they haven't been able to do that should tied to some kind of strategic plan or vision, so we help leaders achieve their vision. However, we also view our own employee owners as business leaders. So we also exist to help our employee owners achieve their own visions, and I'm not naive enough to think that In a small company like this, we can help all of our people achieve their visions within the confines of our company all of the time. So part of it, we have, like, you know, mentor mentee relationship model as well, internally. It's understanding what our people want to do with their lives, with their careers, etc. And it's okay that sometimes we're a stepping stone to that, that's okay. As long as we can enable them to just we're still leaning into our mission, right, as long as we enable them to do that in some kind of genuine way. Fantastic. Then the last one is, we also see community leaders, as business leaders as well. So how do we show up in the community? And how do we help, you know, not for profits or other community leaders? In primarily right now in Denver in the Front Range? How do we help them achieve their vision. So that's, there's a lot rolled into that one little statement, right. And personally, when we set up the company, and it was a little bit in reaction to how the previous company had had folded, I mean, even down to the kind of brass tacks of the operating agreement is written in such a way that it's very difficult for one person to put the company, etc, etc. But we wanted more longevity, more opportunity for our own people. So we made an employee on company, number one, everybody has the opportunity to participate in the ownership. And the idea is actually it's a multi generational company. But by that I don't mean my own family, my own kids, it's not strapping in sons, I mean, the people who work for us, we want to hire people who are interested in growing and developing this business ViTL Solutions into something bigger and better than an iron kid or other fighters ever could. So it's that old adage of hiring people who are smarter than you. But on top of that, giving them the opportunity and the line of sight to say, oh, I can continue to collect ownership as I grow here. And then let's say no, Graham retires, or Jimmy or was or entrepreneurs retire, that ownership gets rolled back into businesses, it's available to other people. So you know, when I eventually retire, or win the lottery, or get run over by a boss, or whatever it is that you know, makes me not be in the company anymore. I would like to think that the people who step up, whether it's a smaller percentage, it should be worth way more than my big percentage ever was, and having that kind of continuous thing, opportunities for people to grow and develop while serving our customers or clients that that's what excites me.

Richard Medcalf
So I just say, I love the fact that you built this, I mean, this ownership model into the business, because that does kind of put your money where your mouth is, right? It's easy to say we want to you know, give back to employees, we want to create opportunities, but in a sense, the ownership structure almost forces you to, to live that out at this point, right? Because yeah, and it takes in.

Graeme Strachan
It's, it's actually looking at the numbers right now we have to because of this, we have to do like an annual value, valuation, all that kind of stuff. Looking at some of the numbers right now, it is scary. When I look at it, say, Oh, wow, if this person left and that person left, that's a lot of money, we have to start paying people out. How do we make sure because this is I call it as well burning, you're burning your boats, I like to kind of paint myself into a corner sometimes good. We like to take your money where your mouth is. I know that if we as a company, underperform, do not have a good culture, don't have good employee engagement, etc. People will leave. Goodness, if they leave, we're going to have to shell out quite a lot of money to these employee owners to buy back their stuff. I'd better make sure as the CEO, that I create a wonderful place for people to work so that they don't, and we all know people leave from time to time, you're never going to get zero attrition ever. But how do I make sure that because of the position we deliberately put ourselves in, we're not hemorrhaging money, because people are leaving, because it's not a great place to work. So I love it sounds a bit weird. I love painting myself into those corners. So that I really need to think long and hard it It forces me to undertake certain actions that actually ended up bolstering the forum.

Richard Medcalf
It's interesting, I was thinking about a quote, I think I mentioned it on another episode recently, which was around from Jeff Bezos. He said, in the long term investor, investor requirements and customer requirements align, right, because I mean, the short term that they feel that they diverge, and it's a bit the same thing, you know, it's like, if you do the right things, the right long term things are gonna benefit the employees, and they're gonna benefit the business as a result and that kind of makes sense.

Graeme Strachan
It's, I think this quote has been attributed to a few people but I know that Richard Branson attributed to Richard Branson as well and I love this because if you look at his way before his time as well, I'm sure but if you look after your people, your people will look After customers. So I, that's great to me my absolutely if I if I, if we can make an environment with, you know, great culture, challenging work and work that people want to turn up to and perform, they're going to be much happier at a client site. Yeah and if they're much happier, including work for client, we're going to do good work and to do good work, guess what, our clients are going to buy more and it's building those virtuous cycles, right?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, some, it's, I mean, I love this. I love the fact that you know, you have this, they call it the multi generational approach, that you're actually trying to create a cycle where people can come up to the business, earn their way into it, and then exit at the right time and other people can come through. And I think it's really fascinating, in that you've built there. And then this building, the vote strategy is a way to almost say, you know, it's, to me, it's like, yeah, you create, create a mechanism that then almost creates the right behaviors or forces the right behaviors.

Graeme Strachan
Yeah, and meet the right behaviors. Me?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, Right. Yeah, that's fantastic. So at the moment, what would you say like, as you look at that vision, and everything be focusing on, you know, what energizes and excites you, and what drains you and slows you down, and you know, as a CEO, in this business.

Graeme Strachan
So my it's funny, my degree, my original degree, is in product design engineer. So I've got a master's degree in product design, engineering, sounds like it's got nothing to do with management consulting. And actually, just like we talked about earlier, I kind of accidentally stumbled into Accenture into management consulting in the first place. But what really energizes no ties all the way back to my original degree, being the CEO, is very similar to product design, in one respect, I'm building a company, I'm building a culture. I'm building a client base, you know, I'm not building a product, but the same thought process has to go into what is the voice of the customer? Whether that's our clients or people, or the local community? What are their needs? How can I build a company that satisfies those needs? And so for me, it's almost it's also coming full circle, you know, I did my degree, I never did something very different. And actually quite difficult for me, I must admit the whole management consulting thing be very structured and structured, you know, Project program management and my backgrounds. Like Lean Six Sigma is talking about structure and, you know, data and being precise, where's my natural behavior is gonna see it depends. So you've got this weird conflict between seat of the pants wanting to do you know, big fish and stuff, but having to be in the details to then come full circle to be in a seat, know where I get to design and build this organization, this living, breathing organization that achieves something is energizes me. No it. There are, however, because nothing's perfect. Some areas definitely do take energy away. We are a very ot culture, first organization, everything that we do every conversation have flows through, you hear us talk about our four culture tenets, it's kind of like our company values, right? You'll hear us talk about those things. So for us, we always have a big focus on culture. One of the things that takes energy away from me can sack me a little bit. I know, I've had a couple of occasions where I mentioned before we do partner with other companies to go into bigger projects, etc. We've had a couple of occasions where we've definitely, I'd say missed a trick or two, when determining who best to work with and really learned a hard lesson about it's not just about the skills that they can bring, it's about the combination of the two companies cultures working together. And you know, we had a very, very large project recently, for us, it's enormous, working with a partner company, who just did not share those values and having to be firefighting, because of strained relationship due to lack of culture, integration or similarities. We still have the same values that we did. And it was exacerbating because in my man, you know, I'm not always right. But you know, you like to think it's culture because it's the right thing to do. And it's amazing we're working with someone doesn't quite do it. It baffles me as to why they don't see things we the way we do. Clearly that's not right. And I'm sure they have the same conversations on their site, why can't vice will do things we did you know, that was draining.

Richard Medcalf
So, what would you recommend? How would you solve that problem next time? How would you actually try to get under the skin it's quite hard from the outside.

Graeme Strachan
It is but a little bit more care and time and attention the same to the same degree that we perform employee interviews is actually stepping through that with the client. You know, we use results sorts of things including predictive index, which is like a behavior assessment thing, you know, just to determine what kind of profiles people have, we don't say no to someone because of a profile helps us understand who they are so and how to manage people. But it would be the same for a client, it doesn't mean, because they don't have the same values as us, or the same company values written down or that we wouldn't work with them. It just means we have to understand how to manage things differently. So it's not a yes, no thing. It just means, hey, if we tend to work this way, and they tend to work that way, what's the bridge in the middle that enables us to work together? And how can we manage that better? So it's not it's not necessarily to say, I wouldn't work with that partner. If it was to do it. Again, it would be to help us manage it better. And that, so just doing your homework, do your diligence.

Richard Medcalf
Interesting, we need to come up with a few key use cases on those partnerships to ask the how they would want to work because I think that's when their values come off the page, right? Because all the paper parties look good on the paper, right? But right, actually, like what how would you manage this situation or this situation? I feel this choice. It's always in the do those hard choices, but this rally is really come out, doesn't it?

Graeme Strachan
Well, we did actually build as a result of that some high performing team tools that we would be run through now at the beginning of projects like that. So making sure that not as company to company, but as team to team. So we've, you know, we're doing the management layer, they're doing the technology, heavy lifting, okay, well, let's all get in a room and understand what the project is about, what's the vision of the project? How do we need to show up as a team? What are our team values, and are checking in on an ongoing basis to say, Hey, these are the four or five or six things and said, Where Are We Living? Then? How are we doing if not wanting to change? So it's all about expectation setting?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Great. So I'm just for sake of time, what are we let's move on, I'm always interested in these little quickfire questions that we have these days. To, to dive into, yeah, what's kind of what feeds you as a leader? So what's a favorite quote that you live by or you apply in your leadership or you find is distinctive for you?

Graeme Strachan
To do I already mentioned the one about looking after your employees, your players look after customers. So I'll think something different than the and it's this is a learn thing. For me, I did say earlier, it was kind of see the pants person. But this is a bit of a classic one, probably bit Sunsoo. every battle is won before it's fought. And I say that that's a learn thing for me, because it's a naturally more big picture, see the PET scan again? That to me, it's a good reminder for me that every time we start a piece of work every time I do something internally, like what's the outcome we're trying to achieve? What is the plan to get there? What happens if things go wrong art, just the example I gave about the teams? How do these two teams work together? Having a plan of having defined goals, and a plan to get there will always help us be much more successful than just a regular, go for.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's such a great point. A lot of leaders, you know, we're pretty me included, you know, we want to get ahead. When we have an idea, we want to go for it fast, right? And make thought moving. And just taking that time to really slow down and articulate what it is we're doing and why and what are the key steps?

Graeme Strachan
The less I guess, the less classy way of saying that is the six PS. Perfect planning prevents piss poor performance?

Richard Medcalf
Yes. Yeah, will you give for that one? If that's one title? What about a favorite app? Is there an app that you use that makes you particularly productive? Or that you know, really, you find gets you through the day?

Graeme Strachan
Yeah, I I'm a bit of a productivity junkie. I really, really am. And one of the things I it's actually one of the things I think I'm pretty good at, if you look at my calendar ever, it's probably only about 50%, full. One of my pet peeves is, you know, people are just like, Oh, they're double and triple booked all the time. You don't have to delegate or manage your time there. But one of the things that I found is using apps on my phone, I've used all sorts of productivity apps, the problem with apps and phone, your phone is a time sink, or can be a time sink if you're not careful. And I am very easily distracted. So it's not an app. It's such that I've actually shied away from productivity apps on my phone, right? Because every time I pick it up, I get sucked into other things, which defeats the point. Yeah, I actually recently got it's actually a physical clock called Time Timer. And it's, you can buy an eight inch block a 12 inch clock, it's a pretty big clock. And it has a it's like it's an analog clock with a kind of countdown timer from 60 to zero, and it will show red for your remaining time. And it goes down and it's visible and it's in front of you. And so when it's in front of me I can say well, this task took me 45 minutes. I adjust it to 45 hit start, and then I've got this visual in front of me that is shrinking. That is exactly how much time I have left. Not an app that's such a physical product, but it is a productivity tool that I use to great effect. Yeah,

Richard Medcalf
I love it. That's fantastic. I love it. Yeah, time time. It's a great, it's a good. It's a really good time timer. What's a book that's really influenced you?

Graeme Strachan
Trying to think of it because it isn't very obvious or cliche. I, it's funny I am, I think probably because my product design background, and because of my move into consulting, having to very clearly and succinctly communicate with clients and being a very visual, very visual thinker person, probably Edward Tufte, the visual display of quantitative information is it's kind of a seminal book around data and how you present data. Yeah, I think a lot of times, you know, being a management consultant, our clients often want us to be brief, be bright and be gone. So having the ability to communicate large quantities of data very succinctly into findings, it's incredibly useful. And although it's kind of an old school book, I mean, some of the diagrams are from Napoleon's march to Russia. And back, that's one of the best, by the way, if you have never, ever, ever seen the graphic for Napoleon's march to Moscow, and that best piece of information display ever, and so, you know, all of those things give you ideas about how to present data to see right.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, yeah, it's great. I've I have seen that what I've seen another similar book, and, and they're really quite, quite interesting. Yeah, it's, yeah. Can you see that? See it? Yeah. So um, okay, visual display of quantitative information. Thank you. What, what advice would you give your 20 year old self?

Graeme Strachan
That is suitable for this podcast. You know, this might sound strange starting to, but understanding compound interest, and applying it wherever you can. And I don't just mean in investments, I don't just mean I mean, absolutely, I probably back in my 20s should have put a lot more into my pension accounts, or 401k, etc. However, you know, look for other areas in your life, where you can invest time and energy that will give you that kind of compound return. So relationships, you know, your own health and well being and your learning and development. Because those things I liken them to compound interest are those things that I learned over time, they become more valuable to me, as you know, relationships is a great a great example, your relationship can grow exponentially. And as a consultant when running a company business developments, hugely important to us. So you know, how do I know years and years and years ago, I would have probably spent a lot more time I'm not in I mean, in a genuine way investing in relationships. Yeah, way. But I like to tie things back to that concept of compounding interest over time.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, yeah. building momentum. Yeah. I mean, I think in my own life, I think one of my professional regrets is that when I was in, in big corporate in Cisco, I didn't attend enough to, to all the relationships, because there's so much going on around me, it's easy just to work within your small little section. And that was a classic moment of, you know, sometimes what got me, you know, what got me here isn't gonna get me to the next level. And, you know, I'd consulting, I had a great career, and then I think I just left let that slide a little bit. And it's a shame. So I think you're right, I mean, front load, relationships, work for no knowledge is great. That's right, exactly. And the last question is really another one, as you might know, you do know, JT was Laurie Jones, who referred you, to me saying that you'd be a great guest for the podcast. And we had Laurie on a few months ago. And many of our guests do come from referral. So I'm always keen to know you know, who inspires you? Who's an impactful chief executive, who you've worked with as a client or as a as a as a as a boss or as a manager or somebody in your network, you know, who you think might be, you know, who inspires you it might be a great guest for this kind of show.

Graeme Strachan
I can fit So it's not a client. And it's not someone I've ever worked with. It's someone I grew up with. And so his name was Brian woods. And Brian started a, he started out. And he was a rep for spirits companies when he worked at Diageo and ended up setting up his own business. Because he's a friend, we never actually talked that much about business. And I'm always very, very intrigued how he's managed to do what it is that he has done, because he has built and sold and built and sold and now does a lot of consulting. And honestly, it's probably for nothing more than my own personal inquisitiveness, because whenever I'm home in Scotland, you know, we tend to go to the pub and hang out, we don't talk shop. So I'd love to hear him on a podcast talking about his business real success that he has. Yeah,

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, it's great. Finally, it's one of my favorite, it's pretty my favorite question. No matter how much we've achieved, there's always a next level to get to. So where do you want to go as a business? What's the next level for that company?

Graeme Strachan
The next level for that company is is quite honestly, with you're probably after I'm gone because and it goes back to talking about hiring that next generation of people to take over. Like you said, you know, what, got me here won't get me there and I think that's the same for the business, what got the business here, probably won't get it there. I can paint that picture of where we think there can be, I can guarantee, I'm going to have a few moments that I go, Oh, can I do that? Am I capable of that? Or do I need to look to these other people that we have hired brought up to achieve those next things and, you know, there are other things outside of work that I want to do as well, I'm not talking anything imminent, but I don't look at it necessarily as what's next for the company, what's next for the company after I'm gone, what's next for my life, not may or may not be in what we do now and so honestly, a lot of my time, it links back to the productivity thing as well. A lot of my focus these days is on how can I free up time and change the way that I work to do more of what I love doing. So you know, designing and developing this company is one thing over today's family. My wife loves to travel. My parents are at home in Scotland. So how can I have my cake and eat it? How can I continue as far as I can grow and develop this company, but bring more joy into my life by you know, working remotely or bringing other people to take on other pieces of the business? Or you know, just put my foot down and say actually, you know what, no, today, I'm bad example. But today I'm going to go snowboarding, which I'm very, very bad at.

Richard Medcalf
It's interesting that you answered my other question, which was what are you? What were you personally need to do differently to multiply your own impact? And we're really getting there was really interesting and you said freeing yourself up, right? And I'm reading a book? Yeah, I've written it, it's, I was just with the editor today, it's about freeing yourself up for strategic activity, right for the ninth level and it's always, it's always that shift, I just see it in all my clients, it's always the shift and, bizarrely or counter intuitively, it's what you said, it's actually, I think it comes from doing less. I've said it many times in podcasts, I have a little snail on my desk, you can probably see it there. A little snail to remind me to slow down to speed up and what happens is we build our careers by saying yes to everything, by getting into opportunities, by taking on and by learning and by and by just being all the action and it gets to a stage where actually we don't need all that actually, it's about the couple of is the critical few things. It's moving the you know, changing this, what's the one phone call that can make all the difference? What's the one thing and he's changing the business? That's gonna release everything else. Right? And it's, it's hard because we get used to the the adrenaline and the sense of being needed and feel guilty. You know, like, you know, today, I didn't have a actually it was a busy day for me today. But I went and read a book and it was literally I probably spent it was not lonely like 20 minutes, but you know, but even after the first five minutes are feeling guilty, you know? Because, because it's like, the middle of the day and I got all the things I could be doing and I'm reading a book but usually that's where you get insight that's where you join the dots.

Graeme Strachan
We're so programmed to have to It's like your more success if you work more hours and all this silliness, quite frankly and yeah, I find it difficult as I was joking about, you know, snowboarding or you know, just taking some time Just today I'm looking at my Windows node about six inches. Ideally, I should start with snowboard on and go up the break can become rigid here. So if you're guilty and doing it however, I know that if I'm out in my own snowboarding, as a CEO as the person in charge, it's the vision of the company clarity of thought. and I can often do that. emails come in phone calls happen meetings happen, you need that headspace, but overcoming the guilt is the single hardest part because we're so wired. We're so wired in the western world just to like,

Richard Medcalf
Always be doing Yeah. Well, on that note, I'm gonna stop it there. So you can go snowboarding or go back to work. So hey, Graham, it's been great speaking with you. I've really enjoyed hearing about that founding story, how you were able to, you know, where you became an accidental business owner and then your strategy of painting yourselves in the corners to make yourself do these do the right things, to build this employee owned business that actually got potential to kind of continue and multiply across generations as new people come in, and do that and I'm probably going to get myself a Time Timer and yeah, it's been a great discussion. So thank you kind of for your for your warmth and for your insights.

Graeme Strachan
Thank you Richard. I say the beginning. I always love these things and honestly, it's because I think I learned probably more about myself than then people are listening to the podcast. I love to you know, it's not always 100% altruistic. I love it because I do learn as well myself.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect.

Graeme Strachan
Thank you.

Richard Medcalf
Well, thanks so much, and stay in touch.