Tim Robinson - CEO of AgencyBloc: Private Equity Transformations, Integrating Acquisitions, and Managing a Leadership Team

Tim Robinson  00:00

I remember the CEO sitting down with me and saying, "Okay, your world is gonna be different now. You know, it's one thing to be a manager, director, or vice president, but as soon as you step into the C-suite, there's just a different set of pressures and a different way that you need to apply yourself to be successful."

Callan Harrington  00:20

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Tim Robinson. Tim is the CEO of AgencyBloc. AgencyBloc is the leading insurance industry growth platform serving the health benefits and senior insurance space. Prior to AgencyBloc, Tim was the COO of WorkWave, COO of FMG Suite, and COO of CII. I learned a ton from this conversation. Tim's current position and the three COO positions I mentioned previously were all at private equity-backed companies. And for our listeners that are unfamiliar with what that means, a private equity company is an investor who purchases a company with the intention of growing it and making it more profitable so it can be sold again in three to five years. So, in other words, you have to both clean things up and grow it very quickly. And as you can imagine, the pressure for the people that are operating that company is often very, very high. And we dove into all of this in the episode. We went into what the typical life cycle of a private equity portfolio company is, how that private equity investment impacts the business, and most importantly, what it takes to be successful in leading that kind of company. And Tim is the perfect person to have this conversation with, because this has really been his career, and it's a great spot to get to. And in my eyes, this is just a great listen for any leader in general, but even more so if you're owned by private equity, thinking about taking on private equity investment, or if you want to work for a private equity portfolio company, he gives a very real picture on what that's like. So, with that, let's jump into the show. Tim, welcome to the show.

Tim Robinson  02:41

Callan, thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:42

I thought we would start out by getting a little background on your story. How did you get into private equity?

Tim Robinson  02:50

Fifteen years ago, I was living in Denver, Colorado, and was Vice President of Operations for a small software company there. You know, it was a sub-$5 million business, so not an incredible amount of complexity, but at some point, we took on a majority investment from a private equity group. It was K1 Capital. It was their first majority investment that they had made in any business, really. So, that was where I found out about private equity. I went out, got Barbarians at the Gate, figured that was the way I'd get up to speed on private equity. I don't know, probably 30 hours of my life that I could get back trying to read through that book. But no, it was really fascinating to me. Within an hour of acquiring our business, they acquired our largest competitor. And the reality is we had very similar customer bases, very similar revenue profiles, but we were run quite differently. We were a pretty lean-run organization. And so, the decision was, "Well, this must be the team that can run an efficient business, so this is going to be our platform business." So, very quickly, we learned a lot about how to do the integration work. I mean, we were literally starting from scratch, putting together spreadsheets, trying to think about what it would take to bring together the two customer bases, the employees, you know, having to sunset the other office that was on the East Coast, all those things. And it was the first time that the K1 team had gone through it as well. It was really, I think it was a team of four. It was the founding partners that were in the equity group, so not a ton of resources there. And we figured a lot of things out in a very quick manner. I think we went on over the course of the next 30 months or so to make four more acquisitions. So, what I would say is, by the end of that, we had the DNA in the organization. We absolutely understood what it took. But what was really fascinating about it is that the whole organization, the equity group, was learning a lot of things about mergers and acquisitions as well. Prior to that, I really had not been clued in on private equity or, you know, I understood venture capital, private equity, and public markets and those things, but not necessarily what it meant to be an operator. Within a couple of months after the investment, I went from a VP of Operations to being a Chief Operating Officer. And I remember the CEO sitting down with me and saying, "Okay, this is your world, it's going to be different now. You know it's one thing to be a manager, director, or vice president, but as soon as you step into the C-suite, there's just a different set of pressures and a different way that you need to apply yourself to be successful." I think I've been very fortunate to have had some really great mentors and coaches throughout my career. When I look back over the last 15 years, the CEOs that I have worked for have really developed me a lot. I've learned a lot, and I'd like to think that it's been the same.

Callan Harrington  06:04

Let's talk about a couple of the things that you had mentioned. You know, I think one of the things that's really interesting is with the private equity-backed companies. Just so for our listeners, you know, when you think of investment within a company, you've got venture capital. Venture capital is typically looking to sell the company or IPO in 10 years, and then you have private equity, which is really three to five years. When they buy a company, they want to make their changes with their investment, and buy other companies, and make a really sound, profitable business, and sell that in three to five years. And what I think's really interesting about that is that they had the conversation with you that, okay, the pressure's gonna get real. And tying that back, you've gotta exit in three to five years. Walk us through. What is that pressure? Is the pressure on? We've gotta get this thing organized. We have to grow this. Is it all of those, plus finding deals? What does that look like? 

Tim Robinson  07:05

Yeah, there's a couple ways to look at it, and it depends on the model and the path. You know, I agree with venture capital versus private equity. And then within private equity, you could even bifurcate it and say, there's the growth stage, which is kind of that merging of VC and PE, and then you kind of get a little more mature in the private equity model, which is more about EBITDA, a combination of EBITDA contribution and revenue growth. Whereas in that kind of growth stage, you're focused on, let's grow this business. Let's do it responsibly, obviously. And what I've found is that being really clear about what the investment thesis is, why did the private equity or why did the venture group make the investment in the business originally, and it's okay. It's actually very common that they're not going to nail it 100%. You just can't. You can only learn so much about the business before you decide to move forward and make the investment. But they have a pretty high degree of confidence when they're making the investment, that they'll be 70-75% dialed in, and there's gonna be that 25% that'll just evolve over the first six or nine months as you get a lot more learnings around the business. Call it 12 months. And as an executive, you can't be too rigid, because again, through those learning cycles, things are going to change. And it comes in the form of, if you're making acquisitions, and you're going to typically make some of those acquisitions pretty early out of the gate from the investment in the business, because early on, there's less focus on EBITDA, because you're trying to continue or increase the revenue growth. Right? It's very typical to invest in the go-to-market, so sales and marketing organizations, at the same time you'll be seeking acquisitions, right? Inorganic growth levers that you can pull as well. So, you're investing in sales and marketing, you may be maturing the leadership team as well, bringing in people that have experience and have seen it and done it before. So, you're making an investment there, and then you're also investing in the diligence and finding those other complementary businesses and getting those across the finish line. So, it's a challenging period, because there's a lot of demands on your time and your energy, because you're trying to manage the core team through something that they most likely have not been through before. You're trying to onboard acquired businesses and their team members who may never have gone through that type of activity before. And at the same time, you're trying to operationalize or platform the business, trying to mature it so that, what are the best metrics that we should be using to manage this business? What do we think success will look like, from our LTV to CAC calculations, all those kinds of things around go-to-market? Because you have to start to show a return. That first stage is no joke. I mean, it is a lot of demand, and it's a lot on the people side, and it's just a lot of work to put the proper process in place, as well as proper measurements. Going from being in management into an executive role, that's where there's a real transition. Because in a management role, you're concerned about the overall business, but you're really focused on your core department, your core team, or teams. Right? When you get into the executive role, you're having to look out across the whole organization. It's a lot more about aligning people into the right departments and teams, into the right roles in the right spots in the organization, so you can ensure success in those early days. In some cases, you're going to have to make the difficult decisions to offboard some team members as well. Not in all cases, but, you know, there's just some team members that may not be along for the ride, and they miss what they had before. So, there's all these dynamics that come into play, and you just have to, I think you have to have a calm head and you have to be willing to respond and react to the changes that are happening in the business. Maybe a competitor is really leaning in on the fact that there may be disruption in the business because of the acquisition. Customers may feel disrupted by that as well, and you're also managing the expectations of the investor, right? Of the private equity group as well. So, you're kind of sitting at the center of all these various stakeholders, which is multiplied from when you're just oversimplified, but when you're just an operator or an executive in a privately held business or a business held by a founder. I definitely know that feeling of when you go from, you know, being a manager to an executive, right? Where as a manager, it's also just, hey, we need this. We need this. We need this for us to be successful. When you become an executive, you start to understand those trade-offs a little bit more. Like, yeah, we do need to invest more in the product team, because when we're looking at this two to three years, we need another product, or whatever that might be. So you understand kind of the delegation of resources a little bit better. You mentioned this first stage and how important that first stage here is when you first go into a new company, private equity company, brings you in at the executive level. You're CEO of the new company. What are you doing? What are you doing right from the get-go? Even pre-landing in an organization or in a company, I do a lot of research. I do, you know, just what can be found publicly, and looking for competitors, commentary, Glassdoor to get an idea, or whatever flavor, see what the culture is like from the outside, and then leaning very heavily on board decks, investment thesis docs that were put together prior to the investment. So, you're a student. I mean, you just have to immerse yourself, and it's very helpful to have either a senior person or more senior person, or very well-versed person on the business at the private equity group partnering up with you as well, so that you're asking a lot of questions. You know, they're giving you the narrative, and then you can come back and say, "Hey, by the way, I read through X, Y, and Z. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?" And that really helps the startup time, because when you drop in, the team members are looking at you and trying to determine, "Alright, who is this person, and are they all in on this?" Because you're typically, well, you're replacing either a founder or a CEO that had left for whatever reason that was not the founder. And so, you have to understand that dynamic too. What was the rationale for the previous CEO leaving? You also need to understand the leadership team in the new organization. And that sounds really simple, but getting to know that team very quickly, and just having one-on-ones with them, even before you land, if possible, is really helpful, because they all have perspectives. And again, they're trying to understand who you are, what it's going to mean to their role in the organization. They're generally very passionate about the organization. That's why they're there. They want to ensure that the company is going to be successful with the new leader joining. And so, again, just asking a lot of questions, having conversations, and just starting to get to a place where you can see some patterns, you can digest the information, then you come back and say, "Hey, this is what I'm seeing. Is this accurate? Can you correct me?" I've found that being humble, you know, the team in the business knows more about the business than you do, so you can't come in. I mean, whatever business book you read, right? Like The First 90 Days or one of those, you're not going to come in and say, you know everything and make a bunch of changes in the organization, because that's a surefire way to have the team distrust you and really make your life difficult. And B, you don't know. You don't know, even if you've seen similar patterns before. You have to let it play out. 

Callan Harrington  15:11

You mentioned that, how some of the patterns, it's not necessarily going to be the same patterns. You know, one of the questions was, I think it was an Andy Grove question of, you know, if we were to hire a CEO to come replace us, what would their first moves be? Are there things that you see that are pretty common when you go into a business where you're like, well, here's one of the things that when we come in, we know that we can make some quick changes and get some quick wins?

Tim Robinson  15:41

It's an interesting question, and a great question. Where is the business on the maturity curve? Because if this is the first institutional money in, you have to understand, what does the organization look like before? What is the CEO or, if there are co-founders, like? Any role in the organization. Generally speaking, CEOs come in many flavors, so maybe it is specific to the CEO role, but you can have those that are passionate about the product. That's why they got in and built the business. They just felt like they could build a better mousetrap, and they're all in on it. They may not be the best at the financials, right? Because they've been so focused on building the better mousetrap. You have those that absolutely are passionate about selling. I mean, they get up in the morning, and they are all about getting the next deal done, right?

Callan Harrington  16:31

Guilty as charged.

Tim Robinson  16:36

You know, that's where you get this great energy, right? You come in with these organizations, and, you know, like yourself, just great energy, and I love it. But that may not have all the details covered. So, an example might be, you have that sales-oriented, somebody who's just excited to go out, and frankly, you need to early on, right? You got to be able to invest in the business, and you need revenue to do that. But what you'll find is that there's not typically a discipline in the engineering or product organization, because it's been a very sales-focused org. Okay, great. Well, we probably have 50,000 flavors of the same product out there, so we need to understand how we can rationalize that, but we also need to close the barn door of the gate so we don't keep doing more of that, right? So, maturing the organization there. If it's someone that's very product-focused, they may not have reached real commercial scale because they've been trying to create the best product, just constantly tweaking to create the best product. They're not the best at selling. They're passionate about the product, but they get blinded to the fact that, well, it'd be great if the product did these 50 other things that it doesn't do today. So, in those cases, okay, let's figure out, is there a really good, strong commercial fit today? But let's get the go-to-market engine going. What's our value prop? What's our sales playbook? Who's our target customer? Doing all those things. So, what I really enjoy about this type of work is, you see, it's usually strongly one way or the other, but it's not so strong that the rest of the pieces are falling apart. I've seen it where we bought a business, the founder, very charismatic, did an amazing job, but really didn't understand the financials. And so, when you say, you realize you're pretty much writing a check into this business every month, and they're like, "I had no idea." So, you start to have this conversation around cash flow and stresses and pains and all those things. So, it's actually, for me, it's incredibly rewarding to go out. And then when you start to pull the leadership team together and start to highlight what the key initiatives should be out of the gate and get their buy-in. And then you start to see the improvements happen in the organization. You know, even something as simple as, okay, what's our GTM dashboard, right? What are our sales and marketing metrics? Let's get that up. Maybe they don't know what their LTV to CAC ratios are, whatever it might be, starting to pull that and then starting to show what best in class looks like, maybe around retention rates. It's just a big toolbox.

Callan Harrington  19:13

It sounds like a good CEO going into a private equity-backed company is somebody that's a good conductor. They're very good at managing capital and allocating resources efficiently. Is that right?

Tim Robinson  19:30

As a CEO, you still need to have a really great understanding of the business, but you're doing a lot of it by inspection. Are you comfortable with the approach? Are you comfortable with the outcome? Are your team members aligned with the expectations for the outcome? I think that's a real opportunity where CEOs absolutely should be leaning in, which is, hey, if we're going to embark on this investment or, you know, this initiative, what are we expecting to get out of it? And I think that's incredibly helpful. And I think generally it's probably a bit annoying initially, because you're asking a lot of questions, and people are like, "Oh, gosh, this sucks. He's just going to ask me 50 questions." Then you start to see they start to expect the questions. And it just comes naturally, this forming of the team and playbooks and how they approach things. So, once you start to get that stabilization, you can start to spend a little more time looking out ahead, right? So, if you're starting to work through your three-year vision, and a lot changes in three years, but you have to have some North Star acquisitions, investing in the leadership team, getting the systems consolidated. Yeah, there's nothing more enjoyable than running five different instances of QuickBooks. You know, any finance leader, they love it, so, right? But you're doing all those things in those first three years-ish, so that in the last two years, you're really doing the refinement, and you're shifting to a better EBITDA or profit profile in those last two years as well. So that should the time come, when the time comes to recap or sell the business, you have a nice, healthy profile.

Callan Harrington  21:25

Of that first three-year period and the last two-year period, what phase do you like more and why?

Tim Robinson  21:32

So, I'll give you a lame answer. I like both, but for different reasons. How about that?

Callan Harrington  21:37

I'm going to follow up for sure.

Tim Robinson  21:40

Right. I call it lame because you asked me to pick one, and I didn't. So, the first three, I love the building phase. I love learning, digging in, and then building a team that's on board, gets it. I've seen what an impact having the right team on the field, or whatever analogy you want to use, can do. It transforms what you can do as an organization, and it's a lot of fun. And that earlier period, again, if it's a smaller business, may not have really good formal metrics, operating metrics, so starting to put that in, and then starting to look at the trend over that three-year period, and you're watching, oh, we're getting better on our CSAT. We're getting more efficient in our sales activities, right? And so, watching that trend over time, and then sitting back with the team and going, this is what all of us have done. So, this is an amazing accomplishment. So, I love the building phase.

Callan Harrington  22:40

Before you go to the backside, I'm actually curious on that. How do you put together that team? Are these people that you've known, you've worked with for years? Does the private equity company help put these positions in place? But how do you form that team?

Tim Robinson  22:58

Part of it is the initial assessment right when you land. What does the team look like today? In some cases, team members will have been leadership, will have been placed already by the investors, by the private equity group. But typically, they know they're going to replace the CEO. They'll pause and wait because, as you said, there may be some team members in your network, on the bench, whatever, that you can deploy. I would say generally, the private equity group is a great assist in finding talent because they usually have a recruiting team or a relationship with recruiters, and it's just incredibly helpful because they're there to support both, allow you to cast as broad a net as possible, but also ensure that you're only interviewing the top candidates, right? So, you're not doing a lot of the early-stage activities, which can just burn up a lot of time. I would say, generally, the private equity groups have a pool of executives that they've just known, either they've worked with through co-portfolio companies, or they've just been kind of nurturing through their networks. But ultimately, if it's the right private equity partner, they're going to leave the decision to you to say, is this a good fit? And the way I think about this, Callan, is that especially with the CFO, COO, and CEO roles, they need to be complementary to each other. So, based on the CEO's style, will determine what you'll look for in a COO. If you don't have a COO, like in my current situation, I just placed a CFO who's great. He's got a pretty heavy operations background, so it's CFO first, but with the ability to play a COO role, which is great, and with my COO background, it just works really well for our size business today. And so, I think what it is is understanding, right, being truthful with yourself. As a CEO, what are my strengths, and what are my opportunities, weaknesses, where I can complement, right? Who do I want on the team to complement me? And I think that's important. You have to keep the ego in check. And you know, the sooner you figure out what you're great at and what you suck at, the more fun you'll have and the easier it'll be.

Callan Harrington  25:19

This question might dovetail into the second phase, but what is it? And you mentioned how important the team is, but what do you think of what's the biggest difference maker within these companies? You've got a short time to do this, right? Three to five years is not a long time to make a significant difference. Now, you know you are getting a lot of investment, sure, but what is the real difference maker in these companies that are successful at doing those versus those that are not?

Tim Robinson  25:46

A couple of things. One is, you have to have the discipline to make those courageous decisions sooner than later. When you've done it long enough, your intuition, your gut, is a pretty good indicator or barometer for, you know, is this team gelling? Is this the right team or the right team members? Right? And so, to answer your question directly, relying on that and ensuring that, call it what it is, there's got to be good chemistry amongst that team. And I think we've seen it in sports teams, right, where you may not have all the best players on the team, but you have incredible results, and I've seen that play out. And it's not to take anything away from the leaders, it's just where maybe they're earlier in their career, or they haven't had a ton of experience, and that's been the limiting factor, right? But when the four or five leaders and the broader team come together, great things happen. So, I think it's being really intentional about that. And I also, you know, something that I've learned in the later part of my career here is, it's one thing to have good relationships, good interpersonal skills, but equally important is when the time is needed. Can you have the direct, constructive conversations? Can you provide feedback? Can you—and that goes for your team members too, right? They need to understand how to manage upwards. How do you do that effectively? When you bring those things together, you get trust, which is important. At some point, the leader, usually the CEO in the room, has got to say, "You know what? I've heard all the points, and I really appreciate you guys coming to the table with an open mind and being engaged to drive a constructive conversation, but I feel very strongly about going this direction, so I need to know that you are aligned and will support the decision. To be fair, we'll revisit this decision if it's not panning out the way we expect it. I'll open the door back up again." Being able to get to that place with a team is so important.

Callan Harrington  28:02

I love that last thing that you just said, in that you are open to revisiting. I don't know. I've never thought about it like that and making that upfront. Do you put a time on the calendar of like, "Hey, we're going to take a look at this, and here are our KPIs that we're tracking towards to see if this was a good decision, and in three months, we're going to regroup and take a look at how this is going." Or is that part of your weekly leadership team cadences? What does that look like in practice?

Tim Robinson  28:30

Yeah, in an ideal world, it would be some timeline, you know, like three months. It depends on the size of the project and the impact on the business, might be three months, might be six months, but I'm a firm believer in daily stand-ups with my leadership team, especially in a virtual world. You know, it's just the reality of it. And then we have more focused bi-weekly meetings where we provide updates very specifically on the initiatives and just what's happening on revenue performance and other things. And in those sessions, it's going to come out that it's not tracking well or not tracking to expectations, to your point on the metrics. And that's when you just have to have the discipline to say, "Alright, guys, we've gone through a couple of sessions here. Looks like this is underrunning compared to what we had originally planned on. Let's get a meeting on the books, and let's make sure that, hey, our assumptions were accurate. Should we still make this investment? And let's revisit the original decision to see if we need to go a different way." And having that discipline, in my opinion, makes the difference from being an average to being an excelling organization.

Callan Harrington  29:43

It makes so much sense, because when you make these big changes, whether it's an investment, a pivot, a new product, whatever it might be, it's hard to detach the emotions from it, right? And when you're talking about the discipline, that just makes all the sense in the world. What does that 15-minute huddle look like? I'm super curious. What's the structure of it? What are you asking? What does that look like?

Tim Robinson  30:06

Yeah, you know, it's kind of the classic. You don't want to get into the problem-solving space there. I've run it a couple of ways, you know? I had one which was more classical. Okay, everybody go around, give their update. But really, what I've transitioned it to is opening up. I might have one or two things that I just want to make the group aware of, either conversations with our board or a strategic partner that I talked to, or something like that. And then I open it up like, "Alright, what's the topic? What do you guys got going on?" Either something that's a challenge, and it can be good news as well, right? And what's funny is, Monday mornings are slow, because coming off the weekend, you got the cobwebs, right? So, I try and bring a little more energy, a little more activity to that one. So, I probably cover more of that meeting myself, just because people are getting into their week. But by Tuesday, it's really fascinating, the things that can get uncovered in those sessions in that brief amount of time. It's just a good way. I mean, we do it. Bulk of the team is central, so we do like, 8:30 Central, 9:30 Eastern, and it's just a great way to get the day started. A from, okay, let's get moving, let's get engaged. Let's talk about, what are the most important things happening in the business right now? And it can be anything from, "Hey, there's a team member that's not quite working out at a high enough level," or "Hey, we finally filled those two roles we've been trying to fill." Or, like you mentioned, "We're not seeing what we're expecting out of this project. We're seeing a little bit of slip. It's due to X and Y." And what I've found is that that format has been really good, because when I was going around and doing that, everybody did their report out. It's hard for people when they don't have anything to report on, to not say anything, so they just go down in the weeds on something that's just not relevant, right? Like, "Yeah, I walked the dog this morning. I'm on my second cup of coffee." So, people might argue with the format, but I think having that looser agenda, now you have to be a bit of a facilitator. So, you can't be passive as the leader in that group. You've got to be a facilitator.

Callan Harrington  32:12

Yeah, I think what you mentioned about in a remote environment, I've been doing daily 15-minute huddles for years now, because I think it's just such a great way to keep that drumbeat on the team. Yeah, so, yeah. And in a remote environment, I don't know how you do it without it, personally.

Tim Robinson  32:27

Just last quick thing. The group I recently joined, they've been doing a huddle, but just not on the strict daily cadence. And we kind of joke about it now, like, "Really, another meeting?" And then I could see the body language the first week, probably the first three mornings, and then by the second week, they're like, "Okay, yeah, we get it. This is actually pretty great." So, it's nice to see those things, you know?

Callan Harrington  32:53

Well, the reality of it is, and if you do it efficiently, you do it right. And I totally agree about the facilitator, and it's setting the expectation upfront. It's like, "Hey, sometimes I may cut you off, right? It's not that I don't want to hear what you have to say. It's just in order to get this done in 15 minutes, because nobody wants us to go longer than 15 minutes and be efficient with this, we have to stay on track." You will cut down on your overall number of meetings, for sure, right? Have you found that to be the case?

Tim Robinson  33:21

I have. I think it's especially when you're in the mix and getting, you know, a number of cross-department initiatives or projects done. Yeah, you're having formal meetings, but they're not every day. Typically, in those things, they're popping up maybe once, twice a week. This helps fill that in, so that, as leaders, you're not going, "Well, I don't know if marketing's got the product launch activities dialed in," or "I wonder where we're at with that email campaign," or "Are we going to hit the date?" Right? Like all those things. It takes that off the table, because you're not waiting so long to get these updates.

Callan Harrington  33:59

Tim, the last question I have for you is, if you could have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be, and what advice would you give him?

Tim Robinson  34:11

Yeah, I started out in sales, so you know what type of founder I would be. I would be a nightmare for the product and engineering team. And the other thing, Callan, is I grew up moving all over. We moved every two or three years. Dad was at the same company for a number of years, and so I leaned pretty heavily on being able to connect and build relationships quickly with people, which is great. If I were to go back to my 20s self, I would say, "You know what? It's great to connect with people. It's great that you really genuinely enjoy hanging out, meeting people, getting to know about them, connecting with them. But that's only one piece of the equation. You have to also be able to manage the relationship." And I would certainly say it's very cliché, but it is all about the people. But it's not just building friendships and, you know, amicable relationships. It's building trust, which comes with being willing to have the open and difficult conversations in a constructive—and I keep using—in a constructive way, because you have to be cognizant of how it's being received.

Callan Harrington  35:28

I think I struggled with the same thing, especially when I was a new leader. I really struggled with it, and looking back at it now, sure, it was probably a need to be liked and, you know, wanting to be friends with everybody, exactly what you said. And the reality is, unless you're having those deeper conversations, those are typically going to come from having tough conversations and getting past that, right? And I agree, and the longer you push those off, the harder it becomes.

Tim Robinson  35:59

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Callan Harrington  36:00

 Tim, this has been a blast. Learned a lot, still probably have 500 more questions, but I appreciate you coming on.

Tim Robinson  36:07

Really great talk with you today.

Callan Harrington  36:09

Absolutely. Thanks, Tim. Take care.

Tim Robinson  36:11

Alright. You too.

Callan Harrington  36:17

I hope you enjoyed Tim and I's conversation. I thought it was an excellent breakdown of what it takes to lead a private equity-backed company. If you want to learn more about Tim, you can find him on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you can find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.