Building Better Leaders in Private Equity with Ann McCloskey

0:09Welcome to the Karma School of Business, a podcast about the private equity industry, business best practices, and real-time trends. I'm Sean Mooney, Blue Ways founder and CEO. In this episode, we have an awesome conversation with Ann McCloskey, Managing Director with Excel KKR. Enjoy.

0:33I am super excited to be here with Anne McCloskey. Anne, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here with you. This is going to be a really, I think, insightful and fun one. Insightful because one of the things that never ceases to amaze me is from our business, we get all these calls for AI, AI, AI. Every day we get multiple times of that calls from private equity firms for people. and that always has been the case and always will be the case. No matter how much the world changes outside, it's the people that drive things. One of the reasons I was really excited to coerce and convince Anne to join us here is because she really gets people, certainly more than my linear logical self coming from the deal side of PE.

1:16So I'll just point that to the me, not to the others. And so Anne, this will be fun. Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. Looking forward to it. All right. Well, why don't we jump in? I'd love to start these by just kind of getting the story view. So can you share kind of like where you grew up, college, and then ultimately how you got into this industry called private equity? Absolutely. It's a little bit of a windy road. Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. So go Bears. And I went to Northern Illinois University. Undergrad is in finance and accounting. So did not start out thinking I was going to get into the people business, but was lucky enough, early in my career, I worked at trading desk.

2:00I was an auditor. I was a controller. Happened to work for an organization where when you got to be a senior vice president, they gave you an executive coach. And my executive coach looked at me, thank you, Kathy Van Berkham, and said, you're an OD person. And I said, I don't even know what that means. I don't know what that is. What are you talking about? And she said, you love to come in. You want to fix the people. You want to fix the process. And then you get bored and you want to move on to the next thing. And I was like, yes. So I went back to school, got my master's in organizational development and coming out of my master's program, hung a shingle to be an independent consultant.

2:36And 2008 hit and all of my amazing clients picked up the phone and said, the economy has crashed. We can't have independent consultants anymore. And I was a single parent of a seven-year-old. And so it was a little bit of a panic. So I got a call from an organization, much like Blue Wave. And they said, hey, we've got this great group of guys who are doing this interesting thing with software, and they're looking for somebody to build training programs. And I was like, great, I can do that. Will it pay my mortgage? Yes. Lo and behold, I got introduced to the great group of guys that happened to be Vista Equity Partners.

3:12When I joined Vista Equity Partners, I think there were probably six companies in the portfolio. And they were moving from having the investment team doing things like building out training programs to building in resources so that the investment team could work on investments and practitioners could work on the actual operational transformation. After a year and a half, my boss at the time looked at me and said, you don't like any of your other clients as much as you like us. And I said, that's true. That's how I joined Vista Consulting Group. So I ended up in private equity quite by accident.

3:47It's an amazing path. And that happens more and more, but certainly not necessarily in the early chapters of PE. And so accounting and finance as a kid, did you have like a family member or mentor that said like, hey, you should go into this? My mother was a CPA. My mother was a good person. She's one of my heroes. Absolutely. And so I thought, okay, my mother is a good person. She's an accountant. I want to be a good person. So I'm going to become an accountant. I always say why we ask 18-year-olds to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives is mind-boggling. But actually, I'm really, really happy that I have that grounding in, I can read a P &L, I understand the language of business.

4:33So in hindsight, it has served me well as I moved into the OD and talent side of the business. And I ask that because so often you see that, particularly accounting and sales, where you have a parent, they'll steer you to one or the other. And it's not necessarily even steering. You kind of look at your parents, you say, oh, I want to do that too. And then eventually you say, okay, well, not everyone is cut from the same cloth. And what's amazing is you had the audacity to listen to the universe. So many people don't. And maybe that's another conversation. And I learned this probably in my 40s because my dad was an entrepreneur, but then I got into the machine of finance as well.

5:08But I probably didn't listen to that siren call until much later. And then what I love about your background too is really getting into one of the foundational ops teams in all of private equity. In some ways, Vista started this whole thing. It certainly started a lot earlier than many, if not most. When I was in PE, there was like our biggest competitor was a company called Danaher. And Danaher was just like a private equity firm in a public company form. And they would crush us on everything. Like we would never win anything. But then I started hearing about this group called Vista. I was like, oh, they're kind of like doing what Danaher does.

5:41They're like turning the business of private equity into a business. And they were one of the very earlys. And I kept on trying to, I guess, we got to figure out what they're doing. They're doing something that's amazing. None of us couldn't figure it out. I heard about some of the traits testing and the things that you were doing. And then I started doing that at our firm. So I was secretly kind of like trying to copy what you were doing, but not very well at it. I love that background. And then you've ultimately got in there. And then you've been in the PE industry since then. I have. So I tell people I'm a failed independent consultant.

6:12So I was an independent consultant when I got introduced to Vista. When I left Vista, it was to become an independent consultant. Ended up moving over to a boutique consulting firm called SD6 Partners that was also in PE. Left there to go be an independent a consultant in drumming up new business, got connected to a prior colleague from Vista who was with Excel KKR. And he said, I am sitting in a room right now where we are talking about hiring somebody just like you. He's like, I did not realize you were independent again. He's like, you have to come talk to Excel KKR. So I did. And I've been here ever since.

6:52Your firm is one that we have the privilege of seeing how they work. And without meaning to uncomfortably flatter you, it's like you're one of the firms that we think sees the world in slow motion. You do things really well in the business of PE. And I want to dig into some of your perspectives on how you think about people. But before we do that, I always love to dig deeper into some of your background and maybe some of the off the resume stuff. And so my common question here is, what's something in that we would know you better if we knew this about you? And so what might one of those things be?

7:24So I am the blissful mother of five, grandmother of five. And since we are empty nesters, my husband and I rescue senior dogs. So at any given time, we have three to five dogs in our house, but we rescue the ones that people just want to get rid of, which makes me super sad, but we get the old guys in. I love that. And the old dogs are in some ways the greatest ones. As someone who has a one-year-old golden retriever right now, I'm yearning for my old 12-year-old golden retriever for a lot of reasons. We're at the counter surfing phase. And so they're kind of set in their ways, but they've been there.

8:05They've done that. They just want to be affectionate and receive affection. Absolutely. My son and his wife just adopted a two-year-old golden retriever and his wife had never had a dog and had only been around our dogs. And she was like, oh, two-year-old golden retriever is very, very different than a 12-year-old golden retriever. They're completely different dogs. Yes.

8:55top proactive business leaders at public companies, independent companies, family companies. So absolutely, you can use this as well. If you want to use the exact same resources that are trusted and being deployed and perfectly calibrated for your business needs, give us a call. Visit our website at bluewave.net. Thanks. Back to the episode.

9:18One of the things that I'm always curious about, this is something that I think most people in business are all constantly trying to figure out the complexity of people. It's something that certainly evades me more often than not, as many will tell you. But I try. Life's a journey. It's not a destination. Absolutely. You've had all this great experience, not only starting off in probably a lot of the places that a lot of the deal side people on the finance side starts, and then you moved into the human side. And now you've been on the human side and the deal side, like in this intermingling within P firms.

9:51And so no doubt you've only worked with companies and in companies, but you've probably seen hundreds, if not thousands of them at this point. I'm curious, and if you think about this, when you're now maybe developing some sort of pattern recognition in your mind, what are some of the things that you look for in terms of business leaders? You think, these are the attributes of who we think is going to be a strong leader, whether they'll fit with an organization, can they grow, et cetera. What is that thing that you're looking at and saying, oh, this is something that I consistently or maybe commonly see?

10:23Honestly, first and foremost, I look for a level of self-awareness. You can be the best at what you do, but you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to have that growth mindset and you just have to be able to take a minute and be self-reflective and just understand the emotional awake that you leave behind you. And I think one of the lessons I learned is not everybody is fit for every role. And so just being really clear about, we have some leaders who are fantastic in the early stage startup, scrappy. We have great leaders who do that transition, what I refer to was the startup to scale up.

11:10And some people want to just work in the big, fully scaled, lots of infrastructure. And so you have to start with just knowing yourself well enough to know where you're going to thrive. On the PE side, we definitely see people who index on the go-to-market growth side of the equation and people who index on the operating excellence side of the equation. So if you're getting to rule of 40 or now I'm hearing rule of 50, rule of 60, you just have to know where you're going to be the most effective and just be comfortable with that. Secondarily, particularly in the PE world, you have to be able to work at pace.

11:53So PE moves fast, transformations move fast, you're having to get through M &A while you're still growing the business. And so you just absolutely have to be able to work at pace. And I think finally, there's a level of focused execution and accountability. You have to be able to have the strength of your convictions while still learning. You know, they all kind of fit together. So you still have to be open to learning, but you have to have the strength of your convictions. You have to be able to hold people accountable, have difficult conversations when necessary, make hard decisions in the interest of creating a great business.

12:35If those things are all working together, you can navigate a lot of things. I will say with the era of AI showing up, we're starting to see a shift. You need somebody who's willing to take some risks. You need people who are experimenters and kind of can learn, fail fast, correct, because AI is just moving so fast, you have to be able to adapt accordingly. So it's shifting a little bit. Again, start with the self-awareness. If you're open to feedback, if you're open to coaching, if you're open to self-reflection, there's a lot of things that fall into place as a result of that. If you have to be the smartest person in the room, the loudest voice in the room, you're going to leave a lot on the table.

13:22Where were you 20 years ago when I needed all this?

13:27So I came up through the deal side and maybe the earlier chapters of PE. And as you kind of rise up that you come from maybe a business assessor to trying to figure out how to understand people. And that was incredibly hard for me, where he's like, two years ago, you wanted me to build models and now you want me to hire CFOs. And then I would interview the entire market of CFOs and realize it was the second person I talked to afterwards. And then that person was gone. and then a recruiter would want to basically hang me on my toenails and say, rightfully so, to be fair. All that was so hard to figure out.

14:00And one of the things I'm curious about here is how much of that do you think is nature? I mean, it's like kind of diet in your world traits versus nurture that people can kind of pick it up or strengthen. Or is this something where some people are built for this and they kind of need to have it? And maybe some people are built for other things, not one is better than the other. They might just be different. I think it's both. There is just people who gravitate towards this type of an environment and this pace. However, I have absolutely seen, because we work with a lot of founders, I have seen the founders who move from this, like, I'm just going to be scrappy and wear all the hats to, oh, wait, I can scale this business.

14:45And I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it's the people who say, wait, I want to learn. I want to learn. And I think it's one of the things Excel KKR does so well working with founders is we're like, okay, let's figure it out together. We've got 25 years of we've seen this and we can help you figure it out together, but we also don't have to be the only smart person in the room. So it works really well that way. Now, there are absolutely some people, they're not cut out for this and that's okay. I think the faster we can figure that out and the faster we can help people figure that out, we're actually doing people a favor.

15:26I learned very, very early in my career that dragging people along behind the bus against their will doesn't help anybody. And so I think one of the kindest things you can do is just have an adult conversation and say, this isn't a fit and we'll help you move on to the next thing. and we wish you well, but we're not going to try and force a round peg into a square hole. As I'm listening to you kind of share these perspectives here, it resonates on so many levels as I kind of play back the way back machine. We would see there's different people for different sizes, stages, and types of companies.

16:01And like where you could not take that more seasoned middle market person and bring them to a founder phase, they would get crushed. And same way you can take that large cap person and put them in the middle market. they're all really good at what they do, but sometimes the company changes over time. And the change is better for the person who goes back to that maybe prior phase and they thrive again. And the change is better for the company. And everyone's kind of, it's the more humane thing for everyone. As I even think about my experience here, starting a company from a deck, that was pure panic.

16:33That aged me supernaturally because I had no clue what I was doing. And just through pure tenacity and grit, I kept this thing from probably imploding where it probably should have. I realized each phase was a different chapter in a story. And in order for me to stay valuable, I had to completely change who I was. And that was daunting and humbling and humiliating at times. But then you figure it out. To your point, I had this such pattern recognition. It was like, in the back of my mind, at some point, there's going to be someone who's going to be better for this thing. And I was like, I think I still have it for a while.

17:06But to have that kind of humility, it seems like it's also important because at some point, it will make sense. I don't think I'm going to get founder ectomyed yet, but like, there's probably coming. And I have absolutely seen founders who took it from startup, two guys and a dog in a garage to billion dollar valuations. So it can be done. And again, I think it's the tenacity. It's the, do you want to change? Are you open to learning? so it can be done. The other thing that when I talk to CEOs and I always ask them after the fact, what's one thing you wish you knew then that you know now, without question, every single one of them says act on talent faster.

17:54And when people say, when do you know it's time? My reply is always, if you're asking the question, it's time. Once again, you're keying all these things that kind of trigger thoughts and memories. And it's like, When you're at the board level of the P firm, you're a general manager, as is the CEO. And I don't think there was ever a time or any time with our CEOs where we said, I wish we took three more months on that decision or even one more month. I think that's incredibly true and perceptive. And I think even to this day, probably most executives struggle with that because it was very easy when I was at the board level to have those decisions.

18:33and what i found was when i was boots on the ground and not at 35 000 feet and these are people who you care about you're like wow it's hard to do and it was hard for me and then what i found out was exactly what you shared it was like this ends up being like when we would have these conversations at our company or others where it's like the people are eventually relieved like thank goodness and we help them to the next place and then the next person is ready for maybe our next chapter comes in and everyone else is kind of like 100 100 hey karma school listeners this is sean with a quick aside virtually every day i'm having conversation with private equity from professionals and business operators and we're talking about the same exact thing where and how do we actually start with ai the answer is you start with people who have already done it successfully for others.

19:28This is exactly what Blue Wave does. We have built a one-of-one invitation-only network of trusted AI enablement providers that top private equity firms are using right now to create real value. Private equity, great quality, pre-vetted by Blue Wave, ready to go at a moment's notice. And they're not just for PE. Whether you're a PE professional or an operating company CEO, go to bluewave.net. That's B-L-U-W-A-V-E. We'll get you to the right resources so you can start on your AI journey right now.

20:08One of the other things that I want to drill into here, Anne, is you talked about there's things that you all do to kind of help particularly founders, right? And this is a 24-7 sport being a founder, as I've learned. I've also learned like it's humbling. You're constantly have to reinvent yourself as the story progresses. And one thing I'm intrigued about, as you said, there's things that you do to help these founders reach their next best level, or people in their organization do the same, or more holistically look at this journey from the talent side. What are some of those things that you are doing at Excel KKR to help your companies on that path?

20:43So one of my taglines is, I want to make leaders better, so work is better. And so one of the things I have the privilege of being able to do here at Excel KKR is we run a series of leadership programs. Because we're mid-market, some of our organizations don't have the infrastructure to run these types of programs. So we have three programs, Basecamp, Ascend, and Peak. You'll notice a theme there. Basecamp is just Management 101. one. One of the things that I learned very early on is we think, oh, the best salesperson, we should make them a sales leader. FYI, worst decision ever. Like functional competency and capability does not automatically translate into management and leadership capabilities.

21:33And so Basecamp is just really foundational. First-time managers were very rarely taught how to do that. And so this just gives people a baseline of how to run a good meeting, how to have a hard conversation, how to set goals. They're just things that people haven't been taught. The second one is a program we call Ascend. That is a one-year program. It's invitation only, very, very heavy lifting. It's a combination we focus on learning about private equity, learning about software and learning about leadership. Because the other thing we've learned along the way is you come up through a function and you know that function really, really well.

22:17But as you move up the organization, your view has to expand. And so we help leaders understand that you're not operating in a vacuum. So you have to understand if I'm in product, what are the priorities of sales? If I'm in support, how all those things fit together, super important. So very, very intense program. We get lots of positive feedback. And the last one is peak. And that's for first-time CEOs, founder CEOs, and C-suite execs with CEO aspirations or have been named as CEO successors. And big part of that program is we do a deep 360, we give them an executive coach, and we have very, very experienced CEOs from across the portfolio come in and talk to them about how do you lead through numbers?

23:12How do you manage your board? All of the things that as you get into PE for the first time, people can figure it out, sure, but we're going to help them figure it out. But the 360 and the executive coach kind of connects back to this. Like you have to have the ability to be self-reflective, make changes. And one of the biggest pieces of feedback I've gotten from graduates of that program is, oh, there isn't just one way to be a CEO. I've had a lot of people that are like, well, I don't think I could be a CEO because I don't have this, this, and this. And they get to the end of that program and they're like, oh, wait, there's lots of ways to be a fantastic CEO.

23:52and maybe I can be a CEO. So we've absolutely placed some people in CEO roles out of that that I think was a thought that they didn't have previously. Not everyone has to be Tony Robbins. Not everybody has to be Tony Robbins now, thank goodness. I love Tony Robbins, but now if the world was filled with Tony Robbins, it would be an interesting place for sure. A lot of my fellow reluctant extroverts would be very upset if that were the truth because we would have lots of jobs. Correct. Those of us who can flip the switch, but then get into the fetal position at night afterwards. Exactly. Oh man, I'm in the wrong place.

24:26Exactly. I'd love to kind of dig in there. The one thing that we're always talking about here is you got to give feedback. No one wants to give it. Everyone's afraid of it. Everyone wants more of it. No matter how many times you say it, people don't want it. So how do you think about teaching people like that tough conversation to make it productive without doing what most of us do is the feedback sandwich, or at least what I probably don't. I was like, you're awesome, but you got to improve this, but you're awesome. And like, well, which is it? What's like one practical tip from that kind of deal in terms of like how to have good conversations with people?

24:59So we use a foundational book called Fierce Conversations that we absolutely love by Susan Scott. It's a fantastic model to just kind of help you structure because I think part of it is just if you don't come in prepared with the specifics of what you're trying to accomplish and what the consequences are, the emotion and the fear of damaging the relationship get in the way. I will say this late in my career, I still pull out that form when I'm ready to give somebody feedback. 50 % of the time I get halfway through the form and I'm like, that's about me. That's not about them. So I also think sometimes giving people feedback, you have to reflect on yourself first.

25:45And it's like, oh wait, that's about, I didn't give them the direction that they needed or I wasn't clear. I tell leaders, if you say they should know, that's when you have to look in the mirror because it's like, why should they know? Should they just know magically or have you very clearly and specifically given them the direction so that you can give them the feedback against standards that you've already set? The other thing that I say is I call it the spinach in the teeth syndrome. Like if you have spinach in your teeth, you want someone to tell you that you have spinach in your teeth. You don't want to, you know, have a spinach omelet for breakfast.

26:20And then when you get home at the end of the day, look in the mirror and you're like, oh my gosh, how many people did I talk to with spinach in my teeth? We say feedback is a gift, but it really is. Like if it is given in a way that is about being developmental and about investing and making that person better, if you're giving people feedback just because you don't like it, you don't like the way they do it and you just want them to bend to your will, you probably need to reflect on that feedback. But if it's, hey, I want to invest in making you better, who doesn't want that kind of feedback?

26:55It's reframing it in a way where it's like, if it's intended to be developmental, if it's intended to make that person more effective, why wouldn't you? And if they're not open to the feedback, that's another piece of data. That's a great way to think about it. And I'm going to definitely read the book. So I'm going to click that. I need these things. It's old, but it's great. It still holds true. I'm going to definitely read that. And that's probably something I'm going to share. Because that's the one thing I think that we continue to try to reinvest in our team over and over again. And it's the hardest one to stick in part because it's like the age old challenge.

27:30But sometimes if you, like you said, like give people the tools and the test and let them read it, they know what the test is. There's a way to do it. It seems like all your other programs are around that. Give people the skills and the tools and don't make them guess what the test is. 100%. With this in mind, so you have the Basecamp, the Ascend, the Peak program, that sound like tremendous resources for people making this leap. And I can personally empathize on what that feels like. Now you're having these day-to-day conversations in a time that's probably as filled with change as any time I can remember in my, I'll date myself, 52 years.

28:07right? And so the world is changing quickly. How are you kind of communicating and is your firm communicating with these teams right now to help them kind of manage through this as leaders? What are some of the pieces of advice that you're sharing? It starts with, you absolutely have to get the team right. You have to just make sure that you've got people who are ready to take this part of the journey, but you have to communicate. I was actually at a meeting the other day where somebody said, well, I sent the one email. Why didn't they just comply? Sending one email doesn't cut it anymore. The baseline used to be you had to repeat something seven times to get people to listen to what you were saying.

28:48I looked it up recently. They are now saying with everything coming at people being bombarded, it's 21 times. So 21 times is a lot. And oh, by the way, when you're talking about your team 21 times before they lift up their head and say, oh, I'm sorry, were you talking to me? I've seen lots and lots of leaders who think they're great communicators because they tell the story once, they share the information once. And then people's day-to-day experience is disconnected from what you stand up and say in the town hall and what their day-to-day reality is, that's the communication that they're getting.

29:31And so you have to make sure that what you're communicating in the town hall cascades all the way down into people's day-to-day experiences. I was working with a group of early career individuals and one of the participants said, I wish I worked for the company we say we are. And I have to tell you, it was like a knife in my heart because I know their executive team and I know that their executive team thinks they are running the company that they say they are running. And there was just this disconnect between the day-to-day, what we were standing up in front of people saying, and the day-to-day experiences.

30:09So we absolutely have to make sure that it's consistent. And when I say something needs to be repeated 21 times, I'm not referring to task assignments or day-to-day work. I'm talking about consistently reinforcing the organization's vision, strategy, priorities, and reasons behind change. Repetition creates clarity, alignment, and a commitment about what matters most to the organization. And that's where we have to consistently repeat over and over and over again. I had a CEO, this is many, many years ago, who took over from just an absolute beloved founder. The founder had chosen to move on, but I mean like guru level status of this founder.

30:58Founder moved on, new CEO came in. First all hands said, this is a great business. I'm not going to change a thing. I'm not here to upset the apple cart. Like this is going to be great. two weeks later he called me and he said oh no I'm gonna have to change a bunch of like I'm starting to turn over the rocks and I'm gonna have to fix a lot of things and he said what do I do and I said you stand up in front of everybody and you say I know I said this but I was wrong and let's go on this journey together he was courageous enough to do that and he came back to me and said that earned him so much credibility with the organization.

31:40Because a lot of times what leaders do is they go, oh, nobody's going to remember that I said that. So they won't notice that I said nothing will change and then I'm changing everything. And so I also think it's just okay to stand up and say, hey, we thought this was the right answer. Here's the new data that we have. This is why we're going this way. And I use the term, I got it from my graduate school, but I use it in my leadership programs called being a fully functioning adult. And I think we have to treat people like fully functioning adults. We just have to treat them like adults. And sometimes we treat them like children, whether it's like, I hope they don't remember, like do what I say, not what I do.

32:22But we have to be able to make sure that we've got the right team. We're communicating clearly that experiences create beliefs. If we're shifting the business, we're changing the day-to-day experiences so they align with what they're saying. And the reality is right now with AI, we have to be okay with saying, we're figuring this out together. One of the things that I am having to learn that is humbling is you get to a certain level of your career and knowledge is power and that's my value is I have all this expertise and uh-oh, I sent somebody a 360 and they said, oh yeah, I dropped it into chat GPT and it gave me my development plan.

33:05And I was like, hmm, so now how do I redirect that conversation? So we have to be okay with just saying, we're figuring this out together. And sometimes it's less experienced individuals who have the best ideas right now. And we just have to be open to, hey, let's experiment and let's figure it out together. You said so many great things there. And as I think about particularly the communication and the cascading, it rings true. If 75 employees, we're on this perpetual growth, you got to do it or else kind of a thing. We have private equity backing. And it's just one of those things where when you're 10 people, you can all sit around the table and do it.

33:49One of the things that we still do something kind of unique, we bring everyone together every Monday, remotely or otherwise, and we have a series of core messages and then we've gone. But it's just this whole philosophy we had, you got to be a chief repeater. What I found is my early days in private equity, I was an investor in industrial companies. And then I moved on to more technology data type businesses, one of which I think you know from your Vista days. But the early days, I was thinking about my own life philosophies and business philosophies. I was building a company, and it's like an engine.

34:17So I used to invest in auto part companies, which I would never suggest anyone ever do. But in 2003, it made sense that I learned it shouldn't have ever happened. But anyways, it was just like, you know, building a company is like an engine. There's all these things that are happening in motion. And anytime there's rotation and force, it constantly wants to lose calibration. Because I learned like one time we buy this equipment, you're constantly having to fix it and dial it in and tweak it and tighten the belts. And then as soon as you get it go and something else goes on. So it never stops. And kind of what you're describing took me back to that time where I'm just like, these engines are going and they were constantly losing.

34:55And we would say, why do we have to spend so much on maintenance? But I think like your organizations that you're saying, it's the same thing. You have to constantly communicate and repeat and tweak, and it never ends. And I think everyone wishes it does, but it doesn't. I may have to steal that one. That's a good analogy because it is very much that. You think, oh, okay, we fixed it all. Let's go. And it's like, nope, that's not how it works. And your people, it's the core asset in your company. You better be investing and making sure that it's running well. I never thought about that until I was in this seat.

35:27And then you constantly, when you're living it, you're like, oh, wow, this is never a new thing. And you almost have to invest in your maintenance budget. I love that. The 21 times is something that is shocking, but not as I think about it because of all the information overload we're getting. And the other thing I really appreciate is it's also a two-way street. You have to treat your team like grownups and they have to act like grownups. It can't just be like talking to walls. People got to step up. But if you're not having that tough conversation, they're not going to. If you want to treat them like kids, they're going to act like kids.

36:01But you hired professionals. And if you let them do their thing, they're going to find so much more satisfaction in that. Is that a fair kind of synopsis of what I heard? Spot on. I'm going to listen to this episode probably three times. But I appreciate that. As we kind of bring our conversation here full circle, one of the things that I really appreciate is learning the lessons learned from other people and also big and small. And so I'm curious, Anne, is there something that you've kind of figured out in business or life that makes things just a little easier, a little better as you go through the trials, tribulations, joy, and challenges of life here?

36:42Yeah. And this is going to probably sound a little overly simplistic, but I'm on airplanes all the time. We are a global organization, so I am in a million time zones all the time. And so what I learned early on is the second I get on the airplane. I change every clock, computer, watch to the destination time. And I behave accordingly. I tell people, don't do the math. The worst thing you can do to your brain is do the math. Go, well, it's three o 'clock, but it's really two in the morning. And so I should be tired. It's like, no, it's three o 'clock in the afternoon. Act like it's three o 'clock in the afternoon.

37:28It has worked very, very well. I will say my beloved husband, when we travel internationally, does not take my advice. And so he is up wandering around in the middle of the night, but I'm telling you, it works. So just behave accordingly and don't do the math. I love that advice. And I love don't do the math because you think about even just the mental energy. I've tried to do it like, what time is it? I never know. I'm like, all right, I'm going to go to sleep. I'm not watching this movie on a long flight. But your advice It's so simple and so true and so uncommon that I've never even thought about doing that.

38:02I've got a trip coming up and I'm really eager to try. And I think we'll have that similar schism because I think my wife's probably gonna be like, I'm not gonna do that. But I will a thousand percent do that because I've been trying to figure out this battle for my whole career. How do you not get jet lagged? And my solution has always just been more coffee on day one. And that's not a good one. knock on wood 60 years later i just don't get jet lag ever really yeah ever i've got a big overseas trip coming up shortly and i am going to do this it's just such great practical advice i've never had a good trip i travel a lot like all of us probably who listen to the show but i've never figured out how to do it well like oh there's an app for it and the bubble of us like no just change the clock and act on the time you're going so wonderful advice well you have to report back after your trip and let me know if it worked for you.

38:54I will a hundred percent. And then the bigger question is, will I resist like a few glasses of wine on the trip? Cause I have nothing better to do. Depends on what time it is. That's a good point. Yeah. If it's five o 'clock somewhere, you know, I can do that. Yeah, exactly. Good point. I'm going to put that in the notes too. And this has been an awesome conversation. I think you mentioned, I've learned all sorts of things I wish I knew before they truly do. I mean, there's so much of this is stuff that I am going to listen to this multiple times because we're all on a journey, not a destination on this thing.

39:24And if you ever reach a destination, you're not trying hard enough. So I think this has been tremendously insightful and generous because I know your schedule is really busy. So thank you for investing the time in all of us. Thank you for having me. It was great fun. Appreciate the time.

39:49That's all we have for today. Special thanks to Ann for joining. If you'd like to learn more about Ann McCloskey and XLKKR, please see the episode notes for links. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcasts. We truly appreciate your support. If you like what you hear, please follow, five-star rate, review, and share. This is a free way to support the show. If you enjoy the show, we really appreciate it as it really helps us. So thank you in advance. In the meantime, if you want to be connected with the world's best in class, private equity grade professional service providers, independent consultants, interim executives, AI advisors, and tools that are deployed and trusted by the best business builders in the world, including many hundreds of top key firms and thousands of their portfolio companies, and you can and should do the same whether or not you're in the PE world, give us a call or visit our website at bluewave.net.

40:41That's B-L-U-W-A-V-E, and we'll support your success. Onward. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the individuals presenting and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any other persons or entities, including those referenced herein. No representations, warranties, financial, legal, tax, or other advice are made herein. Consult your advisors regarding any topics discussed during this episode.

41:13Thank you.