Ep. 607 - Optomi Professional Services COO Nick Murphy - Our People Are Our Inventory

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0:49There's no way that as a facility leader, I could have a pulse on the business if I'm not out there in it. I've got my team there clearly, but I can't support them properly if I don't see it and feel it and live it myself. Well, I think that there's things when you're in the field with the team members that you pick up that no matter how many conversations or how on top of things your teams are, they're just things that they aren't going to think to share with you. Even going to visit a lot of these facilities, I'm in there for a couple of days at a time. I don't live in these communities. I don't spend extended time of periods in there.

1:20So as I come in for a couple of days, it's very beneficial, but I still rely heavily on my team that lives it. You know, the communication channels that we've talked about, the willingness for someone to reach out to me and say, hey, this just doesn't make sense. We've really loved A, B and C. I'm editing this building because, you know, to us, culture, retention, the employee experience is hugely important.

1:43Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO Alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the Second in Command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies, and tactics that made them the chiefs behind the chief. And now, here's your co-host, experience-driven growth strategist, former chief strategy officer, and author of No One Needs Another Company Mug, Lindsay Smith. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Second in Command podcast. My name is Lindsay Smith and I'll be your co-host. Today's special guest is Nick Murphy. Nick serves as chief operating officer of OptiMai Professional Services, a 100 % U.S.-based technology firm operating through two different brands.

2:29OptiMai delivers high-end IT talent through staffing and team augmentation, while Provalis provides IT and business process consulting, implementation, and managed services through its centers of excellence located in rural America. Before joining OptiMai, Nick built his career across investment banking, retail, and technology. He started with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, focusing on consumer and retail, and then spent close to a decade at the Home Depot, progressing through finance, merchandising, e-commerce, and marketing as the strategic partner to the CML. During his time at the Home Depot, he also played an instrumental role in developing what is now known as Orange Apron Media, Home Depot's retail media division.

3:12Later, he took on a senior finance position with Ibotta, a consumer cashback and performance marketing platform. Nick joined OptiMai in 2023 and developed multiple functions, including FP &A, marketing, PR, and enterprise strategy, before being appointed COO in December of 2025. His focus has always been on connecting strategy to execution and building the team that will operate with clarity and purpose. Nick is a graduate of Indiana University and a proud father of two children. Nick, we're so excited to have you on the show. Yeah, absolutely. And excited to be on. Why don't we get started and you can share a little bit with our audience about who you are and what makes Nick Murphy, Nick Murphy.

3:57Yeah. So I'm Nick Murphy. I'm the COO of OptiMe Professional Services. So we do IT staffing and solutions under two brands. There's the OptiMe brand, which does your prototypical IT contract staffing. And there's a Provalis brand that does managed services, professional services, so outsourced IT solutions. What's unique about that one in particular is everything is done 100 % onshore from the little U.S. The communities, 5 ,000 to 15 ,000 to 20 ,000 individuals. And so that's where we operate. It's a bit of a departure from the usual outsourcing approach that a lot of companies take, but that's what we believe makes us special.

4:34And I really love that, Nick. And as I was preparing for our show, I just thought about the impact that that has on the lives of people inside of rural America. But before we get to that, let's talk about who you are and what brought you to this position. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's this kind of saddest in the staffing space that nobody seeks to get in the staffing. They just kind of find themselves there. And I'm no different. It's not my background. I didn't come from the human capital space. My background was initially in investment banking. And then I spent about 10, 11 years kind of dancing around retail.

5:08So I spent a number of years with Home Depot in various roles. Another couple of years at Ibotta, which is very retail tangential. And so for me, I really only knew the direct-to-customers for direct-to-consumer space prior to coming in here. But a friend of mine that I worked with years ago at Home Depot connected me to OptiMe a few years back. And I initially took the call as a favorite to him, but loved everyone I met with and found particularly the mission. the company really compelling. It's not often that you find a job that really kind of touches both the career objectives and also the kind of personal feel-good side of everything.

5:47And so for me, it was really appealing. It was an opportunity that I wanted to explore. And your background isn't in typical operations, so to speak. You've had an experience and exposure to different things. Talk just a little bit about what that looks like, because I think in the COO role. So many people are disillusioned and think it's just ops, but there's so much more that goes into that. No doubt. No doubt. So for me, most of my background is kind of oriented around finance. You know, that's ultimately what I grew up in. I started out, like I said, in investment banking, but pretty quickly after leaving that world, pivoted into what's really largely a strategy background.

6:22So kind of incubator concept type of roles embedded within larger organizations. But even in those roles, it was very project oriented. So everything was very different. You would touch different parts of Home Depot is a massive enterprise. You would touch different projects in different parts of the business, some in marketing, some in operations, some in customer data. There's all kinds of different facets that as a finance background, that also wasn't my specialty. But I have always been a critical thinker. And, you know, those new types of projects and opportunities to learn and try something new are really appealing to me.

6:56That's where I find the most engagement. And so for me coming into both this industry and into this role, it's no different. Now, I actually entered as the director of FP &A. We didn't have a formalized FP &A practice. And so I brought him to stand that up. But from day one, it's very transparent with the management team that if you were looking for somebody to come in to just be that transactional finance partner, that wasn't going to be. I was going to be here. It wasn't going to last that long. I'm happy to help get the table stakes set up. But I've always found the most successful finance partners are ones that are business partners first, finance partners second.

7:30So I did that for about a year and then took on marketing right at the turn of the year of being here. Again, you know, I've done some marketing strategy projects and kind of marketing tangential work with, you know, rebuilding a loyalty program, standing up some retail media concepts, but not direct marketing. But again, happy to try a new challenge and take one on. And so I did that for about another year before I took it the turn of this year over the facilities and real estate operation. Again, a new territory for me. So I found that, you know, and I think a lot of other CEOs would agree that there's very blurred edges as to what we're, you know, CEO purview would end and what would and could be tossed under it.

8:11And I think it's interesting how so many different companies utilize different terminology to say the same thing. You're the second in command, whether you're a COO, a CSO. I know that in my former organization, the board of directors actually met to figure out what to call me because they didn't want to limit it to operations. Because to your point, I touched so many different things. And so they decided that chief strategy officer was most appropriate. And so it's interesting to me to hear you talking about all this strategy, because that really is the foundation of a good second in command or a good COO, as far as I'm concerned.

8:45It is. And strategy is probably the cleanest part of my background. If you look at my track record in some of the projects that I've worked on. And ironically enough, we had the same conversations for me, whether it was going to be chief of staff, chief strategy officer to COO. So I can relate. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so you get into this role and you've had numerous iterations even since you've been with the company over the last couple of years. What does your day-to-day currently look like right now? So right now, particularly, we'll start on the Provala side of the house because a lot of my days are really kind of split half and half, one with supporting each brand.

9:20But on the Preval side of the house, we're a rapidly growing business. Our mission has really captivated our clients. We're getting a lot of great national media attention over the last, call it, eight to 10 months. And so we are in expansion mode. So I find that a lot of my time today is focused on finding new sites first and move into and partnering with the local cities and states and local leadership to help bring our sites to life in these small communities. That's probably the top of what my time draw is today. You know, same thing from a marketing standpoint, as we're getting this additional media attention, we're trying to figure out how to make sure we are being selective with where we want to spend our time and where we want to push for that exposure.

10:01For us, you know, digital marketing is a part of our strategy, but the PR aspect is vastly more impactful. And so it's a bit of a departure from what I knew coming from, you know, the direct-to-consumer business, particularly retail, where that was completely flip-flopped. I think what's interesting is that so many people assume exposure, exposure, all of the things, put yourself in all the places. But the reality is you can spend less time by being more purposeful in channels that are going to be true to your mission, true to your company, and ultimately reach the right consumer. So I really love the focus on PR rather than the traditional social media marketing, as I'm sure you know, it's saturated.

10:39There's a million things everywhere. It is. And to be clear, you know, we play in that space to be naive of us not to. But, you know, and this really transcends for both of our brands. But we're so focused on being raw and real and sharing exactly who we are. You know, you go into these small, real communities and it's not always polished around the edges. And so we don't want our messaging to to convey that. So if you look at any of our web properties, any of our ad sets, it shows our real people. We do not use stock imagery to the extent that we absolutely can avoid it. But we want to showcase the individuals that are living this every single day and ultimately bringing the mission to life.

11:18And even on the optimist side, the same thing applies. We want people to know coming in exactly what the life is going to be like. And so we're very focused on trying to be intentional and real and organic with who we are. And we're also not pursuing any sort of paid placements outside of traditional digital media. From a PR aspect, we're focusing singularly on earned and organic. And you had a really big win. Why don't you talk to us about what that looked like and what your role was? Yeah, we did. So back last October, we had a feature story in the Wall Street Journal all around us bringing jobs back to the U.S.

11:52that has historically been offshore. And so they spent about two days in our Tahlequah, Oklahoma site, and they spent time on our site. They spent time when the community talking to local businesses, the coffee shop down the street that now does a delivery service because of the volume that we've brought. the bar across the street that we do a tremendous amount with when we have, you know, events and clients in town. And that was really just an incredible win for us, not necessarily even from a business standpoint, but a validation in those communities of everything that they stand for and that they believe in and putting, you know, bringing to light the mission that we have been touting since we started.

12:30You know, it was seeing the reporter walk around the site and And you can just watch all of the agents that live there walk past the conference room two or three times. And they're almost levitating to see this kind of attention exposure being brought to their small town. What is it like when you're able to impact people in a way that literally changes their life? It's incredibly rewarding. You know, we like to say that we're a company of first. And, you know, you can go to our YouTube page, you can go to our LinkedIn page, and you can see countless stories and testimonials from our individuals.

13:03but you know, we'll take clients around and, and community leaders for prospect cities around our sides and say, pick somebody, pick somebody out of the crowd, have them tell their story. It does not matter who you pick. Every one of them is a pretty compelling message that sells our mission better than we ever could. You know, which will treat people say, that's the first time I've had a job inside. First time I've had full benefits. First time I've been able to buy a car. I got my first apartment. I bought my first home and it's time and time and time again. And so from our standpoint, that is immensely rewarding.

13:36It feels like something you almost have to have on a wall or a banner where you're going to write all of their firsts and take that as your takeaway. I mean, we do a lot of sharing those stories because we want it to be, there's no better validation than seeing someone in your own community that you've known experience that kind of opportunity and take advantage of it. You know, we don't hand these things out to our teams that are in these communities. It is It's earned. We give them the opportunity. And we find that in rural America, there's a tremendous amount of untapped talent and capability that just is an opportunity.

14:09And so by us bringing it there, we're giving them what they have so lacked for a long time. It's just a chance, just a chance to come in and prove themselves. We'll provide the training. You provide the will and the grit and the intention, and we'll make sure that we're successful together. And why don't you talk to us a little bit about what it looks like when you go into one of these new rural areas? What are you looking for? What are you bringing? And then how do you source the teams that you put together? Yep. So when we go in, you know, we've got a pretty prescriptive process of what to look for in a community.

14:42If we can just boil it down, it's most simple. We don't want to be too far or too close, excuse me, to a major metro area, because the worst thing that we can do is come to these rural communities, training up these individuals, and they get poached by a metro center that's an hour, hour and a half away. So rather than being additive, we start gutting the community. So geographical proximity is first. We're looking for communities of 5 ,000 to 20 ,000, give or take, with a commutable population of about 50 ,000. That way we know there's a workforce to be had. What we don't want to do is come in and overly tax an entire community of workforce.

15:19We don't understand other industries in the town. We look for communities that maybe had a lumber bill that has since closed. the manufacturing plant that has since closed, where we know there is a need and a want for us to be there to provide the opportunities that either never existed or have since departed. When we come in, we'll start laying, you know, the training and the recruitment groundwork before the doors even open. We'll partner with local K-12 leadership, Lions Club, Rotary Club, church groups, what have you, just to start to get the word out to say who we are, here's why we're coming, As we're working with local economic development, we are very transparent.

15:59We want everybody in the community to know that we're coming, let them to be excited about it, because that builds that groundswell of a recruitable base and desire once we ultimately do open our doors. So you right now are taking care of facilities, correct? Yes. So how do you find the facilities in these rural communities? I would imagine that they're few and far between. They are, and that ends up being one of the biggest challenges and getting into a community. We actually have a very close partnership with every local community that we go to. And we are hyper specific about, we must be in the main street corridor.

16:37We have no interest being five miles outside of town next to the Walmart in an office complex because it doesn't then support the rural revitalization mission that is core to what it is that we're trying to do. For us, the best thing in the world is we come into a desolate main street. We put our center of excellence downtown. We build it up. We start to employ some individuals. You start to see a coffee shop pop up next door, a dry cleaner two doors down, a piece of parlor across the street, what have you to us. That is an absolute success. Well, you're not worried just about yourself or your product.

17:09You're worried about your team members and the community in which they live and the people around them that also are being able to be successful because of what you're bringing. That's right. And we have to be. You know, you think about going to these rural communities, if we're not really intentional about how we take care of our people, there's not hundreds and thousands of people that then follow them to replace them, right? We can't just churn through these people, nor do we want to do that just from a, you know, employment reputation standpoint. But, you know, for us, the word of mouth and reputation goes a long way very quickly in rural America.

17:46Everybody's got a mother, brother, sister, cousin, and what have you that also lives in that community. And then they've got their points of contact through the local baseball leagues, what have you. So we want to make sure that we're taking care of our people. That way they can take care of their people. And then the community in and of itself thrives. It would be really fun for you to explore statistically how many lives you actually impacted, right? By just like looking at all these communities, how many locations of Provelo's are there today? We have nine sites today currently, four in development, and we expect to grow at a pretty similar clip.

18:21We have pretty lofty growth ambitions, and we're finding that, especially after some of the publicity we've had between Wall Street Journal and Fox Business and News Nation and Newsweek, that we're getting a ton of inbound requests for information and visitation from other communities across the country. So we think we've only scratched the surface. That's incredible. And so when you had the opportunity to be featured in all of these publications, what was the catalyst that started that? Was it somebody that reached out to you or you reached out to them or something else? Yeah. So I mentioned that PR was really kind of a central tenant to our job marketing strategy.

18:57So we engaged a PR firm probably about 15 months ago, give or take. And it was just for pitching our message. We needed some added muscle to get our story out there. And thankfully for us, there was interest from a reporter with Wall Street Journal. And then once she had time to meet us, kind of prospect if the story was real, how much was really there. She was interested. She took it to publication. From that, it just took off. And in the span of about four weeks, we had had Wall Street, Fox Business, and News Nation all visit a couple of sites on our network to do similar stories with different angles, but continuing the coverage of the mission.

19:34One thing that's really critical for businesses is when they choose partners, such as your PR firm, that you have to make sure that they're really aligned. Was there a certain vetting process you went through to make the decision before you brought them on board? There was. I would say the process itself was no different than I think most would go through. But once we found our partners, you know, they really resonate with us. They had done other sort of, you know, mutually beneficial client arrangements where, you know, the client would benefit and the community that the client operated in would benefit.

20:06So they weren't, you know, it wasn't, the concept of our mission wasn't completely new to them, although our execution for it was. But it's a smaller group. You know, we met with a number of the major players in the PR space. And it was a mixed bag of kind of what the team structure would look like and the level of attention and care we thought we would get. But when we met the group that we're ultimate with now, they immediately understood what we wanted to do. They immediately understood the heart of our mission. And then they pretty quickly were able to rearticulate our story back to us as if we were telling it ourselves, which to us was a validation that they were the right partners to move forward with.

20:40Absolutely. Because everybody can say your story, but everybody can't relay your message. And I think that that's a really important thing. Yeah. Go ahead. No, no, I'm sorry. no no it's they they do that great and they've they've helped us figure out how to also more succinctly tell our story and make sure that you know it's it's easy for us to get really excited as i'm sure you can hear me hearing my voice around everything that is a part of what we do for our mission you know i think what's a little bit unique that i briefly touched on earlier is we we pay 100 of the benefits for all of our agents in these communities 100 and for most that is a completely new and foreign concept to them.

21:21And so for us, we'll start saying, we do this and we do this and here's where our communities benefit and here's where our people benefit. So we get excited and they help us really refine what that message needs to be. Pull back a little bit, save a little bit. That's right. That's right. So if you look at the organization with the two different brands and you're the COO overseeing both of them, I'm sure at some point it can feel like a juggling act. How do you handle prioritizing not just inside of an organization, but between brands on a daily basis? Great question. Yeah, it is. Both brands, functionally, they're very different.

22:00Our OptiMe brand operates with contract IT staffing and other talent-based solutions, but they operate in major metro areas. We've got offices, primary offices in three major metro areas and a couple of smaller offices as well. And, you know, then we got the pro-op side of it all in rural America. So culturally, there's differences. From a business standpoint, there's differences. But at the absolute core, the mission spans both. You know, we are hyper-focused on supporting our communities. The communities here look a little different than they might in rural America. But at their core, they're one and the same, which helps as we build the company and we bridge these bands closer and closer together.

22:41There are many more commonalities that exist between the two than they may appear from the surface. We're reaching to similar clients. We're reaching to similar levels of buyers. We're co-selling together if you need the totality of a managed service with some staff augmentation alongside of it. It is difficult to balance between the two, but as we grow as an organization, they're moving closer together than further apart, which ironically enough actually makes my job easier. Absolutely. I love that the mission is the same. I really didn't consider that because most businesses think their mission is, I'm going to provide the best IT services, the best staffing services.

23:17But when the mission is to support the communities, the product almost doesn't matter because you're going to operate at the core the same way. That's right. And for us on both sides, it becomes a very easy concept to relate to because for us, we think about community in a number of different ways. You have your physical community that you reside in. You've got your work community of peers. You've got your familial community. You may have your church community. You may have your local give back community, what have you. There's a number of different ways that someone can apply the community concept to their jobs.

23:52And we are ultimately in the employment business. Our contractors that we deploy on the staffing side are on our payroll. And so we're giving them jobs and opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have found or they wouldn't have had. And so on the managed services side, with taking these careers and opportunities to rule America where they never existed. And so for us, it's very easy to get behind that. We are quite literally putting people to work.

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25:06You progress up the leadership track at any point, and you could pivot over into a shared services role. We try to be very intentional across the whole company to promote from within, give opportunities to move laterally internally, to get a broader set of experiences. You know, we found we put a lot of time and effort into finding our people. And so we want to do everything we can to keep them rather than, you know, give them these very prescriptive career paths or put them in positions where there is no path. How many team members are there today between the two brands? Between the two brands, it's probably around 3 ,500, give or take, between the two.

25:47And so you certainly aren't directly responsible for all 3 ,500 of them. How many people are on your immediate team? On my immediate team, there are right about 20. 20 people. How do you do juggling that? I mean, I feel like 20 is a lot of people to manage. So a lot of your time must be spent in managing. It is, no question. And, you know, you think about with the ownership of facilities and the real estate portfolio, it's not only people, but it's geographic disbursement. We've got admins across every single one of our sites. We've got facilities maintenance operations across all of the sites.

26:23And then the extended network of vendors that our maintenance team is working with. So it becomes a lot and it's spread fairly thin. But to me, it's really exciting. I'm inching closer and closer and closer to the operations of the true operations of the business as my career has progressed here. And that's something that's always been really interesting to me. I'm a naturally curious person. I like to see how things tick, what makes them tick. And to me, seeing the inner workings of how these facilities come together from developing the capital stack, from physically putting them together, from then how they operate.

26:58the feedback of the teams once they start to reside in the building for a little while. To me, that's really rewarding. Let's talk about feedback. How does that get implemented inside of an organization of your size? You know, it is a large organization, but a lot of those individuals are contract consultants. Well, they're deployed on our clients. They're ultimately our employees, and then doable agents on the ProVolis side. And so the actual shared services operation and the internal team was relatively small with respect to the size of the company. And we operate even smaller than that. So it's a there's truly an open door policy.

27:36I'll I'll have people pop by my office. I think given time to ask a question and we believe in the fastest path of communication to get answered rather than me taking something down a couple of steps into my team, moving over to the team that we didn't go from moving it up that team and then back down and over. It's just, you know, it's a nonsensical approach that is this kind of corporate glut that gets in the way of productivity. And so for us, communication's fast. But to do that, you have to have the ears that are willing to have those open doors. You have a conversation with anybody who's got a good idea.

28:08And, you know, I'd like to say that I do that well, but I can tell you unequivocally the rest of my peers in the company do. When you're spread out in several geographical locations as you are, how often do you get to be face-to-face with your team members and with the deployed agents? As much as I can, you know, because being close to the business is really exciting to me. I try to go, you know, as often as I can. I obviously sit in one of our OptiMe offices, which I spend as much time on the road with the Provalis teams as I can. There's no way that as a facility leader, I could have a pulse on the business if I'm not out there in it.

28:44And that includes, you know, I've got my team there clearly, but I can't support them properly if I don't see it and feel it and live it myself. Well, I think that there's things when you're in the field with the team members that you pick up that no matter how many conversations or how on top of things your teams are, they're just things that they aren't going to think to share with you. Right. That's right. That's right. And, you know, the reality is even going to visit a lot of these facilities, I'm in there for a couple of days at a time. I don't live in these communities. I don't spend extended time of periods in there.

29:22So as I come in for a couple of days, it's very beneficial, but I still rely heavily on my team that lives it. And, you know, the communication channels that we've talked about, the willingness for someone to reach out to me and say, hey, you know, this just doesn't make sense. We've really loved A, B and C, I'm in this building because, you know, to us, culture, retention, you know, the the employee experience is hugely important. I think that employee experience is often overlooked as companies are focused on the transactions and the profits and the things that keep the companies fueling. So I really love when someone talks to me about that employee experience and they mean it because it really does make a difference.

30:02We do. We do mean it. And we have to mean it. You know, we don't we don't have physical inventory as retailers do. We don't have a complex supply chain network. our people, our inventory. And any good retailer worth its salt is going to take immense care of its inventory and understand what's working, what's not working, do everything they can to make that experience and the process better. And we're no different. So we need to make sure that for us, it's exacerbated because they are our people and because they are core to the mission on every aspect of our business. They're core to what we aim to achieve.

30:34And so it has to be top online at front and center. What would you say has been the most exciting moment in your career to date? For me, no question. It was the media coverage that, that Provalis got, um, at the last fall, you know, just, just being there. It was like, it was a great PR win, no question about it, but so much more than that. It was seeing the reaction of the agents that live in those communities to just to see them just glowing with the kind of national media attention that we got you know we had we walked the reporter down to lift coffee two doors down from our talaqa oklahoma office and we're sitting there with the manager the reporter's interviewing him and one of his baristas comes up and bringing coffee to the droops they're chatting and he stopped and said do you know who this woman is this woman's here from the wall street journal and you know this reporter turned ghost or the the barista turned ghost white she was so excited she couldn't contain herself and so it was just to me those little inconsequential moments are are what make that so validating it seems like you know inconsequential on the surface but you know that has stuck with me i can picture it vividly and that was you know one of five or six comparable reactions as we walked into the community as they met with um our our local collegiate partner there as they met with the ballroomer across the street was just time and time again seeing the validation of the community for the work that they put in alongside of us was was so rewarding so tell me how did this company even start what was the initial vision of the founder yeah so so optimi was founded initially um the company is the optimi is the staffing company, but it started in 2012.

32:27It grew up for several years before the concept of Frivalis came about. So our leadership at the time knew they wanted to do more. We have been a mission first company for a long time, but they knew that there was more that we could do and a more tangible impact that we could have even outside of the metro communities that we're in. And so there was a lot of services background in the company at a leadership level. some of it was experience with offshore work and so we knew like okay there's a better way to build this mousetrap and so the idea of Provalos were born it was tested out in our first site in Bruton Alabama so Provalos got started in 2017 you know we're really in our infancy in many ways but as soon as we got the first partner as soon as we got Bruton in Alabama to believe in the mission and partner with us and make this thing a reality it took off from there Talk to us a little bit about the relationship you have with your CEO.

33:26Yeah. So we were great together where, you know, we talk frequently of a close relationship. Actually, he was personally a big reason why I opted to come to the company. You know, he he saw a grander vision for what my role at the time could be, you know, even outside of just me. That's not a testament to myself necessarily, as like he knew that there was more that this role could offer and they had to find the right candidate to fill it. And so, you know, I'll give him all the credit in the world as well as the other leadership that was here when I first started to get lip with their mouth, but their mouth is they really, really believed that we needed a business partner in that role.

34:03And so we got off from the day one on, on, you know, the best path. Like he challenges me as it, as he does the rest of his team. You know, the, he, like any other good CEO will probably suffer from some executive amnesia where he'll have one idea, you know, a couple of weeks later, the idea will pivot a little bit. But I actually really appreciate that because it gives me a ton of comfort that he is constantly thinking much further out than any of the rest of us are really equipped to be on any given day. It's his job. He does it well. He has to have some of these abstract ideas that he then tasked myself or some of my peers up with figuring out how viable they are and then ultimately taking to execution.

34:47I love the term executive amnesia. I've never heard that, but I'm pretty confident. I know plenty of people who suffer from that. Sometimes I might suffer from it myself too. Yeah. How cool if I'm not, if he likes that term, but you know, I look, Chuck is fantastic. I think, I think the world of him. How do you communicate to him when he brings an idea to you that you're like, this isn't going to work. What does it look like? We got a really open communication. He, what I think he appreciates is I'm willing to challenge an idea. You know, and if he fervently believes in that, we'll spend some time understanding why, and we'll kind of have that academic discussion.

35:26There've been plenty of instances where we flat out disagreed. And he doesn't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with that. And that's what makes it really healthy. That's what makes us able to evaluate things that are pretty sticky sometimes or that are not fully vetted, but do it effectively. How do you get buy-in in the organization if he has an idea and brings it to you and you're like, yes, this makes sense? How does that then cascade down? So, you know, my personal approach is to start socializing as much as I can with the people that will be impacted, affected, would have to subsequently buy in, you know, how long the flow would go.

36:07And I really try to do that out of both respect and understanding because they ultimately look at as the COO and if Chuck is the CEO, we've got ideas, we'll build them, we'll ultimately take them out to the organization, but we're not the ones that live these decisions every day. And so, you know, I really try to be very intentional both with my team and any of my business partners to understand very clearly what goes on in their world, what downstream applications some of my decisions or some of my concepts or ideas might have and work through it with them. You know, I realize that every decision isn't necessarily going to be popular, but I do think that it can give them comfort if they know that I understand what affects them, what their jobs look like, particularly with my team, where their pinch points are, where they get hung up with just slow processes, what have you.

36:58And that's, you know, I'd love to think that that's an organic and original thought for me, but I've had really good managers in the past that I saw that firsthand. And that gave me a lot of comfort knowing that they had my, whether or not I grew the decision, I at least had comfort knowing that they understood how I'd be impacted by it. Have you ever had a decision for, you know, a new product, a new service, a new something that you've rolled out and then realized quickly or before it finishes rollout that this isn't the right decision and we need to pivot? thankfully nothing that's been just outright the wrong decision i think we've we've definitely had some instances where either the the approach wasn't the right one or the timeline was unrealistic and so we've had to there's been a lot of stop stars no question about it um but you know we've we've done our best to really evaluate and think as comprehensively around a new decision as we can you know whether that's getting into um a new technology platform partnership or figuring out the best way to take that to market, how to ultimately penetrate that in market.

38:01There's certainly been missteps along the way. But again, I really appreciate the nimbleness of this organization to say, okay, we may have misfired on this approach. Let's peel it back. Let's take a different tactic rather than to continue down an untenable path or to just throw in the towel. Like that's, I think, I think we found a really nice, healthy balance there. That's certainly important. And it's great for the teams to know that you're not so hooked to the idea that you're going to just keep pushing without realizing it needs a couple of speed bumps in here before we can actually get to the end.

38:35Yeah. And thankfully, I'm surrounded by a bunch of all-stars across both brands. There's a ton of experience, industry experience, related industry experience on both sides of the house that there's very few things that any of us are seeing, namely them, for the first time. And I rely on them a lot. You know, I, as a COO, to your point, I have some components of where traditional COO responsibility will be classified as operations and some that aren't. And there's plenty of things that are otherwise classified as operations that are outside of my direct purview. But for my business partners that, you know, on those aspects, we work really well together.

39:15And I rely very heavily on their expertise. And ultimately, they're the ones that live in the facility decisions that my team makes on a daily basis. And so, you know, having that support network and that trust is invaluable. What cadence of meetings do you have with your direct team? Weekly and... Individually? Yeah, yeah. With my two primary leaders weekly, with the larger team, a little more infrequently than weekly, probably every couple of weeks. I would say, I say probably because there's a lot of non-scheduled ad hoc calls that come up. And I would much rather, that's kind of how I want my team and myself to operate.

39:56Like if there's a decision that needs to be made, let's just get together. Let's just make it. I don't want to spend a bunch of time swapping emails, waiting on the delivery's month. Let's just get to the heart of it and let's get it done. It was my favorite too. I really enjoyed just making the decisions and not having things needing to be in a formal box of a meeting to make a decision. I think that that allowed progress to happen faster and it kept things from becoming a bottleneck. It does. And I probably have both a blessing and a curse of not being, you know, a subject matter expert in marketing or facilities, you know, or some of the other the other aspects of my domain.

40:35But, you know, the blessing in the sense that I've got a great team underneath me. And so I rely on them and they've done great so far. The curse in the sense that I have to rely on them. Right. And but I think that's a healthy position for me to be. If I'm ultimately the one most equipped to do an exercise or make a decision, then we're probably not in a great place as an organization. because that means I haven't staffed up my team appropriately or that we've got resources in this place or what have you. If I, at my level, am the bottleneck in a process, then we've got a busted process. You've experienced a lot of different departments and domains over your career.

41:16What would you say specifically has been the most interesting for you to learn? For me, it's probably been this facilities side. I mean, you know, if you think about marketing, everybody, everybody has had some experience with it, whether you've worked in marketing, you conceptually understand what it is to be marketed to, or to try to get your message across to someone else. You know, I think my, I think my team would tell you, yeah, everybody thinks they're an expert in marketing, but the facilities aspect was completely new to me and a uniqueness of our model, particularly we're really on the Pravala side is the partnership that we get locally from our city and state partners and having to you know partner with local economic development organizations partner directly with the city the community of the state that was a completely new uncharted path for me and that's been you know it's been a really good experience it's a ton that I've learned I rely very heavily on my team that has an economic development background But it's been interesting.

42:19It's been interesting to see, particularly to see the excitement that these communities get when we go in and we know we're going to stand up a new side. And they know that on the back end of this project, what that can and will ultimately do to their to their communities. Where are Optimi and Prevalis headed? What's next? hopefully up we now we uh you know we there's there's really i think there's a couple of waves of momentum that we're really riding strongly on right now you know everyone depending who you ask i think they would tell you that ai is changing the world for the better or it's all doom and gloom you know for us on the particularly on on the tunnel solution side it's a completely new growth vector for us.

43:09The amount of interest in new projects that companies are able to take on and we can ultimately provide the talent for is hugely exciting. And we think it's important that we continue to be able to offer the human element of what this tooling can unlock. We think it's going to be tremendously additive versus kind of the negative connotation I think, you know, certain people in the marketplace may have. on the Provolta side is no different. You know, we are using AI to train and upskill and equip our people and get us to points of information that we would never been able to get to in the past with any sort of speed.

43:44You know, we've got, we're building any given week, a new tool platform, training, training solution to make our people more and more effective at what they do and, you know, increase their career ramp, their career trajectory, their upskilling. So we actually think it's truthfully supported of both our mission as well as the business, which is a great place to be. I was sitting with a business partner the other day, and our conversation was about this exact thing. And we were talking about how AI is the data. It can give you information that it would take you months and months and months to gather very quickly.

44:25But that data can't operate without the right prompts and without the right human being behind it, manipulating and then utilizing it to make decisions that move forward. And so I concur with you, AI is a support that can give us greater capacity because we've got more information at our fingertips than we ever have. That's right. And look, ultimately, we are in the IT services and solution space. And so we deal with some very sensitive systems and workflows and processes. And the tooling is critically important. The technology will be immensely supportive of what we're trying to do. But you need that oversight.

45:08You need that nuanced understanding, particularly some of the sensitive projects and workflows that we ultimately do for our clients. So for us, we see it as a tremendous growth boost that we really can only scratch the surface of. Absolutely. And is that something that you're training your teams on? Or how do you know that they're utilizing it in the way that aligns with your missions? We're very intentional about when and how and where we want to use it. We don't want to just send it out of the ether unfettered, but also without any guidance. Again, we're working with some pretty sensitive workflows and data and information and processes and access from our clients.

45:48And so we need to be intelligent with this. So for us, we're really focused on tooling where appropriately for client engagements, where it makes some people more efficient, more intelligent, more accurate, more capable. prior to that we went we're trying to use it to get really sharp around okay let's find let's as quickly as we can find the best that communities where we want to expand to let's then use that to properly evaluate the candidates that are coming in that way they know what they're getting themselves into we know what we're getting from them and it ultimately is a match for everybody and then once we have our folks internally let's use it to give them the best training that we possibly can.

46:28We've got role play scenario builders where we can give our agents real examples of what a production environment would look like before they ever step foot on the floor that you can never get just from doing peer-to-peer role play. You're never going to be as tough on someone as an angsty client or an angsty business partner is going to be on the other end of that line. So that's pretty demonstrative of what lives can look like. And then we've got feedback loop. We're monitoring what the signals are that define success, what a successful person looks like, what are the commonalities that we can extract from that sort of better evaluating talent on the front end, and that we're putting our training to course direct those individuals more towards that path of success.

47:11When you were a young kid, I'm certain you never said, I'm going to grow up and be a COO. What were your aspirations back then? I did not. it's actually really funny you ask that and I think my I think my mom would probably have a stroke if she heard me say this on this podcast but I was a kid I wanted to grow up and I wanted to be a school bus driver

47:33listen we were talking especially with back to school coming up we were talking about how children have this imagination but yet their curview of what's possible while infinite is also small. You can be a princess, you can be a superhero, you can be a teacher, you can be a school bus driver, a police officer, and maybe an NBA player. But that's all that exists in the world. And they think they can do all of those things. So you're perfectly spot on and in line. I'm glad you're not a school bus driver because you're doing great things in this world. But I'm sure you're impacting school bus drivers in your communities.

48:09I am. Yeah, no question. It's funny that you asked, what did I think I was going to be as a kid? You know, I don't know what I'm going to be in the next five years, five, 10 years prior to this. I didn't know what I was going to be as demonstrated by kind of the curvature of my career, but it's been really exciting. And I think for me as just a naturally curious person, I wouldn't have it any other way. Well, keep being curious, keep changing rural communities, and we can't wait to see what happens next for Optima and Provalos. Well, thanks so much, Lizzie. I appreciate it. I appreciate you being on the show today.

48:42Thanks, Nick. Bye. You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share, and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry-leading COOs, visit COOalliance.com.

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