136. Dreamers to Doers with Orrin Klopper

💭 How do you manage culture in the middle of mergers and acquisitions?

Orrin Klopper is the CEO and Co-Founder of Netsurit with a vision to build an IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) that truly helps its customers achieve their dreams. Netsurit has won numerous awards including the BDO Alliance Workplace Culture Award & the Inc. 5000 Award, as well as Top 100 MSP globally for 9 years running.

In this episode, Orrin shares how he balances passion with disciplined execution through decentralization and employee empowerment. Maintaining values and culture amidst rapid growth can be challenging, but having a clear purpose and culture can help in acquisitive growth. He also shares his experience behind the Dreams Program, where he helps people identify their top 10 goals each year – and help turn them from dreamers to doers.

🎧 Download this episode to learn how mergers and acquisitions can be an opportunity to bring like-minded people together for a greater cause.

🌐 Socials:

• Email: orrink@netsurit.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orrinklopper/
• Website: https://netsurit.com/

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:26

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project with your host, Mick Spiers. We bring you thought provoking guests and topics every week to challenge your thinking about leadership. Our aim is to help you become the leader that you wish you always had, as we learn together, and lead together. Hey, it's Mick here breaking in with an exciting announcement. This episode is brought to you by our new business partner, The Lighthouse Group, we have joined forces with The Lighthouse Group to multiply the impact we're having on the world. The Lighthouse Group work with strategic business leaders who want to make change leaders who recognize that leadership is the key lever of organizational performance. The Lighthouse Group is the how to your why working with you to develop a leadership system that forges a high performance culture, across the breadth and depth of your organization, from the CEO and executive leadership team, through senior and middle management, and all the way to aspiring leaders, those with high potential that will form the next generation of leaders in your business, The Lighthouse Group, accelerating transformation through leadership. Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by someone quite unique. And that's Orrin Klopper. Orrin is the CEO of an organization called Netsurit. And next year, it has had some incredible growth, both organic growth and inorganic growth. But the interesting part of this is the element of culture and how you manage culture when you are going through things like Mergers and Acquisitions. And I'm really curious to unpack this today with Orrin and I had a chat, a brief chat before we hit record. And I heard something really different and unique about the approach to M&A here, and I'm looking forward to unpacking that more with you today about culture, about purpose and about how M&A can be done in a slightly different way, bringing like minded people together for a greater cause. So this is going to be a great discussion, really looking forward to it. So Orrin, without any further ado, please do say hello to our audience. And I'd love to know quite a bit about your background. And what led you to start Netsurit in the first place.

Orrin Klopper: 2:54

Thanks, Mick. Yeah, I think, you know, when I was particularly in high school, I realized that there were some teachers that I just respected and I just was inspired by and then there was some teachers, we, I was just an absolute nightmare. And in those days, in South Africa, where I grew up, you still got whipped. So if you got kicked out of class, you would stand outside. And then the headmaster, Deputy hardened head, wants to walk around, I think call you down to the office. And then you get a couple of jacks. But I realized what happens one day, if I get a job, and I'm really don't connect with that leader that I'm reporting to, or they don't inspire me. So that's the kind of the seed was planted. Then I went to university, and I was massively disillusioned in the first year thinking that university was going to want to know how I thought and you know, it's going to be this real intellectual engagement and was just memorize this stuff and regurgitate it. And then a friend at the time, invited me to come and sell computers and engineering calculators for them. And I'd taken information systems as an extra major in my second year university. And I loved it, it just felt like it really was writing software was just a hugely intellectual and challenging dynamic that I really enjoyed. And that's really where it began. And that was in 1995. And I officially started doing this full time back in 97. And where the purpose in our business first to cold was in the lead up to y2k or the year 2000. It was partly that dynamic. But the other dynamic that was leading to entrepreneurial Small and Medium Enterprises being accidentally ripped off was that a lot of the technology that was available was built for larger organizations. So when smaller organizations were trying to adopt it, the dominant providers had experienced that service in larger organizations. And when they saw the costs of what it would was required, it just didn't work out to be an equitable solution. So we saw this opportunity to build a business that would provide honest, transparent, predictable service to our customers was like an insurance and that's where the name Netsurit came from was like we actually wanted Netsurance. But the.com was taken. So we went with Netured and the idea was an IT support insurance offering for entrepreneurial small and medium enterprises. And that's kind of where the purpose of the business that seed was planted, there was 98-99 leading in up to 2000.

Mick Spiers: 5:30

Yeah, really interesting. And there was a definite need in the world right then, the few things that I'm hearing there, Orrin and the first thing is passion. So you found this passion around technology around software, then you found a place in the world that needed that skill, you found a market opening, you found a market need that needed to be addressed, and one that some of the words that you're using were values, once that aligned to values, that seemed to be important, too. But if I wind the clock back, I think there was something even more important back in those school days, you use the word connection, and you use the word inspiration, I'm going to do immediate call to action to the audience right now, I'm going to ask you to think about who was your favorite school teacher? Who was your favorite school teacher? And what was it about them that made them your favorite? Did you connect to them? And did you feel inspired by them? Just think about that, just while we now unpack that a little bit more with Orrin, where do you see the dots joining here between this word connection and inspiration?

Orrin Klopper: 6:32

You know, the deck book Marcus Buckingham did a few years ago, a few years ago, called a first break all the rules were the Gallup Institute. And they've continued, so the numbers are have grown significantly, but I think they'd surveyed about a million employees, staff and about 80,000 companies. And the one key insight that came out of it was that people work for managers before they work for companies, okay, so you can be in the most exciting department at Google, but your manager is really toxic, and diminishes you, and you can't see a way of getting out of that, you're going to probably leave, you could work for a small 10 person organization. And that key leader absolutely inspires you, cares about you is deeply interested in your growth, and you will be unbelievably loyal. So that was the one key, and then they came up with 12. Other questions that to sort of define employee engagement. And we've done we've used that as part of our staff satisfaction survey, probably for the last 15 years. And you know, by programmatising our purpose, it has made knowing what someone wants in a personal life a key part of the land management relationship. Whereas I think in some cultures, the view is your personal life and your work life or totally separate. I don't need to know anything about it. Whereas what we are advocating, and I think a lot of progressive workplaces are that they're actually inextricably linked. And there's a beautiful opportunity to leverage that to amplify both the success you have at work, but the success you have in the rest of your life as well.

Mick Spiers: 8:13

There's some really interesting words that you're using again here Orrin, and like to unpack it a little bit. So I think it's a common saying that people have heard that people don't leave companies, they leave bad bosses, right? And I'm gonna say that's almost universally true. I'm sure that these people in the audience are going to say that, you know, if your dream job comes up, or whatever, yeah, okay, so there's going to be exceptions to that rule. But as a general rule, when someone leaves the company, they're leaving a bad boss, or a boss that they didn't connect with to use your word from before a boss that they didn't connect with a boss that was a diminisher, rather than a multiplier, and then business comes down to all businesses are about people and our ability to connect other human beings. And what I'm hearing from you is that connection then leads to inspiration. And then when there is a common purpose, at least to amplification, use the word amplify. So we're seeing connection, inspiration, amplification, but a common thread through there was the purpose. How does that sit with you?

Orrin Klopper: 9:12

Yeah, look, you're one would call a very good listener. And the way you just sort of recap that really makes me think I think it's a very, it's powerfully connected. And you know, that book by LizMcKeown or Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown- Multipliers. So, so beautifully, this idea that as a leader, we can multiply not just someone's intellect, you can actually just multiply the growth and the impact they have on the organization. And yeah, so it's always work in progress. I've never really felt I've just cracked it, you're still to this day get hires wrong, but it's something we aspire to. And to have a workplace where people feel free to Well, what we do is we try and decentralize as much knowledge and information as possible. So we share our financials openly. We share how we're doing from a strategic execution, we dashboard our strategies, we it's an open invitation for people to come to a monthly stratco so that the thinking and execution can be decentralized and yeah, so no, but I love the way you recap that and it really makes sense.

Mick Spiers: 10:21

You know what I'm hearing now I'm hearing some more really interesting words here, I'm hearing your values come through again, you've used the word openness and transparency multiple times already in the interview, you probably not aware of that, but you have. So your values scream out when you talk, Orrin. And that's going to be part of what allows you to attract and retain people around you that believe in the things that you believe. Because you're very open about pardon. I'm using the word open, but you're very open about your values there. I think that's wonderful. And then what I'm hearing though, when you used the word, decentralized, I'm hearing the word empowered, I'm hearing the word empowered. So Orrin, let's say, a conventional or traditional business where things are a little bit more closed and centralized. And the leaders are calling the shots. And the leaders are trying to steer the ship. And they're doing their best by the way, I'm not I'm not saying this from a point of view, where they're trying to kill the business or anything like that. What I'm hearing this powerful from you is this decentralization with openness and transparency is going to empower these people to go and amplify, multiply and grow. How does that sit with you?

Orrin Klopper: 11:30

Yeah, you know, I look at the growth that we've gone through, and, you know, my aspiration of being a good dad, and being good life partner, and being healthy and fit and my own balance, and then, you know, delivering in my role, and then coping with this growth that we're going through letting go definitely caused some anxiety for me, because sometimes as an entrepreneur, you know, and the fact that I am not as close to some of that detail, there is this old sort of patenting in you, that is ACOA, if you're not close to detail, you're slacking and things are going to slip. And so you know, if you were to talk to some people in our team, in our leadership team have had some tough engagements with probably over the last six to nine months, they could feel this anxiety, you know, in that book founders mentality talks about it, how do you like so for instance, giving an example, I'm obsessed that if you phone, our service desk, it must be answered in under 10 seconds. And you know, and that's kind of part of our service orientation, and then I kind of saw that, that it may be slipped, and then I overreacted. And you know, and then some similar stuff happened with some deals, we were closing to low margin, and then you know, so well, that I know, for us to grow, and for me to for the business to grow. And for me to grow as a leader, I need to let go of certain things. There definitely was a vacillation of it during this period, I'm in a particularly good place now over the last two months. But you know, I remember in the early days of the business, Mick, where I was so bad, it was like a war, didn't even know where we were going to get money for salaries. And there was just war. And I think there were nine of us and I've walked past the boardroom, we had these small offices and there will be a meeting and I didn't know about the meeting, I'm walking there, like what's going on yet was there meeting and I'm, you know, I was unplayable. No, the more meetings I'm not in, the better, you know, because these guys are world class. So it has been difficult for me to just to be honest and vulnerable, like it, it has made me doubt my own leadership ability through this term. But it's the change of it and getting used to letting go and actually trusting the leaders that have a filled that space that as we've grown, and we've had to, to focus on different things. And yeah, it's been rewarding and exciting. But also, it's been a fair amount of anxiety too.

Mick Spiers: 13:55

Thank you for sharing that so openly. And I can see the challenge there, right. So letting go, it is hard for all of us as human beings letting go and the anxiety that you talk about. But the gift that comes with what I'm hearing in all of these things when you do let go, it is a bit of a leap of faith, but it's then the trust and empowerment. And that's where magical things can happen. Because we're attracting and retaining these people employing them, whether they're partners or their employees, whatever the case may be, we're bringing them around us for a reason. Because we want to tap into their brains into their experiences into their energy, because there's only so much we can do ourselves, Orrin. But if we then multiplying others, then that's when great things can happen. But it does take a bit to let go. Tell us more about how did you manage that? How did you manage to finally go? Kind of deep breath and go, okay, I'm going to let go now, I'm going to allow those meetings that you spoke about, you spoke about going past a meeting room and getting anxious. Hey, the team are meeting without me. Why are they meeting without me? How did you get past that?

Orrin Klopper: 14:59

Yeah, I'll share two stories that kind of just illustrate, you know, when I first moved to New York in 2016, I remember I was back in South Africa at one of our company meetings and one of my colleagues, Brian was running the South African business and it's an all company meeting, we do it either weekly or bi weekly, and I just sat there and I just saw how the business was being run and objectively he was doing a better job than I I had been doing and it's like, I could just see it clearly. And that wasn't me being self deprecating, or anything. It's just Brian's a deep fixer. And you know, at times, I don't think I've always done that. And then, and then, you know, as we continue to grow our business in New York and the US, Brian became more involved in that. And we promoted Eugene to run us African business. And then I was in South Africa at the time, and there was quite a big rugby event. And he said, anyway, I saw I went, and they said, There's a surprise guests. And you know, so I showed up, I had no clue who it was going to be, like, absolutely no clue. And Eddie Jones was the surprise guests, and yada, and it's like, I had nothing to do with it. I didn't even know he was going to be there. I can tell you, I don't know if you've ever engaged with Eddie Jones. But he was unbelievable, and I came away. That was honestly, in my opinion, one of the best nature events, it was probably the best natured external event I've ever been to, and nothing to do with it, you know, so there's just I would lean on these terms where these guys just absolutely blow me away and inspire me. Even our virtual award ceremony last week, Brian did the conclusion. You know, so one of gratitude is a big superpower of ours. And it's always something we've leaned into. And so Brian ended with talking about the Zulu word Sawubona, which means I see you and you know, so you Brian actually implemented a thing we called wow moment, and then we morphed it to be more about Sawubona, and I see you. And then he just spoke about this. And then the response is actually Shiboka which means I exist for you, or you inspire me. And I mean, I was so inspired, I felt tearful, you know. So, like, I look at these guys that I work with. And even though I've always had this natural paranoia, which is I think being healthy to an extent, but it's crossed in sometimes being negative. And so when I did overreact in this last six to nine month period, these guys were calm, they were grounded, they didn't overreact, they went dug, provided the information. And the truth is, there was very little that was going wrong at all. And I was just overreacting out of my own paranoia and anxiety. So I think it's taken me six to nine months Mick to just calm down, and know that I'm doing the right thing. And the best thing for the business, and to capital, I'm having more fun than I've ever had. And to this day, I absolutely love what we do. And I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to work in this team.

Mick Spiers: 18:02

That love comes through in volumes, and I'm gonna throw a few words at you again here now, and the word values is going to come again, right. So values around Sawubona, around gratitude, I can tell that your organization is very values driven. And I think that speaks volumes of who you are. The other word I'm going to use now is superpowers which you did use, I'm going to throw a story back to you. And this is what I'm feeling when I'm listening to one of the thing about your superpowers is we talk about humility as a leader, which is important, the ability to be humble about the things that we're not good at. But then it's also okay to own the things that we are good at. So we're looking at a bit of self awareness here. So having that self awareness that here I am, I'm Orrin, and I'm good at these things. But I'm not so good at these things. And you used the words that you stood back and saw that your counterpart was actually running a certain part of the business better than you could, right. So wonderful self awareness moment there of seeing that. So here's the story I want to throw at you. I see this time and time and time again in businesses Orrin and I want to hear your reflection on this, right. So imagine this, a company is growing, and they're not very good at marketing, let's say. So they go, You know what, let's agree, let's bring in an absolute gun marketing person, we'll call him the CMO, or we'll call him the head of marketing, whatever we're going to do, we're going to bring in a deep expert in marketing, and then the deep expert in marketing arrives, and they sit him in a chair, and then start telling him right, this is how we do things around here. And they start telling this marketing expert about this is what we want you to do. It's like, well hang on a second, didn't you employ this person because you admitted that weakness that you had a weakness in marketing and this person was going to help you fill this weakness? So why have you just employed them and then sat them in a chair and told them what to do? So I think that's the reframing or the rethinking that organizations need to make is that when you bring these people in, be self aware of your own strengths, but be self aware of the things where you're not good at start surrounding yourself with people that are good at those things, but then let them do their thing. How does that sit with

Orrin Klopper: 20:04

Yeah, that's such a fascinating topic. You know, I you? look whenever we engage with an MSP entrepreneur, you know, whether they're, you know, a $3 million revenue business or a$10 million revenue business, I always learn from them. And you know, so you could say, well, we're much bigger and because of that, we've got all the answers and And we definitely don't have all the answers. And, you know, you used the example of a CMO we bought in a fractional CMO. And he had this because I love marketing. So I'm not as involved in it now as I used to be, I used to love it, you know, so I realized that I was driving our marketing team crazy, because I get excited. And then he would Jeff called it is these random acts of marketing. So they see or come up with an idea, let's put a profile on, and then people are gonna think we can do particularly then we're gonna get a lead. And then like, Elon is like Orrin economy, which he never complained. And it also took me time with Jeff to just let go, you know, because I was spending an unbelievable amount of money on marketing. And I was trying to just, you know, get the maximize the returns. But he came in, he built everything together, he coached and led our marketing team in a way that, so I think, when I let go to him, and really, I think in the beginning, I was a pain. If he was on this court, he would say like, the first three months, I was micromanaging it, it was a massive investment for us a very significant investment, but we're a better business for it. But even when we do have a business join us and we acquire them. So we concluded an acquisition in Maine two weeks ago, you know, that's a geography we don't have any customers in, and they know and understand that market. And, you know, so we want to allow them and for our organization, and this new part of our organization to focus on, where can we create additional value instead of going in there and just trying to dictate a change this change that, Don't do that anymore, Don't do this. And we've tried to make sure in the diligence that we find businesses where that fit is right. But yeah, you can bring someone in and then basically diminishing them to a point where they actually can't play themselves to the strengths will just end up in a failed hire.

Mick Spiers: 22:20

Yeah, there's another aspect that I was picking up there as well, Orrin and that is not just skill set, but then also going to say mindset, right? So I'm going to say that the person that's sitting in front of me right, now, Orrin is a visionary, right? So I'm gonna say you're a visionary, you have great ideas, you are passionate, you're a driver, in many respects, you need to be balanced with an executor. So if you're the visionary that has 50 ideas, a minute, maybe a slight exaggeration, but if you have, you know, 12 ideas in the day, and three of them are outstanding ideas, but then you've got an executor sitting next to you, who has the discipline to go. That's an excellent idea, Orrin, I think we can do that next quarter, because they're in the middle of implementing your last idea. Alright, so you're with me? So balancing your team, not just in skill set. But now in mindset, how does that sit with you?

Orrin Klopper: 23:13

No, that's definitely I think, a huge part of why we have been able to grow is the dynamic in our leadership team. There's such a mix of a different skills and strengths. And you know, like, Take, for instance, Brian, my one colleague, who I mentioned earlier, he's a deep fixer, you give him something he fixes a deeply, he doesn't just shoot from the hip. And that complements, and I'm a great starter. But I'm not always the best finisher, you know. And fortunately, we've got lots of people in our team who are unbelievable finishers. So that resonates very, very deeply. We did some of the Gallup strength finder profiling and that, and it was, it's interesting when you kind of have a view of what your natural strengths are, then how that compares to people in your team. And then they do a group profiling of that, and where the gaps potentially on where you're very, very strong. So now that resonates very deeply Mick and it's part of I think, when I think of this period of being anxious of letting go of things, knowing that some people are actually much better at these things has helped me to let go, Yeah, makes total sense.

Mick Spiers: 24:25

Alright, brilliant, Orrin. Now, I want to come back to these values, again, because it's come up a number of times, and let's say values drives behaviors, behaviors drives culture, culture drives results, right? So what I'm looking at here is values and culture, and you have grown incredibly in and sometimes in short periods of time, I want to start with the organic, and then we'll get to the inorganic in a moment, when you're going through those growth spurts organically and you're all of a sudden you got 50 people where you used to have nine, let's just use that as a number. How do you maintain what was good about that core nine when you explode to 50? In terms of values, culture and ways of doing things?

Orrin Klopper: 25:05

Yeah, that's a great question. And we've had multiple times where that has happened. And it challenges the whole business. So everybody in that team, because sometimes the rate at which we sign on a bunch of new customers, and how quickly we can find and bring on the right people is sometimes the constraint, you know, because when a customer wants to start, they want to start. And you know, obviously there's different customers And we've got a professional services partner, we've got to manage services part, which is annuity contracts. So that's definitely easier to plan and predict, look what we've in those difficult times, we've definitely leaned on our purpose. So in the recruitment, we're saying before they make the final decision to join us, after we've made the decision, we would like them to join us, we say to them, this is our culture, it does expect you to be vulnerable to be open to engage. And we believe if the dreams program and the purpose of supporting the dreams of the doers does not resonate, don't join, because you will see a much greater meaning in your work and your life. If you join an organization where you do connect with their purpose. And you do feel that you want to engage in the key one of the key pillars of their culture. So that's one thing we've done it sometimes to be honest, Mick, we've compromised, that we've compromised that. And what I have learned is nothing pisses off an A player more than tolerating or hiring SeaPlex, you know, you think it would be something else. But I know in the times where we've gone through that rapid growth, and we may compromise the quality of who we were hiring, or you compromise the quality of who you promote, is that just is absolutely toxic, is a great leader Mockingbird, you said nothing defines a culture as much as who you fire, I am promote. And it's so so true. So yeah, at times, we've compromised it because of the pressure of having to deliver. And actually in our exco meeting on Tuesday, there's been a dip in our client care. And obviously, and, you know, asked both our Managing Director for the US managing director for South Africa to just kind of address that in exco. And we just had an unbelievable organic growth year last year, you know, just unbelievable. And this exact reason, the rate at which the amount of work increased and the rate at which we could hire people, it was challenging, and we were putting some of the some of the existing people under too much pressure. So the service levels did Drip Drop, they're still high. But you can see a little bit of a downward trend. And I suppose that's the reality of a growing business. And it's critical, because if we there's a direct connection to how proud I feel about as a team member of Netsurit of what we're doing for our customers, and whether I want to stay at Netsurit. And if for too long, I'm not feeling proud, and we're not delivering good service, it could potentially result in me moving on. So there's a direct link to the finding, keeping great people and protecting their culture and their service orientation, which enables us to find and keep great clients. Because if fast growth breaks the finding and keeping great people so it will start to unravel. So this is the balancing act that we're constantly trying to do and organic growth challenges that and acquisitive growth challenges it in other ways as well.

Mick Spiers: 28:29

Yeah, we'll get to that in a moment, I'll just reflect on what I'm hearing there. There's some really interesting things there. I think it's a great reflection of we get the behavior that we celebrate, reward and tolerate. So when you say be awfully careful of who you hire, who you fire, and who you promote, everyone sees those decisions, and everyone is looking to see what's being celebrated what's being rewarded, and what's being tolerated. And it has a huge impact on their feeling about the organization and their connection to the organization. So that's really cool. And then in that hiring process, the things I'm hearing there is deep clarity about your purpose from the outset, and clarity about your culture, and saying, Hey, this is who we are, this is what we do. This is why we do it. This is how we do it. This is these are our values, do you connect? Do you connect? Does any of that resonate with you? Does any of that not resonate with you? And if it doesn't resonate with you, you know what, you're gonna be happier somewhere else. Really powerful message. Alright, let's get to the acquisitive or the inorganic growth. So you have built a business that is now growing very strongly through acquisition. How do you test culture when it gets to that? So how do you make sure two things, how do you make sure that the acquired company is not going to destroy what you've already built? Or the other side is how do you make sure you're not Netsurit is not killing? What's beautiful about the place that you're buying? Yeah, no, look, it starts with a discussion like this. You know, so hypothetically, you were the CEO of an MSP we are considering, you know, as to join us and you in turn, are considering us and I always say in their discussion, I can try and sell you something that's not true. And you could do that too. But the truth is, in time, the truth will out. So I tried to make that very clear upfront. Let's just be as open with each other as we possibly can. So through that, that's the value start to come through. And you can hear how that leader thinks and what some of their personal values are. So there's definitely a piece of the culture that I think has come and grown out of the value system of that entrepreneur that leads that business or founded it. And then, you know, if I look at the first acquisition we did in New York in 2016, I think we made every mistake we could except got out of business, we did so many things wrong. And fortunately, there's a bucketload of learnings that came out of that. But I read this great book called Scaling Up Excellence. And he spoke about this different types of growth. And the one is almost like a franchise, where this is how everything will be done. There is not a maybes, ifs or whatever, you will wear this uniform. These are the hours this is the food you serve, etcetera, etcetera, then you have other organizations that are less dictatorial and less prescriptive and autocratic, can you kind of use the Catholic versus Buddhist metaphor for that, whereas Buddhists is more kind of this is the key principle, but you can be open to interpret. And so for the routed verse, Catholic is more prescriptive. So what we've actually done in our approach, so to look back to the the culture pizza, we look at the nature of the discussions with the leader, and owner and whoever else we're able to have engagement with and we start to feel is there a fit here, then, in our approach to the thinking around the integration, we literally categorize things, Buddhists, and Catholic, and we first select even with the dreams program, for the first year, they'll hear about it, but we don't, unless they volunteer, and they say, Look, we want it now we say let's just because what we want to do is, the last thing is destroy the magic of what is being created there. And you know, in my mind, you get business leadership, and then you get community leadership. And I actually think culture is a community form of leadership, more than a buzz and I can performance measure a sales target, I can performance measure response time, a resolution time, I can performance measure profitability, I don't think culture can truly be performance measured, I think there's an outcome measure that comes back to staff turnover and dynamics. And that, you know, so like, even example, that Barbie who runs our Cape Town branch, she has some of the coolest stuff from a culture perspective. And it is nothing has come from us, she initiated herself. She's that regional leader, but they call it like a meeting a month where they show up in their pajamas, you know, or during COVID, they would do the meetings from the bed, you know, you had to sit at your laptop in bed. And that's how you did the meeting. How cool is that? I didn't think that I didn't come up with it. I mean, I look at the gods in our New Jersey team. And some of the staff they do is just, you know, so how do we, you know, like, try and win something cool is happening back, celebrate it and maybe throw some money at it, you know, so that they've got a bit of extra budget to do something that more with it. But it's tricky balance. We want it to be decentralized. So the purpose is, we don't that we're all focused on the purpose supporting the dreams of the doers. But how that's lived by the leaders are those particular regions, we want to give them the autonomy to be able to decide on that. What's the flavor of it? What does it look like? So it's in my mind, it's not prescriptive, and we just don't want to break the magic that is there. All right. There's multiple things I'm taking away here. The first thing was that the whole process is a two way interview. It's not an acquisition here, I'm coming in aggressive, hostile takeover. Are we a match? Or are we not a match? And that's a two way street. I love that. That second thing. second takeaway I'm taking is this. And he said some time ago in the interview, well, I'm gonna bring it back now, which is where are we going to add value here? And where are we just going to be interfering with the magic of what was magic about the place in the first place? Now extrapolate a little bit you didn't say this, but something that jumped into my mind, I was also would be thinking, hey, what can we learn from them as well, like backwards? What can we learn about this acquired entity that we've just taken on? Is there something magic there that we can bring back into Netsurit as well? So where can we add value? Where should we not in a few whatsoever? And what can we learn from them that we bring back to the organization? And then the third chapter for me was this prescriptive versus guideline. And for me, the prescriptive is the values. It's the values, these are our values. And the guidelines are what allows this kind of, I'm going to call it community rituals, where your regional managers and coming up with these rituals that are celebrations that they've reinvented themselves, they become cultural rituals, but they're within the prescriptive, let's say values of the organization so that they're inventing their own rituals, but they're still within the bound lines of what you'd be happy with as a value within the business. How's my summary?

Orrin Klopper: 35:29

I love that. I love the way you captured that. And you're an unbelievable listener. But the way you threaded that together, no, you got it. And it's quite organic, because we've learned from and if I think back, I remember now that first acquisition we did in New York in 2016. I remember talking to Scott, and he said, No, we use smile backs for client care. So what basically it's a red, green, yellow. So if you've just read, I'm not happy yellow, you guys that okay, Green was great. And I was like Scott that's too simple, we've got this and this and this and that, you try and phone a New York customer every month and asked him how you doing? You're gonna get some profanity. Yeah, you got to make it easy for them to give feedback. So we were wrong on so many levels like that. And I learned enough lessons now to know, okay, how these, let's listen for a long time. You know, like, I look at the business in New Jersey, we were too busy to do some of the normal integration stuff. And they outperformed. We integrated finance from the beginning. And then we did some centralizing of lead generation and marketing that are performed on their own. And then we introduced a new offering, which is called innovate. And that team outsold every single part of our business. And we weren't even fully integrated yet. So there's something that happens where people have you leave their autonomy and their magic, but make the most of the value that just does the there's this amplification that happens.

Mick Spiers: 37:00

I love it. We've got this empowerment going again, and this decentralization and this amplification, I just love it. Alright, so let's get to key part of what you do. Let's talk about this dreamers, doers. Let's talk about the dreams program. You've mentioned it a few times. Tell us about what that's all about.

Orrin Klopper: 37:17

Okay, great. So in 2004, one of the guys is actually in our team in New York now, he used to be in our South African team was so in summers in in South Africa, back then, very few companies had a proper server. Okay, so the Summers are hot, their server, which is like an old white box was in a closet somewhere, it would overheat, and they would crash. Okay, that was before we were able to push the standards that we do now. And Shawn had gone from one server crash to the other, he's sitting in front of the server. And he wasn't talking about a call saying, Guys, Sean's just sitting there, and he's not doing anything. And he's looking blankly at the screen. Long story short, Shawn it burnt out. And so something in that incident made me realize, you know, what, a lot of these guys, technology is their passion. And they're gonna go home on the weekends and play with the latest technology. So we need to have a more explicit part of our culture that says, We want you to be balanced. And we're going to make it a key part of the land management relationship. So I started using a journaling life planning tool in called Map for life, which day is basically the Gaza pasta, and an engineer, okay, is purpose led as you can come but it took the idea of setting your goals in your life from an engineering perspective, and it is bulletproof. If you go through this thing, you're going to come up with a plan on how to achieve everything you want in your life. But not everybody could do that, because it can seem all consuming. So I started using those two. And I remember even in 2006, 2007, inviting open invitation, I'm going to share how this tool works, who wants to come had very little response. Then I attended a program joint program between MIT and Entrepreneurs Organization. And one of the lectures spoke about a book about by Matthew Kelly called a Dream Manager, which is a real story about a business called Jencola. That is a janitorial services business. And they had this unbelievably high staff turnover. And they bought in the idea of a workplace that encourages you to not only do great work, but achieve what you really want in your life. And I just thought, wow, this is amazing. So we launched the dreams program in 2008. And really what it was, well, at that time, it was like like a book, a book like this. And then you had 10 pages and you had cut out of magazines and put on those pages what represented that dream so dream could be like, meet my life partner or get to 12% body fat, or the one guy has a picture of his grandmother climbing out of a pool is fixed my grandmother's pool because she loves swimming and she hasn't got money to fix it. So these are some of the goals and dreams that would come out so and then in 2010 we actually articulated the purpose supporting the dreams of the doer. So what is the dreams program? It's your top 10 personal goals and dreams visualize some of them could be work, they might be no work. Some people have three dreams. Some people have 12, Some people choose because something's private. They don't want to put it in there because we share them publicly there in a team's folder, so we have over 300 dream books in there. And so you do your dream book once a year. And some years you do more elaborately, and some years, it's just a tweak, because you feel like you it's like business strategy, it's your personal strategy, you could put it in a dream group, which is anywhere between 6 to 12 people, you meet once a month, and it's strictly confidential, and you share that Mick this something that happens when we share with another human being in an open way, what we really want in our lives is something in the human spirit where you want to see them with that, and it creates connection, that sometimes that, you know, like you meet someone, and you're like, I know that kind of person. I try not to do it. But it had this rapid cognition piece where you just think, okay, I get that person. But when we know a little bit more about them, where they've come from, and what they really want in their lives, and what they value in their lives, it just creates this beautiful connection. So you get put into a dream group you meet once a month. And then we also have this thing called dreams, we can advance which is a little software platform we wrote, where you capture the top three to five things you want to get done this week, no matter how crazy things get, and it circulates to your dream coach, no matter how crazy things get, you want to do those things. And the dream coaches get trained. So everybody volunteers to every time you volunteer to be a dream coach, and it's generally a year or two year, ten year. And then the last piece of the program is that we do a thing called a Dream Connect. So we've got people in Poland and people back in various parts of the world. Now, the funny thing is, these people all want the same thing. They want to spend more time with their family, they want to exercise more, they want to you know, financially be better with their money. And so I love this program, and it's not perfect, they're sort of cynical, there are people that you know, would love to do away with it, but I absolutely love it. You know, very seldom do I come out of a dreams group meeting or dream connect where I'm not literally just, I feel like I'm floating. You know, it's just, you know, like, even if you're having a tough month, and you get into a dream group meeting and Mick a guy called Mickey runs my dream group, and you hear his update and all that stuff he's got done, and you just like, get stuff done. That's awesome. You know, so ya know, it's a big part of, you know, I love what I do.

Mick Spiers: 42:49

So I'm loving the balance that's coming through there, Orrin and so the fact that so many of the dreams were consistent across the world, but they weren't all work oriented. They were about family, they were about all kinds of things. So I love that. I'll tell you what my takeaways, what was coming in my mind when you're saying so I was I was hearing dreams, I was hearing people using the process to work out what's really important to them. So that's narrowing them towards true purpose, true joy, true fulfillment in life. I'm hearing action oriented. So once we have those dreams, what are you going to do about them? I'm hearing accountability. Once I share with a group, there's something empowering about that, but also the accountability that comes along with that. And then I'm hearing the word community. I think he called it Dreams Connect, where you're going to find your tribe, where your dream, you might have thought you were the only one that wanted to do this with your life. And then all of a sudden, I think he said no way. But someone the other side of the world's got the almost identical dream, you find your tribe. And when you find your tribe, you feel like you belong. And when you feel like you belong, you feel like you can almost do anything. Yeah, it's really powerful. There's one thing I want to ask is, What about limiting beliefs? Because there's a big saying that limiting beliefs and fear kill more dreams than failure ever did. How do we help people in the dreams program? How do you help people get past the limiting beliefs?

Orrin Klopper: 44:12

Yeah, that's always working work in progress, without a doubt. And while I can even feel limiting beliefs, what can amplify limiting beliefs self limiting beliefs is lack of execution. And it's not looking in the mirror saying, Well, you know, because I didn't execute what I didn't put the energy into it. They'll almost be like, Well, I tried last year. And I didn't do it. So well. Let me just think dream even smaller this year. So it's constant. We bring in people like you to coach and train our dream coaches from various parts of the world and they've got different techniques. So we try and give the dream coaches a tool set to use and then we have a dedicated dream manager who's done also some of the coaching certification where you could have a one on one with her or look there are some people that are just naturally very, very good at this so the one guy I think he's a dream coach for two groups. I think he's dream groups are both of them are like 14 or 16 If I'm not mistaken, which is actually a bit too big, but he's just so good at it. And he loves that you know, self limiting beliefs is definitely something that is a work in progress. You know, you find some of the most talented people have these little self limiting beliefs me too at times, where you feel like they're gonna figure out I don't really know what I'm doing, you know, but the one thing you said, which I just want to go back to, which has been such an amazing thing to witnesses, sometimes these young people coming into the industry are T, they don't know what they want. And there's nothing in their natural life that's helping them go through an iterative process of refining and distilling that on an annual basis. And you could do it more regularly than annually. Like we say, you can change your dream book a month in, you can change it three months in, you know, there might be a big life occurrence that happens. And it's fascinating to see. So the first job is like, get this car, and you know, they meet someone, and then it's like, you know, they did a different college, then they have a child, and there's a totally different goal and dream. So there's this iterative dynamic that you can see where people, it's forcing them to say what I really want in my life, because sometimes you put something in, and then you achieve, and it doesn't really mean that much to me. And then it drops off, you know, so yeah, I liked that point that you made around that, because sometimes people don't know what they want.

Mick Spiers: 46:34

Thank you for all that you do to help people find that, but then also find their path, find their path, find their support group, find their accountability, find that tribe, I think it's amazing, Orrin. Alright, so that draws us to a close of our discussion, I'd like to take us now to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions that we asked all of our guests Orrin and really, really interested to know your answers to these, so let's see how we get, what's the one thing that you know now Orrin Klopper that you wish you knew when you're 20?

Orrin Klopper: 47:03

So as a great question, great great question,

Mick Spiers: 47:03

Yeah, that's beautiful, Orrin. Really I think I would gravitate towards I think from even at that age, there were really high quality people wanting to go on appreciate you sharing that. What is your favorite book? this journey. And I wish I'd known then that trusting and letting go to these people would have actually only accelerated the growth that we always wanted.

Orrin Klopper: 47:33

Oh, I do a lot of reading, over all right now? I'll give you right now. Because it's so top of mind. And you know, you get these really clever people that start a podcast. So like, I listened to Peter Attia, a couple of his podcasts, and I wanted if I could email him or find him and say, Dude, we're not all scientists just tell us in a way that we can flip and understand, you know, he just got carried away. And then his book, Outlive came out. And you know, I'm a late dad, my daughter was born when I'm 45. I've always wanted to be a dad. But this is my one and only child. And I realize now when she's 21, I'm going to be 66, okay. And I want to be able to get down to the party, and so forth, with that said, this idea of my health and wanting to he talks about the idea of longevity and being healthy as you get older and being able to do things. And this book, Mick is just, and he has the obviously the editor and the publishers have told him do you need them adapt? It is such a beautiful story. It's an inspirational story. And I've taken so much from it. As far as your overall fitness and health and your mental health. It's just, it's honestly one of the best books I've ever, ever read. And I think you know, everybody, certain books are more meaningful at certain times in your life. And just being a dad, for me is just one of the greatest blessings I've ever had and wanting to protect my health to be around and be with her in an active and present way for the longest time possible. So I've just taken this book, I literally do audio, mostly, I did it three times.

Mick Spiers: 49:10

Oh beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And by the way, you were just the very embodiment of something you shared earlier in the discussion, which was our values are what No, I will change at what we value. And what we dream of can change as we go on in life. And you just illustrated that was beautiful. What's your favorite quote?

Orrin Klopper: 49:31

Let me show you. So I had a tattooed on me.

Mick Spiers: 49:34

Oh, serious. Oh, wow. Okay.

Orrin Klopper: 49:36

Well, basically, it's surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the thinkers and the believers. But most of all, surround yourself with those people that see greatness within you, even when you don't see it within yourself.

Mick Spiers: 49:47

Oh, wow. All right, that's kind of go close to the top of my list. Now. That's that's an amazing quote. Yeah. Thank you so much, Orrin. That's beautiful. Now finally, there's gonna be people that have listened to the show. And you know what, there's gonna be one or two things they're going to be interested in Netsurit it and tell us about Acquisitions and MSPs and the world that you live in. But then there's also this book end at the end where we've talked about the dreams program, people are going to be really enthralled in everything you've shared with us today are and how do people find you if they'd like to connect with you and know more?

Orrin Klopper: 50:18

Yes, you can just LinkedIn is one option. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. You can reach out to me there or you can mail me my email address is orrin@netsurit.com. And yeah, we share very openly anything about the dreams program. It's something that we would love to see more people doing. And it's a way to broaden the impact and then for Netsurit, you can also go to our website netsurit.com or gone to LinkedIn. We're quite active on LinkedIn as Netsurit, but you feel free to reach out to me.

Mick Spiers: 50:51

Yeah, brilliant. All right, thank you. And I do encourage everyone to do so we'll put the links in the show notes so that you can just click away and then off you go, you can connect with Orrin. Thank you so much for your time today for for sharing your experience, for sharing your wisdom, for sharing your insights. It's been a really amazing conversation for me, I feel like I've grown because of it. And I know that our audience will as well. Thank you so much, Orrin.

Orrin Klopper: 51:14

Yeah, me too. Mick. Thank you so much.

Mick Spiers: 51:20

This episode was brought to you by our new business partner, The Lighthouse Group, we have joined forces with The Lighthouse Group to multiply the impact we're having on the world. The Lighthouse Group work with strategic business leaders who want to make change leaders who recognize that leadership is the key lever of organizational performance. The Lighthouse Group is the how to your why, working with you to develop a leadership system that forges a high performance culture, across the breadth and depth of your organization, from the CEO and executive leadership team through senior and middle management and all the way to aspiring leaders, those with high potential that will form the next generation of leaders in your business. You can find more details about The Lighthouse Group in the show notes. And don't forget to tell them that I sent you, The Lighthouse Group accelerating transformation through leadership. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project at mickspiers.com. A huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content. And to all of the team at TLP- Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week. And you can follow us on social particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do take care. Look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.