Episode 89 Morgan Witham, Ficus Advisors

Morgan Witham, a stellar product of the Harris Williams “coaching tree,” stops by Middle Market Musings – akin to starting your career with the New York Yankees and ending up in the dugout with Ricky Vaughn and Willie Mays Hayes.  Morgan recently launched Ficus Advisors, a new firm that helps private equity clients guide management teams dealing with first-time institutional capital, post-deal integration issues, and PE growth imperatives.  Before that, Morgan takes us on a tour of showpiece Southern cities – childhood in Lexington, college in Nashville, then a first job in Richmond at Harris Williams, the market-leading investment bank. She rose through deal execution and business development roles to become the youngest member of HW’s executive team as Director of Strategy.  The episode begins and ends with Morgan reflecting on a life-changing event – the fire that destroyed her family’s home earlier this year, and what the experience has taught her about leadership, resilience and human kindness.  

Transcript

0:00

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Well, Charles, we're back with one another. We just finished a conversation with Morgan Witham of Richmond, friend of mine, has a new company called Ficus Advisors. What did you make of it? I think the word that comes to mind is thoughtful. You know, she grew up in the Harris Williams mold of thoughtfully thinking about growth, how businesses scale. Interesting, she was the youngest member on the executive committee at Harris Williams. So, you know, she's got some chops in terms of how she thinks through and addresses challenges that businesses face. And now, as you said, hanging her shingle with Ficus Advisors. Interesting perspectives along the way in her 20 plus year or so career in middle market private equity and investment banking. Yeah, and of course, we spent some time at the end talking about the fire that she, her husband, and their young kids experienced earlier this year in this remarkable article that she wrote and posted about resilience and control and leadership. I really think that while she may not be a household name, our listeners will really enjoy taking the trip with her. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Morgan Witham, founder and principal of Ficus Advisors. It's a pleasure to get to talk to one of my favorite people in the M&A ecosystem. And also, Charlie, one of my thousand favorite people in the M&A ecosystem. Good to have you here. Rude. Thank you for having me. You don't need to build somebody up by tearing somebody down. I think that's- I know. I just was gratuitous, but be better, be better. So from our prep session, I feel like there's so much that we want to talk about with you. So just to preview it for the listeners, you had a fascinating career at Harris Williams, an industry-leading investment bank. And we want to talk to you about that. In the past year, you have started and are running Ficus Advisors, an advisory firm that focuses on cultural transitions. And we want to give you the talk about that. And also, while doing that, your family had a tumultuous, difficult event. We did. So I had made the decision about eight months ago that I was ready to start my own advisory firm. So started off the year, 2026, kind of rearing, ready to go. And then we had a devastating home fire at the end of January this year. So certainly any kind of traumatic event like that is never expected. I think it's also one that still to this day, months later, sounds pretty surreal when I say it out loud. So not at all the expected year and kickoff that we had thought. So we'll come back to that. And when we get there, the aftermath included a remarkable article that you posted online about the experience called A Woman in the Arena. And then the response to that itself has been pretty incredible. So we're going to come back to all of that. But I don't want people to feel like this is a very special episode of Independent of, and before that, I consider you to be one of the real thinkers in our business. So now that I built this up, we got a lot to cover, but it all begins with childhood in Lexington, Kentucky. That's right. So I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, was always an athlete growing up, was a competitive year-round swimmer for many years, and then switched to volleyball in high school and really was just a kind of innately curious kid who just wanted to learn, wanted to be involved. I kind of naturally gravitated towards leadership positions and really was excited to kind of figure out what it was in college that I wanted to do. I think I always knew that it was something business related. I grew up, my father was in sales and business and had just kind of taught me from a very young age, a lot of what he had learned. What was interacting with your businessman father like? Yeah, I think I approached a lot of situations from this kind of sales perspective. He used to tell me early on that sales is involved in everything that you do, which I've certainly learned at this point in my career. There's a lot of truth to that. And I remember even approaching kind of everyday kid moments from this kind of business sales-oriented perspective. So I would go to him with a pitch deck on why I should get my ears pierced and why he should let me do that. And it was just, it was very, you know, it wasn't formal, that kind of sounds a little more formal than it was, but I think he just really instilled a lot of these practices on communication and sales and the importance of making a clear case and a clear argument that stuck with me in a lot of ways, perhaps even at a young age. Did you really put a document together outlining the benefits of getting your ears pierced? Quite literally, Charlie. I think this was early. I don't even know if it was PowerPoint at that point. I don't think there was PowerPoint. And I will top that off by saying I called his work, his office number when I knew he wasn't going to be there so I could leave a message. And I had a scripted voicemail that I left to kind of double down on my pitch. Needless to say, I won, I won that pitch and I got my ears pierced. I can say you can't talk about that without, you know, what was the conclusion? Did he say, did you get to yes or no? Yes, definitely, definitely closed that deal. Did he let you get through your pitch? Did he pepper you with questions right away? You know, he wasn't, he, Shark Tank was certainly not around at that point. I feel like if it had been, he might've been prepared with a lot more questions on what was his, what was the ROI going to look like and, and what was that cost? What was the recovery period and all of these things that didn't get asked then. I think he was, I'm not sure he was, he was expecting a full-blown pitch kind of multi, multi-channel pitch effort on that one. That's funny. That's funny. So, and then you matriculated not too far away in Nashville, Tennessee, right? It's Tennessee, not Tennessee, right? I say Tennessee, tomato, tomato. How was your time in Nashville? That city's changed. That city's changed a bit. Did you enjoy your time there? It has, it was incredible. It was, it's definitely different now, you know, 20 something years later, but it was, it was incredible. I, I was far away enough from home that I, you know, felt like I was really kind of on my own. And I had a great experience. I, I majored in economics, minored in corporate strategy. Vanderbilt, at least at the time, didn't have an undergrad business program. But I knew that was the path that I wanted to take. And so that was the pretty typical path that students followed that, that wanted to get into investment banking or consulting. And those were kind of the paths that I knew that I knew I wanted to follow. But I also just had a lot of kind of well-rounded experiences that, you know, taking classes I otherwise wouldn't have taken and studying abroad. So just a really well-rounded experience and loved the city for sure. It was a fun city to go to school in. So, but by then Morgan, you met your husband. Yeah. So I met my husband in high school. We, we stayed together in college, kind of just thought we'd see, you know, where it went and what happened. And it, for us, it worked out really well. I think having kind of our own individual college experiences, but ultimately somebody that, that I think we knew deep down was a lifelong partner was a really great experience. So as somebody who is intuitively sales oriented, like who sold who, like you, you'd, I'm guessing you didn't have to do a PowerPoint presentation for him. I didn't, but I did. Our first date was the result of a lost bet. The two of us were playing a game of pool and I went into it feeling a little bit overconfident and lost that game of pool. And so our first date was actually me taking him out. We can't let the opportunity to pass us by to ask, what is your husband's name? I'm so glad you asked Charlie. His name is also Morgan. Yeah. Did you name any of your kids Morgan? Thankfully, no. I felt like two, two was definitely enough. Now are your legal names, I mean, give us a different, different middle initials, I assume, like for things like passports, voting, confusing? No, not because his first name is Robert. His middle name is Morgan. He grew up going by Morgan. But you know, official documents all say Robert Morgan with them for him. So that's pretty easy. What actually makes it a little bit more confusing is that he has gone in certain scenarios by Robert. He was in the military for a while in his professional circles. They've known him by Robert. So that actually makes it more confusing when I now have to kind of toggle between, between names. So out of Vandy, you found your way to, what was it called? Hexpoint Road? Flexpoint? What is it? What is the address of Harris Williams headquarters? Haxel Point. Haxel Point. What is it? Haxel Point. So you ended up in Richmond, which I always giggle. I have a lot of collegiate friends and friends in the industry that grew up in Richmond. And the idea of living and raising their family anywhere else other than the Mecca, as they affectionately call it, is just heresy. You're kind of new to the city, haven't been there for 16 years, but do they still think of you as just passing through? Because I just feel like it's, that is like the bastion of Old South. Yes or no? True or false? I think true. Perhaps when I first got here in the early to mid 2000s, I'd say not anymore. You know, there's, and I have learned from my experience in between Harris Williams and starting Ficus Advisors at CoLab, which we'll talk about a little bit later, have learned that there is a massive advertising, marketing, digital community in Richmond. So I think that there have been enough, enough kind of commerce and different industries really blowing up here over the last two decades that it's really kind of changed the nature of how kind of welcoming and how easy it is to grow roots and kind of find your own place here. So I, you know, when I moved here in 2006, I thought I'd be here for two years. And, you know, this many years later, 20 years later, still here. And I think that's truly a testament to the ability to build roots, not being originally from Richmond. Yeah, we've loved it. Just to set the stage for our listeners, we have Harris Williams for, you know, call it 10-ish years, then your time at a place called CoLab and then at Ficus Advisors, which you started earlier this year. That's right. So chronologically, let's talk Harris Williams first. So tell us about what young Morgan showed up 2010-ish, is that the time or earlier than that? 2006, earlier, yeah. 2006, showing up a young analyst in the new class. Obviously, the bank has, Investment Bank has experienced incredible growth. And I think Harris Williams definitely has an aura to it. It would be helpful, maybe you can give us a little bit of the inside baseball around that aura, what it was like to be there in 2006 until your departure in 2018. Yeah, so when I joined in, in 06, it had, they had just been acquired by PNC. So it was a really interesting time to join, because I think there was this a little bit of kind of questioning, what is this going to be like? And you know, Harris Williams was really intentional about building into that deal, a lot of autonomy, and both in keeping its brand, keeping its processes, but also just kind of operating really on its own. They put a lot of work into their brand at that point. But also when I joined, I feel like it was really when the kind of middle market ethos for Harris Williams was solidifying. You know, it's funny, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, when I first joined, we were touting being a generalist firm at that point. And, you know, we certainly, of course, there were pockets of expertise that had built up very naturally. And we adapted as the industry and private equity became more and more specialized. But it was a fascinating time to be part of an organization. It was 100, 150 people when I joined. By the time I left, it was, you know, well over 300, approaching 400. And it was a really kind of growth oriented time to be part of Harris Williams. I want to ask about the Harris Williams brand, because even by 2010, it was a recognized name in our industry. People would market against Harris Williams with the idea that the firm was characterized by far-flung process, marketing machine, lots of books going out. And people would say, well, our process, it isn't going to be a Harris Williams process. And my reaction was, anytime other people are marketing against you by name, you're a market leader. So I'm just curious, as a young person who was on the inside, who was brand minded, what did you think of as the Harris Williams brand? And did it change over time? It was pretty consistent from when I was there. You know, we certainly were, I think had garnered a reputation for being more of an auction shop, which was interesting because being on the inside, that really wasn't the reality. We actually did a significant amount of smaller processes. Certainly the larger ones, I think were more well-known to folks, but it really was a range. I think what was so consistent about Harris Williams and what really helped develop that was one, the people. You know, we pitched against and worked with a lot of folks in other banks, and it was just a very different feel when you work with the Harris Williams team. It was just, people really felt like they gave a shit, like they were really human. And it just, it was very unique. I think our process at the beginning was pretty unique. I think over time, that perhaps wasn't as unique of value proposition as others. A lot of people had developed really interesting processes. I think what was unique for Harris Williams at that time was kind of how we approached our proprietary deal information. So we were meticulous trackers of data from every aspect of the deal process, from how many books we sent out, to whom, to what conversations we had, what were IOIs, where did final bids land? And kind of before we really had the technology to support it, which was an interesting role that I played while I was there, was really figuring out how do we kind of use this data almost in like a predictive analytics capacity? How do we kind of, how do we use this data to figure out who are we going to go to and who's going to be the best logical partner and why? And sometimes that had to do with highest bid, and sometimes it had to do with other more qualitative factors. So that was a really interesting, I think, unique part of Harris Williams. Morgan, I think it's safe to say that Harris Williams was the last of the big, well-established middle market firms to embrace kind of industry specialization. And for a firm that was so successful throughout, I've always been curious why it took the time that it did for the firm to embrace that, what is now kind of the ante to play the middle market sell-side game. Yeah, well, I think there is a gap there in terms of when internally we recognized that and very much played into that, and when that became part of our external marketing. So I think it was, it was embraced internally really, really early on. I mean, like I said, we had, when I started, we had already had a dedicated healthcare life sciences group. Our team out in Boston was primarily focused on technology. And so we were already starting this, but we didn't tout it externally or in a marketing capacity the way that we did several years later. So I do, I think we were a little slow to embrace that externally, but internally we had already, it just became a very natural kind of way that we structured deal teams, you know, people doing specific sectors and industries over and over and over again. And so really understanding the landscape of strategic buyers, but also understanding the landscape of private equity groups that really wanted to focus on that particular sector. A quick side conversation. Feel free to be frank here. Who were your top three favorite MDs at Harris Williams that you ever worked with? Nobody's listening. Oh yeah. Oh, that's a good question. Just kidding. If Morgan doesn't want to answer that question, I'll, I'll ask one where you may be more inclined to name names. Who were the custodians of the culture? Hmm. So when I started the COO, Dina Moore, I think was a very large custodian of the culture there. Ned Valentine, who had also was playing a key role, I think was very much part of that. But I think what was, what was interesting about culture carrying and certainly what I learned, and even if I didn't recognize it at the time, I certainly recognized it when I left to run a business myself, was how culture carrying can't come from one person and it can't come from only the top. It has to be something that's really embedded throughout. And that really was what I experienced at, at Harris Williams that, you know, each industry group built their own cultures. There were culture carriers that were analysts, as well as culture carriers, you know, from Heider and Chris at the very top. And so I think there was this very, and I think part of that was one, the entrepreneurial spirit there gave people the autonomy and the kind of authority to be culture carriers. And I think two, this, this, this kind of high responsibility, high accountability environment lends itself very naturally to that. Morgan, we haven't really spent any time about how you started on the kind of, on the traditional analyst associate track, but then you pivoted away from that to eventually becoming the youngest person on the executive committee as director of strategy. Maybe you can just share over this kind of 12 year arc, how you started, how it ended and kind of connect the dots in between. Sure. So that's right. I started as an analyst, moved on to be an associate on the business development side, which was a little bit of a test after PNC had owned us for several years. And I think we started realizing, Hey, there's a lot more kind of synergies we could have. They have tens of thousands of corporate clients. We should really start mining that from a lead gen perspective. But then had actually decided I was going to continue kind of what, what I would say is, is a pretty traditional path, which is investment banking analyst or associate onto private equity for a couple of years and then back to business school. So that's kind of what I thought I was going to do. This was 08, 09 time, which was obviously a very challenging time in our industry. And, but I was still actively pursuing private equity opportunities. And at that time the then COO, Dina Moore had decided to step down. And while they were hiring a replacement for her and his, his background was much more in regulatory and compliance. There was this kind of bucket of strategic and analytical work that she did that didn't have a home. And so that was really started a conversation with us about, Hey, is this, is this a role that you might want to take on and kind of make it into both what Harris Williams needs, but also what I kind of naturally gravitated towards. So that was another great example of where I was able to really make the role and have the impact on the firm in a way that, that I wanted. And it was really, you know, at that time I had, I had realized that the deal making itself wasn't as exciting to me as getting to learn the businesses. I really loved getting to learn how leadership teams worked, how businesses operated, what made them tick and what made them grow. And so this was a chance for me to really kind of have a foot in every part of growing Harris Williams. Chris Williams was an early guest on the podcast. And Charlie, I would say we have had Richmond, Virginia per capita has had more guests on middle market musings than any other city in the United States. You agree with that? Well, I'll have to do some crack analysis and get back to you. You mentioned Morgan, this entrepreneurial culture from the outside looking in, I always thought that it was such a process first environment more so than its peers that led to success. But I'm guessing I'm hearing something a little bit different that it was actually that entrepreneurial culture that really drove it. Well, I think both can be true at the same time. So I think the process piece, it's very difficult, difficult to scale a business effectively. If you don't have a process that you can anticipate is going to have a positive outcome, day in and day out that we're going to we can expect no matter who is executing this deal, we can expect that we're going to have a positive outcome for our clients. I think where the entrepreneurial spirit came into effect was really around both the building of the firm. So I mean, when I was there, a newly promoted VP who was just an associate weeks ago, it raised his hand and said, Hey, you know, I really want to start an aerospace defense group. And they were like, go for it. And so the ability to really take ownership and have autonomy over the piece that each of us was building there, I think is where the peer piece comes in. But again, I don't think it's very difficult to scale quickly and effectively a business without having a repeatable process that you can train everybody on that everybody can be on board with and really get behind. So my impression is that the table stakes going back 15 years, you know, middle of your tenure as head of strategy was that the competition had begun to evolve toward industry specialization. But without the kind of model and framework that you had, it was much more subject to individual practice leaders, tendencies, you know, relationships inertia. So if somebody else will pick on aerospace and defense, if someone else had an aerospace and defense practice somewhere, they had their list of strategic buyers, they had their list of financial buyers, they had people who they played golf with, they liked a little bit more, but client would come along. And the go to market strategy wouldn't change very much based on the business. And what Harris Williams introduced was all of this quantitative stuff on who took books, on who provided indications of interest, who retraded, right? So how did, I mean, maybe another way to ask the question is what was the balance across practice areas between that process and individual practice leader tendencies? I don't know if it was so much driven by the individual leaders of each practice area as it was what that particular client was looking for and what they needed. And so when you talk about go to market strategy, there were some opportunities that came in that we were working on kind of industry agnostic, where a larger process made sense for what that client was looking for in terms of an outcome. Then we would have processes where a much tighter, much smaller, much more intimate process was called for because of what the client was looking for upon exit. And so it really was client specific in terms of what our go to market strategy was, who we went to, how we approached the market, how many people we approached. And that's where a lot of this data, both quantitative in terms of IOI, the final bid and who came in lower within higher, who didn't come back at all, was a piece of the story. But a lot of our understanding, this is where the heads of the industry groups were so remarkable, was really understanding what specific financial buyers or strategic buyers were looking for on a qualitative basis as well. And I don't just mean low customer concentration, high cash flow, increasing market expansion. But what they were looking for in terms of that leadership team, how it fit within their current portfolio, that was the information that was both a little bit of a blend of the art and science, if you will, when we were approaching a sale. You're listening to Middle Market Musings, brought to you by New Heritage Capital and Greenberg Variations Capital. Morgan, in 2018, you made a move to join another business in Richmond called Colab. Thought process behind that and what did Colab do? Yep. So the last seven-ish years that I was at Harris Williams, I had a foot in each part of the business. I had a foot in marketing. I was working really closely with the CFO, had a hand in building out some of our proprietary technologies that were even written up in the Wall Street Journal and had a hand on kind of revising our ops process and really enjoyed having a seat kind of in each part of that business. I had the opportunity to go work with the founder-owned business. He had started a business. Colab is a digital agency that does web design and development, both for websites for mid to large businesses as well as web applications. So entirely different industry than I was used to. But the mandate was really to help grow and scale the business. And to the founder's credit of Colab, when he first approached me and I said, well, you know, I don't know anything about digital, right? And he said, well, that's the point because I need somebody to help focus on growing the business and not get sucked into the business. And so that was really my thought process. I wanted to take what I had learned, helping to grow Harris Williams over a pivotal, you know, period of growth and see, well, can I do that on my own on a smaller scale? Not literally on my own. I had a great team. And also, can I get kind of deeper exposure in each key function of the business? So really lead the marketing effort, lead the biz dev effort, sit in the CFO seat, sit in the CHRO seat and really learn it intimately enough, A, so that I could hire people smarter than me in each of those areas and B, still be a really effective leader and sounding board for each of the key functions of running a business. And so that was really my goal was, can I grow and scale a business and lead a team effectively? And can I get really deep, intimate experience in each of the core functions of the business? And that's what drove me. That's what my goal was when I went to Colab. And that's what I did while I was there. Morgan, as someone who is a judge of CEOs and executive talent, before coming into that experience, you got to spend five or six years as the CEO of Colab. How did you do? What kind of CEO were you? I learned a lot and evolved over that time. I think I sharpened my leadership style. I have what I call a very human-centered approach to leadership. I learned a lot about how to foster change. And we approached a significant amount of change throughout my time there, both in terms of just our sheer growth, but also over a pandemic, moving to hybrid, changing the way we work, implementing new processes so that we could be a really attractive candidate. We had massive firms that were trying to take our talent. And so how do you build an environment that not only attracts top talent, but retains them over long periods of time? And really found my kind of style, I think, of leadership there, both from the people side, as well as the kind of strategic setting of vision and galvanizing a team around that. And how do we really kind of relentlessly focus on what that goal is and ensure that every aspect of what we're doing within the business is oriented towards that goal. Then you decided to take that knowledge and step out on your own and start Ficus. Yeah, so the idea was probably first planted with several clients I was working with at Colab that were all private equity-backed. And interestingly, they were all working with private equity for the first time. And so I'm working with the leaders of these companies and