The Consulting Growth Podcast
Joe O'Mahoney is Professor of Consulting at Cardiff University and a growth & exit advisor to boutique consultancies. Joe researches, teaches, publishes and consults about the consulting industry.
In the CONSULTING GROWTH PODCAST he interviews founders that have successfully grown or sold their firms, acquirers who have bought firms, and a host of growth experts to help you avoid the mistakes, and learn the insights of others who have been there and done that.
Find out more at www.joeomahoney.com
The Consulting Growth Podcast
Episode 25: Meg Newhouse: From Clinical Psychology to the Boardroom
Have you ever wondered how an aspiring clinical psychologist ended up co-founding a successful tech consulting firm? That's exactly the intriguing journey of Meg Newhouse, our guest for this episode. We get a fascinating peek into Meg's career pivots, starting with her initial discovery of the field of instructional design and her subsequent roles in a tech company and a large consulting firm. Her company, Inspirant Group, was sold to 10Pearls in 2023.
Meg shares how she went from writing training programs to building her boutique learning and development consulting firm. She vividly explains how the Inspirant Group was born when a good friend asked her to help build a consulting firm. In this episode, we dig into the nitty-gritty of how the Inspirant Group's founding team disrupted the consulting industry. They established their core values and behaviors and created an attractive culture for potential team members. We also touch upon the importance of resource utilization and the pitfalls of solely focusing on it.
Our conversation takes us to the complexities of being a solo entrepreneur and the crucial role of transparency and trust among co-founders. Meg reveals how they balanced decision-making processes, incentivized employees beyond sales, and kept company secrets. To top it all off, she discusses the crucial aspects of preparing for exit strategies, constructing a fair bonus structure, and the importance of engaging a broker during a company sale. This conversation is a treasure trove of insights for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and team-building.
Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit. Joe's research, writing, speaking and insights can be found at www.joeomahoney.com
Welcome to the Consulting Growth podcast. I'm Professor Joe Omani, a professor of consulting at Cardiff University and an advisor to consultancies that want to grow. If you'd like to find more out about me and access some free resources to help your consultancy grow, do please visit joomanicom. That's J-O-E-O-M-A-H-O-N-E-Ycom. Welcome back, everyone. It's a real pleasure today to have Meg Newhouse here. Meg started Inspirant Group about six years, seven years ago, and recently sold it to Ten Pearls, which makes it an interesting company. Meg will tell us all about it shortly. So, meg, first of all, welcome to the podcast. Lovely to have you on.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Joe. It's so nice to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you today.
Speaker 1:Thank you. So could you tell us a little bit about your background and how this led you to starting your own firm?
Speaker 2:It's always so fun to sit back and reflect on our origin story and how we got to where we are, and I don't know if we take a lot of time to do that, so thanks for the chance to go through it this morning. I was a psychology major. I was so certain that I was going to be a clinical psychologist with my own practice. I've always loved people, I've always wanted to help people, and I thought that was the way I would be able to do it. What happened, though? During my junior year of college, I moved into the sorority house here in the States, and those of you who aren't part of the Greek system in the US, it is a lot like what you see in the movies, unfortunately, what is it?
Speaker 1:Is it really Well?
Speaker 2:but what happened was that I made some good friends and turned out I'm a really good listener and I'm pretty empathetic, and so much of my time was spent listening to my friends' problems and giving advice and coaching them through, which I was honored to do. But then I also, as the empaths, started wearing their emotions. I really, thank goodness for a 20-year-old, sat back and said I don't know if I can do this for the rest of my life. So I went and spoke to my guidance counselor and they said well, you could do maybe like business psychology. What do you think about that? I'm like I have no idea what you're talking about. They're like well, have you ever heard of human resources? So what that led me into was actually the field of instructional design. So I looked into human resources and using what I enjoyed doing and where I thought my talents were. I was a pretty decent writer and I thought maybe I could write training programs and that would be my way of helping the world, helping people learn their jobs better and feel like they knew what they were doing. I started doing that and I did that. I went right into tech right out of school and really loved it. So I would say I turned like ones and zeros and user materials where people really understood how changes were going to impact them, whether it was new technology or a new process, and I enjoyed doing that. I did that for a very long time, but then I got a little greedy. I wanted that title.
Speaker 2:I was in my late 20s and I felt like I'd served my time and earned my dues and I left an organization I'd been with for a long time and went to big consulting. And it was like my husband said he's like you're going from JV to varsity and I was like what are you talking about? And man, if you're right, you know I long hours, you know busy. It was quite a grind. I learned so much, really grateful for the time I spent there. And what that did is it showed me this idea of partnering with vendors for specialty skills. Even the big consulting firms bring in consultants on certain things and I was like, oh yeah, that's what I want to do. I want to be an instructional designer, brought in on very specific projects to create end user materials.
Speaker 2:So I quit the big consulting, went out on my own, started my first business. It was a boutique learning and development consulting firm single shingle for a while. I ended up bringing in a couple of subcontractors to help me on the bigger projects. And I did that for a long time, joe, and really enjoyed it because I had the flexibility to choose the work that I wanted to do. I thought I was doing valuable work. I'm part of a bigger team, though. About four years in I started looking to join a startup and the startup ecosystem here in Chicago is actually really great, really cool. Tech ecosystem is great and I started kind of poking around and during this time, a good friend of mine who was an executive at a healthcare company came to me and he's like hey look, I'm going to quit my job. And he was a client at the time paying me some good money and I was like don't do that, wait what you do it Sure yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's like no, no, no, listen. He's like I'm going to start a consulting firm because I think consulting can be done differently. I think it can be better. He had spent quite a few years at one of the big firms as well. He kind of been on both sides of the table and he's like let's do it better, let's do it differently, let's be people focused. He's like I know people are your jam. I want you to come and help me build the culture and build this company and bring your learning and development background with you. And so that's how InSpring Group was born in 2017. It took me like 30 seconds. I was like, yeah, let's do this. It's kind of exactly what I'm looking for at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, given you were in one of the big four, I think we can say Deloitte. I think that's fair enough.
Speaker 2:It's out there in LinkedIn, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're still going. You could have stayed in the big corporates. What drove you to start your first firm and then be a co-founder of the new firm?
Speaker 2:So when I joined Deloitte, I went into what they called a learning manager and my skill set is in creating learning solutions, so being creative, coming up with unique, innovative ways to get the information to the end user. My role at Deloitte was managing deadlines in the Excel spreadsheet, so very different. Not exactly what I thought I was getting into. There was that. And then, honestly, joe, it was the hours. I went from working pretty traditional 40-ish hour a week to doubling that on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:And I had two young had I done this the reverse, like right out of school and the work hard, played hard mentality it would have probably been a much different story. But at that chapter of my life it just wasn't right. I was there for a glorious 10 months, lucky, and honestly no disparagement, I mean, I don't think anything I'm saying is it's surprising I learned so much in those 10 months and also the beauty of not burning bridges. As soon as I went on my own and started my own company, they did bring me right back in for a couple of years to help continue deliver on some of those projects, as that vendor that I had seen when I was there was like that's the guy I want to be.
Speaker 1:Okay, brilliant Thank you. This is a way of getting you to introduce InSpring Group as well. But so what did you start off doing versus what have you ended up doing? Did you start off with all three things as a fit? I'll let you introduce them, but all services as a focus. Did you have a phase where you just did anything to keep the cash coming through the door, or where you like? We're starting in this niche and then we're building outwards.
Speaker 2:No, that's a great question. So Inspirant Group has three founders, which is why you have those three main members Okay right.
Speaker 2:So we came together as the three-legged stool. Amir was the friend I was talking about with the initial idea. He reached out to me. So Amir has the strategy, the business ops, the business process. He reached out to me for the people side, the learning and development side, and then our third partner, chris Van Evermaid, is the tech genius and Amir and Chris know each other from their time at Deloitte as well. Chris was actually a Mirrors counselor at Deloitte, so that's in common, even though I didn't work with the guys at Deloitte. So that was our three service lines.
Speaker 2:So we did have those offerings. I mean, as you know many of your guests have talked about as founders, you're hustling, you're taking what you can to get going those first couple years. But what we really wanted as a differentiator is we didn't want to be the yes men. We didn't want to take on things that we couldn't, that we didn't have the skill set for we're too old for that right Like we would sell ourselves experience. We also had other partners within our network that we would source work out to if it wasn't in those. And then we started to build the team underneath that right and we were so fortunate that we had a compelling enough story where we were able to reach out to folks that we had worked with before, that we knew they were good workers and they'd be a good cultural fit, and build this really incredible team that was able, I think, to really make a difference in disrupting consulting, which is what we were setting out to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. And how did you attract that team? Were these people that you'd worked with before? Is something that a lot of smaller firms struggle with, especially if you're used to having the big brand behind you. All of a sudden, no one's heard of you, and why should they come and work with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm so grateful for the opportunity I was given to build the culture from day one. You talked to a lot of founders and chief HR officer. I was chief people officer. That is definitely not an early hire in the organization, but Amir knows I mean he knows companies are made up of people, so you have to get the people right in order to achieve the vision that you're set out to do. So I had carte blanche to create this culture and from the get go we established our core values and what that meant to us.
Speaker 2:It was the soul of the company. We had three core values have integrity, care about the greater good and get it done. And we had behaviors associated with those core values. And that's how people show up for each other every day. And then that just made it easy. That was like the secret sauce for the people we were looking to bring in. Most of the people we brought in were people we knew. It was people from our network that were looking for something different, right, they'd spent time at the bigger firms and knew that it could be better, knew it could be more people first, work-life balance. Like I said, we're all experienced so a lot of us have families and kids and, like we don't want to be traveling four days a week or grinding 80 hours a week. How can we find really efficient, effective, smart people that can get their work done whenever, wherever.
Speaker 1:However, as long as they're delivering value and we did it- I should say for my especially student audience in the UK and even more so in Europe, when you're working hard in the US in consulting, you're working hard, and that's not to say that consultants don't work hard in Europe. But the holiday system is very different, the work-life balance, the law is very different. Say in France where literally last week I had a conversation about utilization with a CEO and Carmen Budo is, but I think the maximum working week was something like 45 hours and I was like can I come on work? Can I come on work with you?
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Well, honestly, joe, to that end you are absolutely right and I think it's well documented that in the States, work hard, work hard right, but what we did at InSpring Group is we wanted to disrupt that. We wanted to show that we can still deliver values without the grind and with the leadership team Amir and Chris and I did every week, and still do actually to this day is we get a utilization report and we take a look at anyone working over 40 hours. We reach out to their direct manager and we ask them what's going on.
Speaker 1:This is really interesting. There's an expert in consulting in the US called David Fields and I was chatting to him recently about utilizing this focus on utilization that so many firms have. And don't get me wrong, it's a KPI that needs to be looked at, but I always associate hammering down on utilization as a feature of a process driven firm.
Speaker 1:You've got a high load of IP. If you're just turning the hand on, there's nothing wrong with that. Utilization is cool. But if you're a brains firm, you're solving problems. If you're an experienced firm, you've got people who have been there and done that. I don't see utilization as a primary driver for a firm. I think that can be damaging rather than helpful.
Speaker 2:I think we're a good example of that and we find that I mean and again, I don't think this is any surprise Nothing I say today, joe, is gonna be rocket science, it's such a-.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2:It's boring for people, yeah, but you're gonna get the best out of people when they are in control of their day. It goes back to hiring. You hire people you can trust to get the job done. We're not babysitters. You hire adults to do the work that you hired, that you agreed upon doing before they signed their contract. So let them do it.
Speaker 2:And then if they're not delivering, then you have a conversation. But we have, like I said, very smart, efficient, effective people. We're a brains organization. I love that, so let them do their job, and if it's taking more than 40 hours a week, let's talk about why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, wow, wow.
Speaker 2:We're getting done in eight hours a day, don't you think?
Speaker 1:Okay, that's great. Here You're gonna have a queue of X big four queuing up at your door now. Okay, tell me a little bit about the growth journey. Obviously, I mean. My view with three founders is it makes things a little bit easier, unless you end up hating each other's guts, which obviously wasn't the case here. But what I guess, looking back, are there things that you'd have done differently? Was it a completely smooth ride? Are there lessons that you would like to share with people who perhaps now have a five or 10 person firm that are looking to get to the 2030 mark?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean gosh, there's always lessons learned. I do think that if you are a solo entrepreneur, you need to be really honest with yourself about where you may be lacking in your skill set. And it's hard to do, because I do think a lot of founders are really optimistic and with optimism comes sometimes a lack of complete self-awareness. Maybe that's true, and so you're either going to need to outsource those areas that you don't do well or perhaps consider partners. Do you think?
Speaker 2:Amir, chris and I got very lucky? I didn't meet Chris until the day I signed, which was taking a leap right, but I trusted Amir so much and Chris and vice versa right? Chris trusted Amir so much that decided we could give this a try. The three of us established very early on to just be honest and transparent, and we were. We have had a lot of difficult conversations, but it was always with respect. I mean never anything brutal or painful. It was always three grownups working through whatever the trouble was that came our way. So I think that's really important as well is something our team has always valued with us as well is being transparent. So talking about I mean we made it through COVID as a young small company lost money that year, right Like it. But we were still able to keep our team and we kept them informed every step of the way during that time.
Speaker 2:And I think that's sometimes hard to do, especially as a solo founder, like this is your baby and it's hard to open the curtain and tell people what's going on behind there. But people hopefully you're hiring smart people and if you are, they're gonna appreciate being spoken to in that manner, that they're kept in the loop and they're part of that decision-making, right. I mean that's another piece of it, especially with young companies. There's a source of pride in being one of the early employees for a startup and we I mean people on our team they're like oh, I'm employee four, I'm employee eight, yeah, yeah, sure, well, they know this, they know this and they'll say this, I think, for years to come, like, oh, when it's rent sold, I was employee whatever. So having them feel as part of the conversation, part of the decision-making ultimately, right, you'll have the final decision, but getting that input and getting those ideas is incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1:Now listen, if you weren't focused on hammering utilization, you must have been focused on value to the client, and that must have enabled you to charge prices that kind of made up for the lack of not lack of focus on utilization, but the strategic decision not to hammer people in terms of work. So did that mean that you weren't charging by the hour or by the day, or did you still do that? But you managed it slightly differently.
Speaker 2:We have found. So we do have projects that are hourly, but we have found our best model is a fixed bid project because that allows us and that way to control hours resources you know, maybe when you bring in QA just for a minute, you know whether they need to charge that or something like that.
Speaker 2:So that allows our team the flexibility and we also do think it's a benefit to the clients. The client's like okay, here's the chunk of money, I don't need to worry about you guys going over hours or anything like that. Like, we can just manage to the understanding that in nine months, for X number of dollars, we're gonna get these deliverables.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, you obviously didn't get much pushback against that. I mean, I personally find that clients prefer fixed pricing because it allows them to budget for it.
Speaker 2:No, I mean honestly, I do think even in the almost seven years we've been in business, I've seen more of a shift to go to those fixed spids because of exactly that. We're talking to clients during budgeting time, which is coming up here soon, and we're like, hey, budget X amount, you want to get this done next year. It's going to cost this amount. It's just easy, right, Instead of like, oh, we think it's going to be this, we'll do it for us, but we might, you know, we might need to ask for more money when it comes around. That's the more traditional consulting model and again, I mean, we're evolving, right?
Speaker 1:Things change, so Okay, I run a I call it a boutique leaders club and I, whenever I have someone on, I send them I hope you don't mind I send them your LinkedIn profile and I say any questions, if you don't mind. There's a few questions that some of them sent in. They're all they've already done it.
Speaker 2:Oh good, this is great, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I wasn't going to bring anyone on and surprise you. And here is your own teacher who has something to say to you.
Speaker 2:Badge, I would actually love that. I have been wanting a roast for a very long time. So, joe, if you could help me with that, that would be great.
Speaker 1:No roasting here. Okay, so we have a question around incentives. So I think this is a more general question where very often the sale is incentivized but there's so much work before the sale that needs to be done and should be encouraged. You know, and very often the person that does that work in terms of the meals, the introductions, the paper doesn't get rewarded. How did you manage that in your firm?
Speaker 2:I like to talk about the sale, but prior to that I'd like to talk about the compensation model that Inspirant came up with, because I think it's quite unique.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of incentives, up until I'd say the first three years of the business fairly standard, I mean, we had very few levels or roles manager, director, partner maybe, but regardless of what that person and that role was doing, they had the same base salary and then bonus was you know X percentage of salary.
Speaker 2:And then, about three years in, we started looking at a new role called a practice lead, and that practice lead was managing a P&L, so then they would get a percentage of the profits of their P&L. That prompted a couple of the team members to come to the leadership team and say so, the practice line leads are really motivated to sell additional work and they receive the benefits of that. But then there's the rest of the team that's getting a more standard bonus structure. What if the profit sharing goes to everybody? What if we come up with a way to do that at the end of the year? And so we design the entire system as far as bonuses go, so base salaries, which we bump everyone pretty regularly, but then the bonus structure is a pool of profits that at the end of the year is shared out based on performance as well as longevity.
Speaker 2:So basically, you know, just being here showing up, you get a certain dollar amount every year, but then you know there's a performance pool and what that did show was, honestly, most of the bonuses were fairly equal, so it made it very equitable for the entire team, regardless of someone was deep in delivery or someone was on the sales side.
Speaker 1:Do you mean equal in terms of final amount or do you mean equal in terms of percentage of salary?
Speaker 2:Equal in terms of final amount.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's a nice place to be a consultant then.
Speaker 2:You know, the first year we did it when the leadership was kind of running the final numbers and getting everything closed the year out because we're cash based, so cash everything out at the end of the year it was like wow, you know we're like, oh, wow, this is great, it really worked and how cool for the team, because then at every single level, regardless, you know, most of our team is billable but we have a handful of non-billable folks, regardless of what they're doing, they're giving it at their all because we all benefit right, we all benefit from what we're doing, and it kind of also focuses the mind a little bit, I guess, on if this activity isn't adding value to the company.
Speaker 1:Why the hell am I doing it 100%? That's it, yeah, okay, and so did that account for the sale as well. So you know, if someone landed a big deal, great, well done, thank you. But you'll see a reward for that in the final pool.
Speaker 2:So there's only three partners and we used brokerage to sell, so really the rest of the team wasn't aware of the sale until the sale actually happened.
Speaker 1:I mean not selling the company, making bids and winning. So we'll come to that, don't worry. But in terms of I'm a senior, I land the client, I bring them in, they sign up with us, Do I just see? I saw my reward in the pool at the end, rather than I get a cut of that deal. No there's also that. There's also sales percentage.
Speaker 2:So there's a different percentage for new work versus repeat work, but there is an extra bonus for selling.
Speaker 1:This is interesting. What was the difference on repeat versus? Do you remember what the difference was on repeat versus?
Speaker 2:Maybe 5 percent difference.
Speaker 1:Okay, I mean I'm pleased you reward it, because in a lot of firms repeat work is known as interesting because you get a new client. It might be half the amount of the renewal, but everyone's ringing the bell and running around wanting a bonus, yeah. So it's quite nice to see them both being rewarded.
Speaker 2:Well, work is work. I mean right yeah it's not. You have to especially, I mean. So the folks who are getting that repeat work are often the directors who are running the team of people who are delivering so well that the client wants to keep us on. So there should be a report in that.
Speaker 1:Okay, Now you brought us into the exit side of things which I'd love to jump into. So I've got another question from one of the members of the boutique leaders club, which is are there any key things with preparing for your exit that you wish you would have done, say, 6 to 12 months prior to initiating the sale process? That perhaps might have made it go smoother? I think I know who this is, because he's in exactly that position right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so you should know that we did engage a broker to help with our sale. They're a sell side only broker. Okay, he's out of the States and I'm happy to share the information.
Speaker 1:Oh no do please.
Speaker 2:It was important. When we first decided the right thing to do was to sell, we started kind of going at it on our own, you know, like, oh yeah, I know someone who sold and I'll ask them about it. And the reason we I should even back up even more the reason we chose to look for an acquisition was that we reached a point in our growth that we felt like we had hustled as much as we could. You know, like we didn't see any. We could hustle harder, but we didn't see any change happening, and so we needed a larger organization to help us open doors, to help bring us into existing clients. That needed to be the right sort of complimentary services to you know what we didn't offer? Like we didn't want to join another consulting firm.
Speaker 1:We didn't want to get fired.
Speaker 2:you know, just get absorbed into that. We wanted to still be the consultants, but as part of a different kind of larger ecosystem. Yeah, so to the acquisition story. We, when we decided to do this, we didn't tell the team, and this was based on some advice as well as the fact that the three founders had decided should we not find the right partner? We're not going to do this Like we are finding the opportunity as is, and we don't want to upset anybody, you know, for no reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I you know it's something I advise all of my clients that, no matter how much you're trusted, how big friends you are, once word gets out simply because it's an unknown, people get jittery.
Speaker 2:That's right and right, and we just needed the team to focus on the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But this, when it was time to tell them, we would tell them. So. So, anyway, we kind of stumbled around for a few months trying to make this happen on our own and man, oh man, I have to tell you that salesperson from the firm we used reached out on LinkedIn and was very persistent and finally I was like fine, we'll have a conversation. Okay, this is one example and I don't want to encourage people to continue.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it is in general quite annoying, but it was just right, right person, right time.
Speaker 1:Your LinkedIn box is going to be buzzing now with all types of Already in.
Speaker 2:You should know I don't look at my LinkedIn inbox, so just FYI. In general, right, I would say to folks that are starting to consider the sale if you're really serious and you want to make something happen pretty quickly, use a brokerage. Now, the hard part is giving up a percentage of the sale, and I understand that. But as I was speaking with my partner, you know it's like selling a home, right? Like just, do you want to do for sale by owner? Well, maybe in the States, right? So when you use a real estate agent, they get a percentage of the sale.
Speaker 2:So, but if you do for sale by owner, it could sit on the market for months and months and months and maybe you lose value and, you know, miss the right opportunity. The benefit we found with using this brokerage was that they had a team of people that put together the sales materials for us and then a database of interested buyers and then they broker the discussions. And I tell that you know when we close and had a hand of chunk of change over to the brokerage, I remind the guys, like 10 pearls would never have found us had we not used them. They are absolutely the right company to acquire us. They are exactly what we are looking for.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Just two quick things here. Number one there's a lot of statistical research that shows that using a broker, despite the fees even when the fees are taken into account and the lawyers and all the rest of it generates prices 15% higher than not using a broker. So that's the first thing. But I also remember I was using the house selling analogy with a guy called Paul Beaumont who founded Equatech, which are one of the biggest M&A firms for professional services and tech, and he said you're right, it's just like that, except your home doesn't go down in value because you're selling it. When you're selling a business, if you take your eye off the ball because you're trying to sell the business and you're not getting it in, your value goes down, so it's even more. The consequences can be even worse if you're trying to sell it yourself.
Speaker 2:Great point Because I have to tell you, even using the brokerage, it took a lot of our time to so go ahead, right, because you have to. So first they put together all the sales materials and so reviewing that, making sure they got the story right. So there's two pieces that they used. It's the teaser, which has no identifying information, but it's enough to let someone's whistle and want to continue the conversation. And once someone is interested in talking, then the brokerage reaches out and says are you interested? If so, let's sign the NDA. Do that. Then they send this 30-page marketing brochure, the SIM, for the potential buyer to review. So you really want to get that story right. So that took months to work regularly with the brokerage and then, depending on how deep you want to go, we had, I mean, first of all, we used to review the companies that were interested in talking to us. That takes time. And then they have the conversations to set up, to even schedule those conversations honestly with the three founders. So there's three of us plus from outside, plus the brokerage.
Speaker 2:So all that being said, joe, just to underscore, you're absolutely right, like we used to brokerage and it took a lot of our time.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine if we were trying to navigate that, yeah, and what I see, and in fact it's quite sad when people come to me afterwards. So very often you'll have someone either someone who comes to me and says, right, I'm ready to sell my firm, and you look at the firm and say, well, it's making money but it's not ready to sell Because they had no advice.
Speaker 1:So that's the first thing. But secondly, you'll very often get someone who had a great firm. They've tried to sell it themselves. It's fallen through because they've taken their eyes off the bull. Sales have gone down, margins gone down, A few key people might have left and then you're stuck there a year and a half later and you've got you're trying to sell something that's gone down in value and no one's going to want to buy that.
Speaker 2:I had not thought about it that way, and I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you definitely did the right thing. I'm a big believer in brokers and if you're bigger, getting the banks involved, then it is talking to a client at the moment and I just told them how much the lawyers would cost. Forget about the banks cut and you could see them.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it's a little painful at the end of it, but again, I mean, I just keep coming back to like we wouldn't have found this perfect partner had it not been for the broker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, okay, good. And one of the questions I was asked to us was in terms, now you might have been quite early on in what I'm calling a recession, but officially is into recession, but certainly in the UK and the US, a lot of consultants these are finding it quite hard. Now you chose to sell. I guess you chose to sell in 2022 and then the deal was done in 23th. That right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was late summer of 22 when we, the three of us, agreed let's get to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, so that actually was an ideal time to do it in many ways, wasn't it? I mean, I don't know about your specific sector, but in terms of the consulting market as a whole, there's a lot of firms out there that are struggling. But did you give how much thought did you give to timing in terms of market trends, waiting for potential buyers to be in the right place to buy, or was it all done quite quickly? Was it quite a tight deal?
Speaker 2:It was done very quickly. In part, we did take the looming recession into account. We were worried that our business would slow and we become less attractive and that potential buyers would get scared, and I do think actually a few of them did. Even during the process we had some good conversations and then they went silent. So we got. I think in many, many ways we got lucky. I think success in business it's a lot of right time, right people and, of course, there's a little bit of luck. So I think that the time we chose, the recession was being discussed, but not as much of a looming threat. But I think, honestly, when we were in the thick of the sale was really when people were starting to tighten the belts of it.
Speaker 1:Okay, now you're on the other side. Tell us a little bit about 10 pearls, because it's an interesting company. Am I wrong? Is it based in Germany or Osno?
Speaker 2:So 10 pearls was co-founded by two brothers in Pakistan.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:They built the business for about nine years in Pakistan is an offshore resource to compete with India. What's great is that there aren't many Pakistani competitors as there are in India, so it's not like there's Pakistani Google or Amazon. So 10 pearls was able to really grow and become that resource. As well as in school, folks are learning English as soon as they start school, so the English is very well spoken and folks are easy to communicate with. So brothers had had major success and also founded the company tech company app development staff org. With a generous heart. So they wanted to give back right away.
Speaker 2:The brothers wanted to give back to their community. They provided, starting from day one, when they're working out of their home, their mom would provide lunch every day To the guys in the next room, the coders, and this day, now we're almost 20 years in, they still do lunch every day in their Pakistani offices. Another big piece the brothers look to their mom as a big inspiration in their lives and so they focus, especially in that region, on promoting women in tech, and so they have a lot, even from day one they started all of these initiatives around women in tech. 40% of their name, pakistan.
Speaker 2:So that spoke to Inspirant, because Inspirants are people for this company as well. So, first and foremost, our cultural values needed to align, but then they're also the the backend of digital transformation. That we didn't have right. We don't have a dev shop, we didn't have hard coders like that, right. Those were things that we needed to outsource so and they didn't have that front end strategic consulting. So it really now, with the acquisition of Inspirant Temporals, is able to provide this end digital transformation.
Speaker 1:Okay, what did they see in you that attracted them to you? So obviously you had good people, you were in a nice niche, you'd grown relatively quickly over five or six years. But what was it above and beyond Because I'm guessing there's quite a few companies that would have ticked those boxes what is it above and beyond that that attracted them to you?
Speaker 2:To hear Imran the CEO. Tallit is so Temporals is. Their story is really interesting as well. Maybe you'll have Imran at some point.
Speaker 2:But so he and his brother, Zeeshan, started the company nine years in Pakistan and then decided even during the pandemic, they decided to double down on growth and they started acquiring and, Joe, over the course of three years they acquired 12 companies.
Speaker 2:So they left just focused in Pakistan and they started acquiring near shore. So they've got some let M companies that acquire. They've acquired in the US and they most recently acquired a company in the UK and they focused on growth and really double down on that. Their model is super interesting in these acquisitions because they look for founder led companies that have been successful, such as Inspirant Group, with similar values people first, with the way they treat their employees as well as the way they interact with their clients, and then they bring them in and let these companies continue to run in their successful way, but now with the support of the Temporals ecosystem. So Imran said his famous line is one plus one equals 11. So you bring in these organizations and let the entrepreneurs continue to be creative and innovative, but now as part of almost 1600 person organization continuing to deliver in their unique ways, but also collaborate, cross sell and use the benefit of the greater good.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. To be honest, I hadn't. I mean, I heard of the company, but I didn't know the backstory and I didn't even know it was a Pakistan company to start off with, which is amazing. They've done so well and especially opening up into the people side of things and expanding internationally. I'm going to have to get them on, aren't?
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I really want to talk about your next I'll, I'll realize you with Temporals and you know there's, there's a great thing there. Do you ever think about going back to psychology or a big change, or are you going to keep keep going the way you've started here?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a great question. Well, let me say I do use my psychology degree every day. That hasn't gone by the wayside by any means. No, I have a real soft spot in passion for executives during my career in the work that I've done. So you know, as I was talking about starting out as an instructional designer, having my boutique learning and development consulting firm prior to Inspiring Group, I did a lot of the tech training and development that I had been doing, but I did start to make my way into leadership development and really focusing on what makes a good leader and then thinking about where we are in our lives.
Speaker 2:You know, when you talk about people moving into these executive roles, they're often you know. Maybe they have a family, maybe they're caring for aging parents, or maybe they have a mortgage, and you know all the things they have to think about and worry about and how often they don't deal with their stuff. I don't know what that means Like. I'm really loving what is going on with Inspirant Temporals and what the future holds, and there will be some time here to really dedicate to the integration of Inspirant Group and as well as the other acquisitions and bringing Temporals to that next level. I don't see that going away anytime soon.
Speaker 2:But I can take this passion for overall executive well-being, I think is what it is. I'm a yoga instructor as well, so you bring that. I want you to say yeah, you bring that piece into it. You know your overall, like life should be fun, like you should be happy, and how I could maybe take my experience and help folks who might be struggling in any situation. Let's get to that point.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I'll have to introduce you. There's a wonderful woman called Sarah Matthew who sold her own marketing company about. It must be seven or eight years ago now, and I mean wonderful woman but has great. She's a biochemist by far Farm's suitable to do the marketing for and she's done that by training. So she knows all about the human system but has kind of got into the leadership from a psychology, leadership coaching from a psychological perspective. So I'll introduce you to her because she's fascinating.
Speaker 2:Right up my alley. I would love that. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Listen. Thank you so much for your time, meg. We've learned a huge amount and I can only wish you all the best going forward with Temporals and, yeah, really appreciate your time, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the opportunity and if anyone listening cares to connect on LinkedIn, I'm happy to do that. I will read your email if you're not trying to sell me something.
Speaker 1:I'll put your contact details up on the show notes, thank you, thanks, joe, take care, bye-bye, as ever. Thank you for listening to the Consultancy Growth Podcast. This is Professor Joe Omani at JoeOmanicom.
