#21: How to Build High-Performing Teams and Simplify Business Complexity with Dave Seligsohn

In this episode of Brewing Business with Brady, we’re joined by leadership coach Dave Seligsohn to uncover strategies for scaling businesses past the dreaded “Whitewater” stage.

What is “Whitewater”? It’s the moment when growth and complexity collide, and Dave has the roadmap to guide you through it.

Tune in to discover:

• The 5 key strategies every leader needs to simplify operations and boost innovation.
• How to build a team that thrives under pressure.
• Practical steps to create a culture of trust and collaboration.

Dave also dives into actionable advice for overcoming imposter syndrome, so you can lead your team with confidence.

🎙 Don’t miss this must-listen episode for business owners and leaders ready to scale with clarity and purpose.

Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveseligsohn/

Connect with Mason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbrady/

Visit BradyCFO: https://www.bradycfo.com/

If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to rate, review, and of course, SUBSCRIBE!

LEAVE SOME FEEDBACK: If you enjoyed the series, please rate and review!

Have a business growth question you'd like Mason to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: info@bradycfo.com

Transcript

Mason Brady (00:02)
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of brewing business with Brady. Today's guest is my good friend, Dave Seligson. I've known Dave for a couple of years now. We actually meet on a regular basis in our convene group. And I have grown to really appreciate Dave's insights that Dave is one of those older souls with a lot of wisdom and insight that he brings to our group.

Really, really appreciate Dave's insights that Dave is a leadership coach. Dave is the person that you go to if you want to develop your leaders, including yourself as a leader. And so I am super excited to have Dave on the podcast today. Welcome Dave.

Dave Seligsohn (00:45)
Thanks, it's great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity Mason and you'll see the long beard just kind of accentuates the long wisdom, long tenure. So you didn't call me old. I appreciate that. You just said old soul. So yeah, I appreciate it.

Mason Brady (00:55)
Exactly.

Yeah,

that was the key that I know you play rugby and you look pretty fit still. So I was worried that next time we meet in person, if I call you old, you might do something to me, Dave. So yeah.

Dave Seligsohn (01:08)
I think you're safe. You're safe. Maybe

a big, big bandley bear hug or something. That's about it.

Mason Brady (01:14)
Yes, so yeah, obviously this is Brewing Business with Brady Dave. So every guest has come with something a little bit different that they start their morning off with, but it's interesting to see all the varieties. So I would love to hear what do you start your morning off with? What's in the mug today?

Dave Seligsohn (01:31)
Funny thing is I don't normally, I don't drink coffee, don't like it. And there's not many people like me. I don't really drink tea. I had to borrow one of my wife's Stanley cups because I don't even use them, but I needed to have something. So I borrowed this and it has water because that's what I do. But I will say that my wife and I do this intermittent fasting to try to help with keeping in shape and staying healthy. And my first drink every morning is at 10. And it's this thing, I brought a bag of it because it's not 10 yet here. So it's this thing called Kachava.

It's like a superfood protein healthy kind of shake thing. And that's typically my first real drink and breakfast. And usually by about that time, really hungry. And so it kind of hits the spot and it tastes, it actually tastes good. So that's my morning.

Mason Brady (02:14)
I'm surprised that your wife Stanley is not like a dark green and black color for you. I know you're an Eagles fan

Dave Seligsohn (02:18)
Dude, she has, she has,

I can't understand why she has so many Stanleys. Like, why do you need to the one she's got like four or five, six Stanleys? I don't get it anymore. I really don't. I had one custom made. I don't know if you can do that, but if you knew you could do that, you can actually engrave and you can send them a thing and they'll engrave it. She likes to cheshire cat. So I had that, that grin and the cat engraved on a dark purple.

Mason Brady (02:23)
You

You

Nice. Yeah. I, you know, I, so there's Yeti, there's Stanley, but, I always liked, Arctic R TIC as a brand and, cause I just, they were cheaper, but they're still good quality. And, in California, when I lived there, I would, I would always order their brand. but then I moved to Texas. had no idea that they're just down the street from us. and so, yeah, I, I get all their, you can custom engrave all their stuff. So with the Brady mugs, that's, that's who we go through. Yep. Yep. You do, you do. And,

Dave Seligsohn (03:06)
I see it now. Yeah, cool. I get one of those for speaking. You sending me up on? All right.

Mason Brady (03:11)
Yeah, actually for our guests, we do a nice little giveaway where they get one too. yeah, the mugs are big deal. I was seeing on LinkedIn yesterday that we had multiple of our podcast guests that had just received them last week and they were posting photos. So yeah, it's working well. So yeah.

Dave Seligsohn (03:14)
Nice.

Cool. Very cool.

My wife will take it. She'll use it, but that's cool.

Mason Brady (03:27)
Yeah. Cool. well, yeah, Dave, I, I'm really excited for today's insight because, know, you, you've had a lot of experience in your life with regards to working with a lot of different businesses, but even you were, you were a principal, you were a school principal as well. And, you know, I mean, as a principal, you have a massive staff, you know, that you have to lead and oversee. And obviously there's challenges with that because, you know, they talk about all the time about, you know, teachers being underpaid, being underappreciated and.

You know, and just dealing with the difficulties of children and what they bring from home and all that stuff. so, leadership is, a definite thing that, you know, any business owner, especially, you know, small midsize business owners that they need to grow in, right. That we all do. there's nobody that has ever reached the pinnacle that we all have a little bit of growth in it. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm really interested though. you know, especially within Brady CFO, we find we work with a lot of clients when they hit a stage that we call white water.

You know, business owners, they start a business and they go through a stage called early struggle. And that's when they're just trying to get their feet off the ground. And then all of a sudden they go through a stage called fun. Once they pass early struggle that, you know, sales are cooking that they've got their target market. They've got their marketing message down and things are rolling well and they hit fun. then eventually they hit a point of complexity where, you know, they've grown from fun, where they're doing a bunch of different jobs or a bunch of different projects. And there's so much complexity. have this big staff.

And they need to figure out how to systemize and the lead well. And, they've hit this stage of whitewater and they have to overcome it. Otherwise it's probably going to kill them. Right. And, in whitewater, their business isn't growing like it used to, and they're really struggling how to move forward. What are your top tactical suggestions for a leader to overcome this?

Dave Seligsohn (05:15)
Yeah, I understand that there's a variety of tipping points. I think of them as glass ceilings or tipping points in a company that if they don't crest that sort of summit that they just stay there. There's one typically around a million dollars. There's another typically around four to five million dollars. There's another at eight to nine. And then after you get past that one, it kind of goes to 20. And then after that, it can go and be as far as, you know, sometimes 50, 60 million. And then you're into the hundreds and on.

those little summits, those glass ceilings or those whitewater times are very difficult. And I have really five things that come to mind. Sorry, I was thinking as you were talking and I was counting them on my fingers and I got five fingers, so that worked out well. It's good, yes, it's good. That you know of. So, you asked me for tackle, very specific thing. So here we go.

Mason Brady (05:59)
That's good. least you're not f6.

Dave Seligsohn (06:12)
Number one is effective data collection and tracking. And if you're not collecting data on the most important things, and I'm not just saying data for data sake, but on the most important things. So what are the key metrics that you need to understand that really define your business performance? And then how do I continue to track those over time? And the reason why you need that on your current state before you break through that glass ceiling is we're going to make change and try to do something different. And I've got to understand how that change is going to operate.

And so if I need to define and have accurate data today on what's going on today, and then I'm gonna do X. And so the question is, here's your business today. We're doing X, so what happened? Do I have to be able to know what changed and am I on the right trajectory? So that effective data collection and then tracking is a huge key component. And I've worked with literally hundreds of businesses at this point, both in my own consulting and in prior work. And anything from GE and 3M to...

United Airlines and then small businesses nobody ever heard of and all of them struggle with and then find ways to overcome that data piece. Secondly, A very specific thing that you can do and that I specialized in for a lot of my career is to grow by partnership, not by selling more, not by working harder, not by lowering price, but thinking about how to identify and find the right partners.

that your services complement theirs, don't reproduce theirs, but complement, and that you and they together can go to market with something new, some bundled, some broader solution, and co-sell those things together, transform each other's markets. So partnering is definitely a way to accelerate that. Just to give you a specific example, I helped grow a company for 11 years. We were a learning management consulting business.

We partnered with a learning management technology company. And so we helped them co-sell our strategy with their technology and both companies benefited greatly because it was something they couldn't offer. And we now had a technology application that required our services. So finding the right one's good. Next would be to simplify. Really look at all the products and services.

and identify, and this goes back to that data-driven piece, but what are the things that we're really selling the most of? What are the things that are most profitable? Eliminate the things that are on the margins. Even if they're the things that you really think or want to deliver, if it's not working over a period of time, we have to be smart enough to simplify. I worked with one client recently, in fact, you know who this person is, we'll talk about offline, but I do, and they identified 12 different products and services, and by the time I got done asking questions and poking into them, they really had two.

because four of them hadn't been sold in the last 18 months and the others, you know, a bunch of them were sold like once over the last year. Let's focus on the things that matter or take those things that are in selling and embed them in the ones that are kind of So yeah, that's, that's another one. And then the last thing I want to say is, finding a way to create an innovation cycle within your business, continually innovating. And that doesn't come from one person. and I've actually developed a process for

Mason Brady (09:09)
Yeah, no way.

Dave Seligsohn (09:25)
creating an innovation team and sort of creating a conveyor belt of new innovations to test and validate and put in the top of the funnel and out the bottom of the funnel once you do your testing and validation, new products and services to go to market. So I think those are the five things that I can think of to help overcome sort of that white water as you called it or that glass ceiling.

Mason Brady (09:46)
I'm going to dig in a little bit to the data piece. And I'd like to actually dig into the innovation piece of it too, Dave. and, but to start with data, you know, lot of these, a lot of these business owners, you know, small mid market business owners, we're talking, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 million in revenue. know, and they're blowing and going right. That they, and especially what I find is that the CEO is usually this visionary founder type to where.

you know, they're out and they're just producing deals. They're a producer, right? That they're coming up with the next big idea. And the idea of tying them down to review data or to help with input of data, or even them managing a team to do that. I, for some of them, I know, like it's, it's like, okay, please pull my hair out, you know, type of thing. Like I, that's the last thing I want to do. And but yet at the same time, they all know it's incredibly important.

How would you suggest these business owners to actually implement a better data tracking and data systems? And just where do they start with it? Where can they take baby steps to begin this process? Because I think, least in my experience, that they think about all the amazing things that they want from their data. And I feel like, hey, let's just take it one interval at a time. And so what would you suggest for a business leader to do that?

Dave Seligsohn (11:10)
So a few things kind of in order the first is is if you can't do it yourself You don't have the skills expertise time or inclination Bring somebody in the can find somebody internally that does or bring somebody in on a project or hire a consultant Bring somebody in who can do that that person needs to evaluate the current state of your data and then you need to develop sort of a Comparison to the data that's most important to the data that you have

Right? So we need to kind of compare those two things. Here's all the stuff we have. Here's all the stuff we're going to need. Let's see what's missing. Okay. You're not going to be able to collect everything that's missing, but there are certain things that you can do. If you're missing customer data, can you do build a survey pretty easily? Yep. There are certain things you can do. And so trying to understand that gap between the data that you have today and maybe no data today. Maybe we're not even doing that in a small startup. That's kind of like you said, blowing and going and speed.

then what are the key pieces that we need to start tracking and how do we put something into place to begin to collect that data? And as the data comes in, it's gonna be really informative and it's gonna help you start making changes and making better decisions, that data-driven decision. just again, bring somebody in if you can't. I do that a lot of times, is kind of evaluate and focus on that, but there lots of people who find somebody internally that has the inclination and their job is to understand the data that you have today and its efficacy, like how can I trust it? And then secondly,

What's the data that we need to have to accomplish our goal? Whatever that goal is. So comparing and finding the gaps and then addressing gaps one by one, just one by one, do one thing. I worked with a company, it was a global real estate company and we identified 37 key pieces of data that they needed to track and what they were trying to do was identify their great talent. Who was great? That's what they called it. We wanted to have more great.

And they realized that 17 of the 37 were things that they either couldn't trust or didn't have today. So you can't address 17 things all at once. So what we did was we had them focus on one piece of untrustworthy data and clean it. One thing they weren't doing that they could do quickly and fix quickly or start collecting quickly. And one long-term project that we thought was most meaningful. And so they had a long-term goal, they had a short-term fix, and they had something they weren't doing that they could start doing. That was where they started.

Mason Brady (13:29)
So I think, yeah, you know, even, even the, I guess I want to, I want to keep deep diving on this, right. In a practical sense, like, you know, I think a lot of businesses like sales, you know, and increasing sales and increasing revenue is obviously a key goal, right. And, you know, and they have a sales force, they have marketing teams, et cetera. say in a business that say like professional services business, just as an example, that, know, they're, they're trying to sell through different channels, whether it be to.

be present at association events, do sponsorships, do speaking events. You know, they have some digital marketing strategies, whether it be social media, email marketing, et cetera. Like, what would you recommend to this type of business of what they should start tracking to determine where should they spend more of their time in their sales strategies and business development strategies? What would you recommend to them?

Dave Seligsohn (14:23)
So the very definitive and specific answers, it depends. the reason why I say that is it really depends on what they're trying to accomplish. And when I go in and work with businesses on this very topic, we do an exercise. And right in the beginning, I asked them to bring in their entire leadership team and or other representatives of all the stakeholders for different parts of the business.

Mason Brady (14:28)
I feel like I'm back in my NBA.

Dave Seligsohn (14:52)
There could be three people in the room or there could be 30 people in the room. It depends on how big the company is and as many. But I want all the different opinions and perspectives. And I asked them all one simple question. What, if made the best it could possibly be, would have the greatest impact on your business today? And I asked them all to write down two or three things that they think would have the greatest impact on their business. Through a process that I've just defined, we narrow that down until I get that whole room to agree that this is the one thing that if we made great.

would have the biggest impact on your business. That's what we're gonna focus on now. The next thing we ask then, or that I ask is, what are the key questions that we need to be able to answer that will help us to understand that one top priority? And then each one of those questions has data points. I'll give you an example here in a minute. So that's where the data comes from. Now I know what the data is, and the data is tied to the most important question that's tied to the key that we all just agreed was the most, the biggest factor of improving our business.

So I'm gonna go back to that real estate answer. They decided they wanted to, in that room of all the different ideas, they decided the most important thing was to identify and create more great talent. So we started asking questions. And one of the things that we decided was the most important question was, how do we identify, what are the characteristics of great? What does great look like is really the question that they asked in their words. And so we started to then list out, well, what's the data that looks like great? And they listed everything from.

Mason Brady (16:00)
it.

Dave Seligsohn (16:17)
Great could be how many years you've been here. It has to do with your salary. It could be, you volunteer? Is that always a consistent criterion across all of our great? How do they function in cross-functional teams? Do we even track how they're doing and how their team performance is doing? Have they been promoted in the last X number of months or whatever? So they listed 37 different data points all around what does great look like. Okay, so many different ones. And so.

the data ties to the key question that supports the most important factor in your business. So when I say it depends, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Mason Brady (16:55)
You bring up, I do want to eventually get back to this innovation piece, but I'm to go down this trail a little bit. you bring up this, this fact that you have helped these businesses facilitate these discussions, right? And I, think that can be, you know, one of the most difficult things is trying to get everybody on the same page, leading everybody, you know, they, the horse to the right, you know, water trough type of thing and getting everybody on. Yes. And, getting everybody on the same page. Why do you think it's such a struggle?

Dave Seligsohn (17:17)
Herd and cats.

Mason Brady (17:24)
for leaders to do this themselves? you know, for business leaders, the CEOs, et cetera, why do you think it's such a struggle for them to do it themselves versus using a facilitator like you've done and like yourself? Why can't leaders, why can't business owners be doing this themselves?

Dave Seligsohn (17:43)
I mean, they can, they just need equipping. Most business leaders aren't trained to be able to do that. And also, not to be too cliche, but you're in the weeds, you're in the middle of forest. You need somebody who can step in and see the curvature of the earth and the canopy of the trees and everything, and not just be down looking at a bunch of bark and leaves on the ground. So it's really hard sometimes to see that. also,

If you want to get a broader perspective and getting that perspective from all the key stakeholders, again, I don't care if it's two or three or 30, that's gonna be different than the leader kind of driving their vision. It's not gonna be the same. And so you need to create almost a place where the leader is a part of the process, but not over-weighted, not weighted greater than anybody else that's there. So it's difficult, but a leader can be equipped and can run.

You it's funny, you alluded that I was a principal and a teacher, the way that I lead these businesses and I've done it for, you know, that real estate company, I've done it for Southwest Airlines, I've done it for Kia, like large Kia, you Hyundai Auto America, is, it's an old first grade classroom management technique that's really called think, pair, share, this cute little thing that I turned into a corporate process.

It really does funnel up and bubble up, me, or funnel down the key number one. And once you get that whole room to agree, you've done, so not just is agreeing important for data, but think about that. You just got 15 of your key stakeholders to all agree in a room together that that's the most important thing. You just focused everybody in the same direction. You got them all paddling down the same stream.

and now we're gonna go dive into how we fix that. So you've created ownership, you've created alignment, you've created great communication. Those people can funnel that down throughout the other parts of their organization. That's all really hard for a leader to do, but the leader gets the credit, because the leader's the one who brought somebody in to go start that process and step aside in humbleness to say, I may not be the best one to do this.

Mason Brady (19:46)
Yup. Yeah. I definitely think that, yeah, that third party perspective, right? That, like you said, sometimes we're in the weeds and, yeah, I mean, we think we know things, but sometimes somebody coming in from an outside perspective can help us to see things in our business, but also bring other, you know, outside industry insight too, that, Hey, have you thought about this way? And so it can be really good. you know, I, I do want to come back that the innovation piece is really important, right? I feel like for a couple of reasons that.

One, for business owners, they never know when they're going to need to transition their business. that is a statistical fact. Like I, I, you really don't know when you're going to have to do that because divorce death, you know, disability, et cetera, can happen in life. And so, you know, the idea is that the business owner can't be the sole innovator, right? They cannot be, you know, the rainmaker of sales forever. And they can't be the sole innovator on their business. They have to build that into the business so that.

When whatever happens to them, that that business can continue to thrive and whether they want to hand it down to their kids or whatever the case is, right. That that business can continue to produce an income that can help take care of their family. If something happens to that business owner and, Innovation is really important. And I, I think, you know, like I, I adhered a lot to this program called predictable success, the system, and it, talks about it that, you know, predictable success is a state where you do have innovation.

but you can also overshoot it too, right? That you can implement so many systems in a business where you fall into a state called treadmill where you're just a bureaucracy, right? Like you're not actually getting anything done and you spend more time worrying about monthly expense reports than going and getting the new sale or getting the new client. so I really want to hear that concept as to how you facilitate innovation.

happening within a company and that there's a team that focuses on innovation, walk us through that.

Dave Seligsohn (21:45)
Sure, it's a great question. It's one that I asked myself in multiple roles when I was tasked with thinking about optimizing products and services. And I finally realized that by trial and error, that there's the ability to create what I call an innovation team. And so an innovation team is an internal team that's tasked with coming up with and listening through the organization to your customers, to anything, to the news, wherever it comes from.

capturing innovative ideas, and then they go and do some high level validation or testing on that based on certain, you have to teach them, and so you have to tell them what the criteria is and show them how to do it. And so they're kind of think about an innovation as being a funnel and the ideas are topped in at the top, they're dropped in at the top, and then these guys are doing high level testing at the top of the funnel. And if it passes that high level testing,

then a few things pass through, then all of a sudden these are ones we want to look a little bit more in depth at and we might take more time, but it continues this constant conveyor belt of things popping into the top of that innovation cycle. So the innovation team, when they do testing, they are actually trained, and I train them to build out a really high level cost analysis, like how much is it going to cost us to do X?

And then simply, what do we think our customers are? Like what's the potential high-level marketing opportunity, sales and market opportunity, excuse me, not marketing, sales and market opportunity to drive some revenue. And at that high level, what I've learned, I'm not saying it's everybody's number, but I look for a 12 times return. So if they're gonna tell me we're gonna have to spend $100 to get this to market, I want $120 of, I'm sorry, nice math, $100, I want $1,200.

of potential realistic sales opportunity coming back the other way in the next 12 months. And so, you know, if it's a service company that needs to build out a new service and it needs to build templates and all kinds of marketing and it needs to build out, you know, and work with customers and build out collateral and that kind of stuff, then you can go figure out what the investment is. If it's a technology, you know what it's going to take to go stand up that new technology solution, whatever the thing is.

If you want to buy another technology vendor and integrated into your own technology to expand capabilities, you find, go part talk with the partner and find out what that looks like. and then you go think about your customers and the market and the opportunity you validate that with your sales leaders. And once everybody kind of thinks, yeah, and it kind of hits that 12 or 10 to 12 times. then this looks like that's something that's viable, but most things fall short of that mark. Most things are great ideas, but they're going to cost you, you know, $50,000 and you might sell $50,000. It's not worth it.

right or it's going to cost you 10 grand and you might sell 30 grand maybe but probably not worth it let's shoot higher than that because that's not going to be a sustainable business growth opportunity so that that innovation team validates the things that then once the things that pop through that team that they consider and I use the term saleable not sellable anything is sellable but it's saleable and that means that

there's enough opportunity for people to buy this at a right price point to create that 12 times return or whatever that number is that you want to target as a company. And so if it's saleable, then we start entering it into what I call the idea to market process. And that's where we'll go out and we'll do things like capture the voice of the customer, run some pilots, do some testing before we ever commit fully to going and investing and doing this thing. that conveyor belt happens all the time.

I keep track in a spreadsheet or an online resource of all the ideas that are tested and I don't ever get rid of them because sometimes we go back to one that we said no to before because something changed and we want to revisit it. And the last thing I'll say about that is we're looking at innovations that are brand new things. Then I have another column or type of innovation that are advances or adaptions to things that we're doing today. And then I have another one that are

internal things, just ways of our doing business. Maybe we can use a technology like AI to help us create new content faster and that's an innovation that we need to consider because it reduces our internal cost kind of thing. that's what that innovation team and I've now worked with multiple companies to stand up and even operate those teams for a time until they're ready to take over and I've seen success in every single case.

Mason Brady (26:06)
I, that is really comprehensive and I really, really enjoy it because, even when, you know, like I'm, I'm running a small business now and I don't quite see it as much now, but especially when I was in corporate and had a corporate career, that was one of the biggest challenges is just one, getting people to come up with ideas, but then to getting people to come up with fully vetted ideas, right? That.

I mean, you spoke about it and I don't mean to, you know, obviously I'm, I'm with Brady CFO. So there's the finance, the accounting piece, but you know, the cost analysis, right? That was it actually going to at a high level generally, what's it going to take to get this done? Because ideas are a dime a dozen, but yeah, like you said, if it costs 50,000 to get it done, it's going to produce $50,000 worth of returns. Yeah, no go. Like this does not make sense. And, you know, oftentimes we underestimate those costs, right? And so.

That's why you put in there that 12 times return because there are so many contingencies that we probably haven't thought about. So you want to build in a sufficient return to make sure that actually pays off. but the idea like even, even going beyond the cost analysis to, Hey, that you're prototyping it and you're actually getting some initial feedback from customers before you ever launch it. and you're really going through this entire cycle before you ever go out to market with it. I just.

Again, I've just sat around so many board meetings or so many leadership meetings where ideas are getting tossed out, but it's not a fully vetted idea. And I think, especially within these small mid-market businesses, right? Like you have a bunch of operators and yeah, I mean, it's like, Hey, let's just go get something done. And they'll just think, go get something done, but it's formalizing a little bit. like, Hey, let's vet out this idea. Let's make the business plan around it. And it sounds like you have a really good concept to do that. And I love that.

I have more businesses, I guess it feels like this definitely, it attacks a struggle that many business leaders want their employees and their next level leaders, they want them to operate like this and it seems like you've created a good program to do that.

Dave Seligsohn (28:13)
Yeah, and you know, there are a lot of agreed on all and there's a lot of sort of side effects. One is you're training every member of that innovation team to sort of understand the needs of the business, right? You're training them to understand that a cool idea isn't always a saleable idea and how they vet it. So you're actually creating capabilities. You're giving stretch assignments. You're engaging them in the growth of the business. And imagine when something that the innovation team surfaces, tests, validates, and it's being sold and it's helping to grow the business.

Like what does that do to edify and care for their ownership of your company? Secondly, when you bring customers in, you can overwhelm your customers by bringing like eight, know, something every month is a new idea. Let's bring the ones that we've sort of tested and vetted, but it also brings them in and gets their feedback. So when it comes to market, you're almost creating your first buyers. You're definitely creating your first pilots and those pilots often turn into buyers too, because they're so embedded and you get their feedback and you can tweak things. So imagine that a customer says,

This would be great, but I'd love to see this component and then you add that component and then you go back to sell it to them because they are, you know, that's, it's a pretty easy slam dunk right there. the last thing I want to say is we aim for that 12th time so early on in the process, because like you said, there's all kinds of hidden costs. And by the time it actually goes to market, you might be at four or five, six times. I'm really good with that. What I don't want is I don't want something that starts at that high level at two or three or four times, because we're going to be upside down by the time that thing is ready to go to market.

Mason Brady (29:39)
100%. so I, I, yeah, I want to, I want to expand upon this because I think that this is a challenge that most business owners and leaders are really facing is how do they develop their next level of team members? You know, the, leadership team below them that they can, they can assign. Cause I, mean, a CEO can go create a leadership team, right? Like you can give people titles and say, you're the director or you're the VP of this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

getting that leadership team to operate like a leadership team is a whole nother level, right? It's a whole nother ballgame that actually creating it and then assigning titles is probably the easy part. It's getting them to think and function like a leadership team to where they really take full accountability for their functional area. And they're coming up with fully vetted ideas and you've in this innovation, you know, process that you help implement.

It's a wonderful way to do it, but I'm interested to understand, Dave, if you have any other recommendations for, you know, especially small, midsize, you know, business owners that they're probably establishing the first leadership team in their business that they've ever established and they need them to act and operate like a leadership team. What else would you tell them beyond this innovation program? What else would you tell them that they should be focused on in order to get that leadership team built up and operating well?

Dave Seligsohn (30:58)
So number one, you have to model the behaviors that you expect from your leadership team. And in order to model those, you have to define what you expect them to do, both individually within their roles and collectively. so defining that is really important. And if you need help again, go bring somebody in to go help, but you need to read a book or study. There's lots of people out there. But that's really important. Along with that is

really thinking how, let me think, intentionally finding specific activities to lead by example with. For example, when I was a principal, kind of a funny story a little bit, but we had like three emergencies at the same time. We had a broken pipe that was pouring water. We had a kid that got sick and threw up in the thing. And I don't remember what the third one was, right? Just three things.

Mason Brady (31:52)
Yeah.

Dave Seligsohn (31:53)
And we only had at that time one janitor. And so I told the janitor, which one you want? And he said, I'll take care of the pipe. And I go, great. And so I grabbed a mop and a bucket and the sawdust and took care of the kid, you know, the floor where the kid got sick. Like that, guy was my best friend for the rest of my tenure as a principal. and, and he, because he knew that I wasn't, I didn't think myself too good to roll up my sleeves and jump in. And I think leaders have to be willing to jump in and not completely stay out. so I think being vulnerable.

and transparent with intention. And there's lots of books and articles and processes and training and college courses, but still one of the best is Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of Team. And just really thinking about how you're gonna build trust, how you're gonna remove that fear of conflict, how you're going to address commitment and focus on avoiding lack of commitment. Same thing with accountability, making sure that we define what accountability is and also

in attention to results. And if you're not familiar with the five dysfunctions of teams, like a pyramid. And so at the bottom is trust. Once you have trust, now you can deal with conflict. Once you can deal with conflict, then you have the ability to deal with commitments. And then once you have that, you can deal with accountability. And once you have that, then you can hold people for the results. So there's good models to go through. There's good practices and team building exercises and training and support to go through. I think leading.

By example, being consistent is really important and stepping into those front lines from time to time is also really important. One last thing is most teams fail because there's a misalignment in expectation. And so the person on your leadership team steps in thinking that they're there to do one thing, the CEO or the leadership team as a whole thinks that they're there to do something else. And so that's really easily avoidable. Let's have that conversation.

Let's make it really clear, even in the hiring process or in the promotion process where you talk about it. Because maybe the thing that I think I'm stepping into as someone new on the leadership team is a really good thing and you should change your expectation and include what I'm saying. Or maybe it's just misaligned. I think those things are also really, really important. And then one last thing comes to mind. My brain's spinning while my mouth is moving as normal happens to me. The leadership team needs to be your first team.

Mason Brady (34:12)
All good.

Yes.

Dave Seligsohn (34:18)
And often, if I'm the sales leader and I'm part of leadership team, my sales team is my first team. That is a complete shift of mindset. And it's really hard for some leaders in the leadership team to start thinking and acting and speaking that way. In a leadership team, are they constantly saying, well, my sales team, my this, my that, the sales team, because your team is the leadership team first. And it helps with decision-making and it helps with building that trust and all those things. So that's a really, also a really difficult shift to kind of make for some folks as well.

Mason Brady (34:49)
I agree. I, I've, I've seen that. and, yeah, I, know, yes, you're in charge of a functional area, right? That that's important, but, so your whole point, you have to develop trust amongst that leadership team. And, I feel like oftentimes if you're saying my, my, my, it's because you're trying to defend a position and you don't have trust within that leadership team that, you know, talk openly and for somebody to come and say, Hey, sales is not performing the way that we need it to.

And for you to be accountable to that, but at the same time, not try to be in a defensive position that, my team does this and my team's overwhelmed with that. And, constantly think about your team, but just rather, how do we make this company move together? it doesn't matter what team, you know, what, what functional area you are a part on. Let's, let's row in the same boat together. Right. And I, have to overcome trust issues that obviously somebody doesn't trust somebody else. And so they're, they're trying to hold on to.

They're fearful and they're trying to hold on to their team. Right. And it's like that, that doesn't work. that this is your team. So appreciate you calling that out. I, I, I'm going to deviate a little bit here, Dave, cause we've talked a lot about, you know, business owners that they're facing whitewater and how do they get to the next step? And we've talked about data. We've talked about innovation. We've talked about partnerships and simplifying. We've talked about building leadership teams, but how to work through.

You know, not just assigning roles, not leadership team and building it, but then actually how to have them be a high functioning leadership team. the leaders themselves, right? Like the actual CEO founder. I'm interested in your take on this. Cause I just met a gentleman the other day that was talking with them for some of our CFO services when the Brady CFO and, you know, he grew his business. was a subcontracting business that they did specialized, lighting and subcontracting work for bigger GCs.

and he had grown the business to about 8 million revenue. And this is actually his second business that, he actually had a business that failed previously. And he, this business had grown to 8 million revenue and he straight told me to my face. He said, I've never grown anything this big and I don't feel adequate to grow it to the next step. I feel like the Lord is telling me that I should, that I should still be in the seat, but I don't know what to do next.

what do you tell that CEO that, know, and again, I mean, he's telling me I'm the guy that would put up the acoustic materials and I put up the lighting. Like that's how I started this business. And that's what I love. And that's where I feel comfortable, but I feel led to do something more and to build this into whatever the Lord wants me to build this into. but he's just sitting there and he's facing, says, I don't have a clue as to the next step of what to do.

I feel like my team is not the right team to move forward with. Walk us through what you would tell that CEO.

Dave Seligsohn (37:49)
It's really it's a common and really difficult situation and I think first the last thing you said was the first thing I was going to say which is is your team the right team? Often we don't even realize that our team might not be the right team to take us into what next and you know I'll say the same process that I talked about with data can also be applied here in the beginning which is understanding what you've got.

And then making a list of what you believe you need and seeing how those two pieces align or don't. In fact, my consulting business, it's called A2O Consulting. And I'm not trying to do a plug, but the A2O is actually a step in the process. It's the first thing that I do when I evaluate and work with a business owner. And it's called Assets to Objectives. And so,

First thing we do is we say, let's fill out the objective column. What are all the things that you need or want to be able to accomplish and do within your business? What does it look like in granularity? We start at high level and then we look at what you have today. And then identifying those gaps and addressing those gaps is the key to the execution piece, what happens next. And so what kind of leadership team do you need to have? What kind of sales leader, what are the roles that you need to have? What are the skills that those roles need to be able to exhibit on a regular basis?

You know, what do you have and and can I develop my people towards that? And and I think it's a really good healthy and difficult conversation to have with your current leadership team that says Here's what I believe we need to have and here's what we have like to be transparent and vulnerable with them Help me figure out how we get us there And sometimes people if they really care about your business and their passion about their job and they have integrity They'll say maybe I'm not the right person

And I will even go so far as to say, I've known quite a few CEOs that recognize that they shouldn't be the CEO. That's a hard thing. I know one recently that he started a technology company, it was a data analytics technology. And he knew that he was really the CTO and not the CEO and finally stepped aside and brought somebody in to be the CEO and to take care of more of that vision strategy. And they are killing it right now. They are growing like gangbusters because he's focused on the thing he's passionate about and that somebody else focused on the business.

It's a really hard thing. You can do it yourself. You can bring in other folks to help with that kind of consulting and evaluation. But at the end of the day, it's really about understanding what you need. If you can't determine what you need and then evaluate and understand what you have, it's really hard to figure out what change to make.

Mason Brady (40:25)
Yeah, I, as you were saying that it, in my mind, it comes back to, know, you want to separate people from roles. and you need to identify what roles a business needs, right? That, what roles does it need for the next stage and where you want to go? And so what do you need to be thinking about the roles to fill? And then you have to assess amongst yourself and your team, right? That can that can these team members, including myself, fill those next level roles? And if, if they can't,

you know, okay, would you rather have a business that gets stuck and can't move forward? Is that what you want? Or would you rather have a business that maybe you do need to bring in a CEO and you move into another seat, even if it's a chairman seat, maybe you are the brand of the company, but maybe you're just not meant to be the manager of a hundred person firm or a business or whatever the case is, but you can certainly be the brand and go be a keynote speaker and to help build that business, continue to have an impact upon it.

Dave Seligsohn (41:21)
You can still

own it.

Mason Brady (41:22)
Yeah, we can still own it and still drive, you know, in, in another

role ultimately. And so if you have a vision for building something bigger, but you know, you just know that your skills aren't, you know, the right skills. It's okay. You know, and I guess I just encourage that, I told this gentleman the same, you know, I said, well, if the Lord is, if you feel like the Lord is telling you to be in that role, then you have to trust that and that the Lord is going to provide you the right people and the right coaches.

and the right, you know, consultants and, the right team members. But if you feel at some point that the Lord is calling you away from that, it's also going to be okay. That, really it's about living open-handed that there are good people that, know, if, if they really love your vision and what you want to build, but that you just need to be in a different seat, then you're going to find the right person, but be okay and willing to let go a little bit too, that it's not, it's not really your business. Right. and so, yeah, that was good.

Dave Seligsohn (42:16)
One thought or a couple thoughts quickly is I believe that sometimes it's hard for us to recognize that in ourselves or at least quickly. And I think that that's the value of community is having people that are in similar situations or understanding. And I add that that can reflect that back that can ask you difficult questions. Community is super important in that.

And I also believe everyone should have a coach and I'm not just trying to say that because I do that and everyone should also coach We should look for people to lift up and we always need somebody's outside perspective to speak into our lives in our business and That actually is a lot of times how God works He works through the people around us and through the relationships we have and even if it's a conversation a month But somebody to hold you accountable and ask is really important and then a couple other just random things that came to mind while you were talking

EOS, which a lot of small businesses leverage for their operating model in the company, has a great process. It's kind of overlooked. It's really simple. They call it WGC. But it's once it gets it, capacity to do it. And it's a great way to very quickly evaluate your leadership team or management team or any of your people really. does this person get it? In other words, do they understand the business? Do they have the intellectual capability?

understand their role and whatnot. then, that's the, sorry, I went out of order, but that's the G, yeah. It's WGC, sorry, whatever. So the W is do they want it? Like, is this person passionate and is this a role they want and are they eager and excited to be involved and are they giving their all towards it? So do they want it?

Mason Brady (43:48)
Yeah. UWC. Yep.

Dave Seligsohn (44:03)
Do they get it, which is the one I said before, the ability to understand and do they get the business and do they get what's needed? And then do they have the capacity? And what that means is, do they have the time? Do they have the energy? Are there things going on in their life? Do they have the capability? Are they stuck in the weeds somewhere? Are they tied to some other part of the business? When I moved them from, know, department A to department B. And so if you can at a high level say, yeah, they want it, they get it and they have the capacity, then that's a great starting point.

And so I would encourage you to just sort of take that WGC, I'll say it one more time, in the right order, and think about your leadership team and or all of your key players and just sort of evaluate people on that. And doing that in an ongoing way is really meaningful and beneficial.

Mason Brady (44:34)
Thank

Yep. Absolutely. So Dave, I really appreciate, you know, all the insight that you shared with us today that, this was a great conversation of just really practical leadership that, know, we've talked about, you know, different, you know, methods of leadership, including, you know, how to get over a whitewater phase of your business. And that includes data that includes partnerships. I include simplifying that includes building innovation as a process into your company.

And I know that that's a lot of what our small, mid-size, you know, business owners are facing. And so, that was excellent. talked a lot about, know, how to overcome, you know, those obstacles and challenges and leadership of are you the right leader? Right. And that are you the person to carry this forward? And, also the idea of how to actually help elevate a leadership team. So this was awesome, Dave, that really appreciate having you on.

I, you for our audience, tell us, tell them where they can find more about you. Tell them where they can learn more about the beard, maybe what beard products you use, but more about you and your leadership coaching too.

Dave Seligsohn (45:47)
Yeah, the easiest answer is call Mason his cell phone number. No, just kidding. My email is easy. Dave at a two consulting.com and then you can get me on LinkedIn as well. Those are the easiest places to find me. I'll be honest. I don't even have a website. I don't I've never really marketed or tried to sell everything that I've done is through word of mouth or you know, companies that I've worked for that sent me to another one.

Mason Brady (45:51)
I'll be a broker.

Dave Seligsohn (46:16)
Maybe one of these days there'll be a website, but not right now. And if you forget, Dave at A2O Consulting or somehow spell A2O wrong, I don't know how that happens, know, letter A, number two, letter O, consulting. I'm sure they can reach out to you, Mason. But you can find me on LinkedIn as well. And it'd be a pleasure to share any of this with anyone that listened and happy to help in any way that I can.

Mason Brady (46:38)
Yeah. And I really encourage our audience that, you know, Dave does these facilitations, right? And, it's, it's excellent in terms of just being able to get away and to have your team focus on some of these key objectives. right. That he talked about an example where, you know, he got several people in a room and they decided what makes, you know, some of their people great that how do we get more great? And, you know, to walk away from something like that, that you want the right people, so many of our organizations.

One the biggest challenges is do we have the right people and do we have really, really good people? And, you know, so that's a major business objective and Dave helped them facilitate. How do they arrive at what is really great? And then they can go attack that and actually get more of that. And so, yeah, I think especially, you know, in terms of facilitation, I can, I've been through one of Dave's sessions that Dave is great. And so I really, suggest to our audience, if, if you're interested in something like this, if you need to take a step away and understand that you need some third party insight, Dave's great for this. So.

please reach out to Dave, but to our audience, you know, here's our giveaway part of the, the episode. So if you listen through the whole episode, for the first person, to comment beard, for Dave's wonderful beard and also the bearded brothers here, you will get a Brady CFO mug. So, if you are the first person to comment and whether it be YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, whoever's the first to comment beard, we'll get, one of these beautiful Brady CFO mugs sent to them.

And don't forget to like and subscribe for this episode and this show. So thank you all. Appreciate it, Dave.

Dave Seligsohn (48:10)
Thanks, you bet, Mason. Thanks for having me.

Mason Brady (48:12)
Awesome. Cool. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop record. can do the intro after, but yeah. So that's.

Dave Seligsohn (48:18)
Yeah, as always.

Mason Brady (48:23)
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Brewing Business with Brady. Today's guest is Dave Seligson. And I've known Dave for about two years now. We actually are part of a convene group together, which is a monthly CEO executive round table group where we share and facilitate ideas and business challenges. And I love Dave being on the podcast because this is the podcast for you as a business owner that is struggling with leadership and

Especially once you've reached a stage in your business where you're thinking about building a leadership team. This is the episode for you. And actually today I'm going to redo that real quick.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of brewing business with Brady. Are you at a point in your business where for the first time you're considering building a leadership team? Or maybe you have one and they're not performing the way that you want that they're not performing as leaders. They're not fully vetting. They're not bringing forward fully vetted ideas, fully full implementation plans. You feel like you're still hurting cats.

Is that you as the CEO founder of a small midsize business? Well, then this episode is just for you. Our guest today is Dave Seligson and Dave is a leadership consultant, coach, and facilitates offsite sessions to enhance what a business focuses on and how business leaders lead. I am so excited for today's guests because Dave and I have actually known each other for about two years that we are part of a group called convene. It is a Christian.

CEO executive round table group. We meet multiple times a month and we share what are our current business challenges? What are we facing? And I've definitely grown to know Dave to be a very wise leadership practitioner. And so I'm so excited for his insights today because he's going to walk us through how do you actually deal with the challenge that a leadership team is not leading like you want them to? And how do you elevate them? How do you get them to really build themselves up and to carry that business forward?

We're going to talk about for any business owners that are facing the challenge of whether they are the adequate CEO for the business going forward and how to resolve that. And how do they move forward with that of them questioning whether they are the right person to lead their business to the next step. And we're also going to talk about how do you build innovation into a business as a process? Like how do you actually have your team in a small midsize business actually churn out innovation, innovative ideas, concepts, and go to market.

You know, plans on a consistent basis that actually produce a good ROI. How do you have your team do that so that you as the CEO visionary founder do not have to do it all by yourself? That's what we talked about today. And so let's get to it.