How Scalable is Your Talent? - Part Two (#265)

In part two of Melanie and Dave's conversation on "Maximize Business Value," Dave Casey and Melanie Shaffer, President and Founder of Talent Suite, close out their discussion on scaling talent. As a top-rated speaker and expert in the talent space, Melanie dives deeper into the turnkey solutions her team designs to help businesses consistently hire, develop, and retain top-tier talent.

Tune in weekly to hear more from Mastery Partners and to receive relevant key content on your journey to maximizing your business value!

#maximizebusinessvalue #masterypartners #MelanieShaffer #TalentSuite #ScalingYourBusiness

Podcast Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:12 - Scaling From $30M to $80M
4:43 - Removing a Toxic Leader & Empowering the Team
6:08 - Identifying the "Ideal Client" Profile
11:03 - Second-Generation Plateaus & Younger Founders
13:32 - Redefining True Company Culture
16:11 - The Danger of False Harmony & Avoiding Productive Conflict
17:51 - The Three Elements of Maximum Business Value
19:19 - Closing
21:07 - Outro

GET THE BOOKS:  Start with Maximizing Business Value by Tom Bronson

Learn More about Dave Casey 
Dave Casey is a seasoned business owner with deep expertise in all aspects of organizational behavior and a passion for helping entrepreneurs reap the full rewards of building their companies. He understands that a truly valuable business isn’t just profitable—it’s secure, scalable, and transferable. In addition to his work with Mastery Partners, Dave actively gives back to the entrepreneurial community through leadership roles with organizations like Business Navigators, Biz Owners Ed, and Liberty Ministry. Whether advising on strategic growth or mentoring the next generation of business leaders, Dave brings clarity, integrity, and decades of real-world experience to every interaction. His mission goes beyond exit planning—he’s committed to helping owners build lasting legacies.

Learn More about Melanie Shaffer
Melanie Shaffer is President and Founder of Talent Suite, a Dallas-based talent strategy firm that helps businesses grow by removing the barriers that prevent leaders from getting the most from their people. Her team designs turnkey solutions that provide their clients with the ability to consistently hire, develop and retain top talent. She has worked with companies in varied ownership structures and sizes ranging from Fortune 500 to emerging businesses which allows her to translate best practices from large companies into viable options for the mid-market. Prior to Talent Suite, she was a Partner and Owner in an executive recruiting and consulting firm that placed twice in the SMU Cox D100 fastest growing companies. 

Mastery Partners

Elevating Businesses to Achieve The Business Owner’s Dream Exit 
The unfortunate reality is that for every business that comes on the market (for whatever reason), only 17% of them achieve a successful exit. You read that right. 83% of attempted business transitions never reach the closing table. Mastery Partners is on a mission to change that. We ELEVATE businesses to achieve maximum value and reach that dream exit.

Our objectives are simple - understand where the business is today, identify opportunities for dramatic improvement, and offer solutions to enhance the business, making it more marketable and valuable. And that all starts with understanding the business owner’s definition of his or her dream exit.  
Mastery has developed a 4-Step Process to help business owners achieve their dreams.

STEP 1: Transition Readiness Assessment
STEP 2: Roadmap for Value Acceleration
STEP 3: Relentless Execution
STEP 4: Decision: Now that desired results are achieved, the business is ready for the next step in the journey!

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Transcript

Tom Bronson (0s): Welcome to the Maximize Business Value Podcast, brought to you by Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners like you to maximize your business value and achieve the exit of your dreams, whatever that means to you. With insights gained from over a hundred business transactions, we share real world strategies, lessons, and expert advice to help you build long term sustainable value in your business.

Each episode is hosted by one of our Mastery certified partners, their seasoned experts who've helped countless business owners navigate the complexities of growth, scaling, and building value. They bring firsthand experience, actionable insights, and a passion for helping you build a business that thrives. So, let's dive in.

Speaker 2 (1m 3s): This episode is the second of a two part release. To hear part one, follow the link below. Thank you for listening to the Maximize Business Value Podcast.

Dave Casey (1m 12s): Yeah, that was, that was another question I was gonna ask you even before we started on this conversation, was, was where have you seen what's, what's been some of the most fulfilling type engagements you've had where you, what you brought to the table really moved the needle for these people and do that? Because then, and I know that's, that goes way beyond just providing a tool. So that's, that's a lot deeper.

Melanie Shaffer (1m 37s): Yeah. So I'd say some of the most fulfilling work that we've done has been with companies that are in growth mode, and the CEO's very clear that we know where we wanna get to. And we've invested in things like EOS. Maybe we've had some executive coaches that weren't thinking about our strategy and maybe we handpicked as the CEO, like this one person that we're going to invest in. Or we've put a few people in executive peer groups and we think that's enough.

Those companies already are showing an appetite that they want to invest in getting better. Yeah. Yeah. And so we have several, the, the one that top of mind that many people could relate to was at 30 million when we started working with them. They were a subcontractor. The founder had attracted talent through building a phenomenal culture, having values that were very clear and lived and bringing in people that aligned to that. He didn't really believe in hiring through any kind of behavioral analytics.

So when we came in into work with him, it was because he was frustrated. He's like, I've gotten a 30 million, I'm doing EOS, I'm creating all these processes in my business. I have an executive coach, but it's not moving the needle. Yeah. So he said, I need you guys to come in and understand why I have all this people drama. So when we came in and did some work to understand in the organization at the employee level, and some focus group interviews to listen to what are the themes we're hearing and what people need that they're not receiving.

Yeah. It turned out they needed two things. He had hired a lot of young leaders 'cause the company grew quickly and they needed to understand their blind spots. They really didn't understand. They had the process and structure through A EOS and they were agreeing to their rocks. Yeah. But they were leaving and a lot of drama was occurring that was slowing progress. So they were just kind of staying the same and it felt really difficult. So that was the first thing is they needed a language for understanding their own blind spots.

And then they needed coaching to start working cohesively together as an actual team. Then the second thing that they needed was in the organization away for the employees and the frontline managers to understand their own areas of development and be transparent. And so we put training in place where we teach the leaders how to do that with their direct reports. And then we train all of the employees in understanding their own areas of development, not in learning behavioral assessments.

'cause that doesn't stick. No. It's the so what of it. So what do you need to do differently? And that's a theme that we carry through the organization. So they grew from when we started with them at 30 million in two years to $80 million. Wow. Because they could actually maximize their people.

Dave Casey (4m 41s): Sure. Yeah.

Melanie Shaffer (4m 43s): And they did have one toxic leader that they had to make a very difficult decision on. But because we were in and working with the owner on kind of a process of trying to help this person with these behaviors and bringing back feedback and coaching that wasn't moving the needle. Once he made the change of getting that person out of the organization, it actually made EOSA hundred times more effective.

Oh my goodness. Because all the other leaders were looking at him not doing what he was supposed to. And so it gave them a hall pass.

Dave Casey (5m 20s): Yeah. Yep. Boy, that happens over and over.

Melanie Shaffer (5m 23s): Oh, you're like, screw my life, Melanie.

Dave Casey (5m 28s): That is awesome. What great results though. That's tremendous. That

Melanie Shaffer (5m 32s): Is Well, it's only because they were willing to do the work. Yeah. They were. And he had a chief of staff that is his right hand. That I've had other clients that we could have been able to achieve the same things, but they would not put an executive sponsor beside the CEO that would keep the trains moving because we don't sit on site.

Dave Casey (5m 55s): Well, that's the, that's the visionary, you know, integrator relationship. Right. You gotta have, rarely can you find both in one person. So, you know, it's

Melanie Shaffer (6m 6s): Very, and then how do they have the capacity to be?

Dave Casey (6m 8s): Yeah. And then how do you scale if you're both in one person? Yeah. You're you're pretty stuck. Yeah. Stuck. Wow. What a great success story. So that kinda leads me to what's, how do you make the assessment when you get introduced and, and start an engagement is, is this gonna be an ideal client for you? You know, and, and we, we've just been through this process, you know, as you know, we've got three companies. So we've got the event company, the Business Transition Summit Mastery Partners, the consulting arm, and then we've got a mergers and acquisition side.

And they all kind of work, you know, move people. I would say move people, but potential clients may fall into one of those three areas. So somebody is just like, man, 10 years from now, I probably wanna transition outta my company. They're a great candidate to come to Business Transition Summit and just kinda learn the terminology, learn all the people and players that, that will be involved in something like that. And just learn about how do I make my business more valuable. You know? And then of course, what we do at Mastery is we go deep with the company and we help them identify those blind spots.

Like you talked about, most business owners know where there's issues. They just don't, they're kind of, kind of, if you see they're, they're, they're kind of like, I don't know what to do about that. Or, we've always had that issue. I guess that's just gonna have to live with that. Things like that. That with this, with, with what we do, we, we, we gather over 300 data points and we really dive deep in the business and kind of find out where their value problems are. You know, what is something kind of killing your value is something making it where you couldn't transition this business.

I mean, it might be under a lawsuit or something. Or there's just things that would make your life better. You know, if we fix those things. And then of course the transaction, when they're ready to go to market, that's where North Star comes in. There's a whole, a whole deal there. But when we went through our process of determining what, what is an ideal client, we had a very short list of things that people just don't qualify to be a client for us. One is if they're way too small and they just can't, they don't have a team.

So a lot of what we talk about, and I'm sure what you talk about is enabling your team. And, and if you don't have a team or you haven't got there yet, then that's too small. If they're a $200 million company, a lot of what we do, they're doing internally. Right. And they've been down that road. Yeah. And then our third one is, is no assholes. We just can't deal with people. Just we, you're not gonna deal with 'em. We don't, you know, life's too short.

So, but those are like our three criteria. So what, what's an ideal client look like for you?

Melanie Shaffer (8m 56s): So I would say the first criteria would be it's, it's number of employees. Because that's gonna impact the complexity of the people issues they're navigating. They may, if they're under, let's say 30 employees, they just, maybe if we're comparing it to working out, like they don't want the trainer, they want the kettle ball, just gimme the kettle ball. Like I, I can solve it with disc or some free assessment or whatever self implemented, how one person like come in and do a workshop. Great. Okay. If you're under that number of employees, that's probably what you're willing to invest in.

And maybe your complexity isn't enough. You need more than that. So I'd say at least 30 employees. Typically the companies we work with, the footprint in the revenue range is that kind of 30 to 250 million. Yep. And they need to have an executive sponsor that's going to, I'm gonna say drive ownership, because I don't like to say hold people accountable. 'cause you actually can't hold people accountable. Right. They have to

Dave Casey (9m 55s): Decide. Yeah. You're not controlling a paycheck.

Melanie Shaffer (9m 58s): Yeah. Yeah. So I would say those three things. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the, the companies are growing, you know, if they're talking to us, it's not because they're okay with lackluster margins or Okay. With erratic years in their business. They have a direction they wanna go and they're not moving there fast enough. So Yeah. Direction, they're looking for not moving fast enough. CEO that is growth minded, at least 30 employees, I'd say 95% of the time we have some outliers.

And then they are willing to do the work. You know, they're willing to commit to habit creation. Yep. Which is a lot different than processes. It's a lot different than processes.

Dave Casey (10m 45s): Do you think that sometimes the, either the CEO or the senior leadership team in let's say a $30 million company came from bigger companies, so they kind of know what's supposed to happen. They just haven't, they just don't know. How do we get there? So, that's

Melanie Shaffer (11m 3s): A great question. I'm reflecting on like our probably seven or eight top clients right now. And it's a mix within the CEOs, a couple of them. It's a second generation CEO that came in on borrowed trust and is looking at where they've gotten to. And they, they're stuck at that 25 to $30 million mark and they know that they need to make some changes in people to, to just overcome that plateau.

But we do have a few, you're right, like the story I told earlier of the guy that was with the subcontracting business, the founder, he had been in bigger companies. Sure. Yeah.

Dave Casey (11m 45s): So

Melanie Shaffer (11m 45s): He

Dave Casey (11m 46s): Knew. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I've seen sometimes, you know, we, I'm on the board of a nonprofit called Biz Owners Ed. So we help owner led businesses, we call it bootcamp for them. Really. We do a 10 week program for them. And most of our businesses in there, we've had some in the $50 million range, but most of 'em are, are probably three to 15 million in, in revenue. So they're a little smaller than, than what you're describing, but they are, have all the same problems.

It's just that many times they're very young entrepreneurs started the business that they haven't had. They, they haven't seen big company systems and processes and haven't looked at, you know, so as they grow, they start encountering problems that are way beyond survival. And way beyond this quarter or this year, we're trying to look at, you know, a three to five year timeline and fast growth. And that's where, you know, sometimes that real fast growth catches up with 'em very quickly that they, they yeah.

Some disarray on

Melanie Shaffer (12m 50s): Their hands. And it's been interesting 'cause I've had some businesses now that we're talking, I'm listening to you that are that size and have young founders that bring us in to do work, not at the scope we would do with our typical clients. Yep. But I've been shocked. We've probably had five or six in the last year that are, you know, founders under 40 that have done very well and are in that three to 15 million range and recognize like, we need to do some work now. We're not ready for full talent suite, but can you help us with these three things?

Yeah. And I've been like, oh my gosh, well yes, we're gonna work with you because like, why would we not help people like this? Yeah. You're going to get to the point where it may not be us, but you're fueling the economy.

Dave Casey (13m 32s): Yep. You're you're doing that. And those are the kind of companies that grow into, you know, the next stage where you can, you can, you can do a lot different things for them as they reach that next stage. You know, and that's, that's always exciting when you can do that. That, that is very, very cool. Well, this is fascinating. I mean it's, you know, I've, I've, I've done one other podcast about kind of HR and people related things, and by far that was the weakest thing that I did as a business owner is, is my interaction.

I mean, I had, we had a great culture. Everybody loved everybody for the most part. Everybody loved everybody. It was good. But just being formal, sometimes you have to be formal in people interactions. Sometimes it's very informal. And drawing those lines was difficult for me. And also, I mean, it's that one thing I did encounter is the people that got you this far may not be the people that are gonna take it to the next level. And having those conversations got very, very difficult.

And, you know, trying to find homes for those folks, you

Melanie Shaffer (14m 40s): Know, and especially if culture is viewed as we like each other. Yes. Because that's actually not culture. So culture is a word that gets it's like strategy. Yeah. You know how the word strategy, like when I used to be in recruiting, they would say, we wanna hire a strategic CFO. And I'm like, oh my goodness. Let's step back and talk about some examples of what would be strategic in your eyes. So culture's the same word. Culture is used, especially in smaller business owners as like, we like each other. Yeah. And culture is a set of agreed up on behaviors that sit underneath values that the business has been built on.

Yeah. And if you're operating with a truly strong culture where the behaviors that are being lived or what you said this business is founded upon, then when you have to make a hard decision, it's not hard. Right. But if you're running it with a culture, we'd like each other, that's where you get stuck. Yeah.

Dave Casey (15m 39s): Yeah.

Melanie Shaffer (15m 39s): That's not a measure culture. It makes

Dave Casey (15m 40s): It very difficult. And, and it's, and it's the, and it's funny, we didn't, we weren't like a social group. I mean, we didn't like, you know, go out for happy hour all the time and stuff like that. But, you know, everybody got along at the office pretty much. But it was, I I, you know, reading five Dysfunctions of a Team Over Again for me has always been, that kind of gets me back to, you know, what, what's real and what's not when it comes to, you know, exactly what you just described, you know, how does

Melanie Shaffer (16m 11s): It, and one of the biggest issues we're seeing in small businesses right now is the lack of talking about problems Yeah. That are happening in the business because people have become so addicted to Oh yeah. Communicating through email on the phone that when they're in the leadership team meetings, the things that need to come up are not coming up. So you mentioned the five dysfunctions. Yeah. Not only is there not true psychological safety to have trust and bring the problems up because the visionary oftentimes doesn't wanna hear it.

Yeah. Because it's boring and oh, that we can do that later and that becomes the operating norm. People work that out and the culture. Right. So that's actually a bigger issue we're seeing in the mid-market space than conflict. It's the lack of conflict right now. That's the bigger issue because you can't get commitment and therefore ownership if you don't have productive conflict. Yep.

Dave Casey (17m 10s): And then, so I mean, I can see it, we've had meetings with clients where, we'll, we'll be in a team situation. We've got a bunch of people there, we have the meeting, and then literally a day later I start getting texts from the people in the meeting. You know, I didn't bring this up, but, you know.

Melanie Shaffer (17m 28s): Okay. Oh goodness.

Dave Casey (17m 29s): Yeah. We needed to bring that up.

Melanie Shaffer (17m 31s): Yeah. We need to, you need to have them talk to us.

Dave Casey (17m 34s): No kidding. Now I know.

Melanie Shaffer (17m 36s): That's what we work with. We implement Five Dysfunctions. That's one of the things we do with organizations.

Dave Casey (17m 41s): Yeah. It's, it's boy it is so huge, so huge.

Melanie Shaffer (17m 44s): It is. It's, people will say, this was almost like therapy. You know,

Dave Casey (17m 48s): It's therapy,

Melanie Shaffer (17m 50s): It's,

Dave Casey (17m 51s): And it helps you did it. Right. Helps the CEO speak sleep better. That's for sure. So, so this is a podcast. It's all about maximizing business value. So in your experience, what's the one thing that you recommend that business owners do to maximize the value of their organization? If you could pick one thing.

Melanie Shaffer (18m 13s): Well, you know, I said earlier, I don't believe it's one thing. So I'm gonna give you the three things I said earlier. It's investing in the right processes that are functional to run the business and operations, marketing, sales, all of those functional areas, which you guys, hello Mastery partners. We need to, it's having the ability to understand how to get people in the right seats. And then it's giving people the training they need to have the relationships to make the deposits so as the business evolves, they can make the withdrawals that need to happen.

Yeah. So it's all great. It can't just be one, there's not one thing that creates the most business value. Of course, every expert's gonna say what they do is, but I don't.

Dave Casey (19m 2s): Exactly. Well, yeah. I am talking to John Gobert later this afternoon about due diligence, so I know what his is gonna be.

Melanie Shaffer (19m 10s): So, well, hey, it probably won't be people, right? It'll be,

Dave Casey (19m 13s): It won't be people. I guarantee it.

Melanie Shaffer (19m 15s): No one wants to say people. 'cause it's the hardest area of the business to get your arms around

Dave Casey (19m 19s): The hardest, the most expensive, the most challenging, and all that. All above. All the above. Oh my goodness. Well, super. So for folks to get ahold of you, it's Talent Suite LLC, right? Melanie at Talent Suite llc.

Melanie Shaffer (19m 36s): Melanie, do Schafer.

Dave Casey (19m 37s): Melanie Do Schafer. Okay, cool. Excellent. And well, you know, we'll, we'll be posting this all over and, and of course you'll have a copy of it as well, so you can, you can use it on your social media side of the world as well. So it's been fascinating. It's just what a wonderful thing that you're doing. I just love it. It's, it's

Melanie Shaffer (19m 57s): Same for you guys. Exciting symbiotic man. You gotta have the people side Yes. In alignment with all of the areas you're helping 'em put processes in place

Dave Casey (20m 5s): Around. And that's, and I will say it's probably the, it's, and it's tied to that owner dependency I mentioned earlier, but it's one of the, one of the things that always pops up when we do that assessment that we do is that, yeah, we've got, we've got work to do in this area. So it is a great symbiotic relationship. We, we certainly treasure it. So, so with that, this has been the Maximize Bus, Maximize Business Value Podcast, I can't even speak, where we give practical advice to business owners on how to build long-term sustainable value in the business.

We air one of these podcasts each week, so be sure to subscribe and tune in. And thanks again, Melanie, only for joining us

Tom Bronson (21m 7s): Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked new ideas on how you can continue driving value in your business. But remember, it's not just about listening, it's about taking massive action. Visit our website mastery partners.com for more resources. Grab a copy of any of the books in the Maximize Business Value series on Amazon or via the links below.

And don't hesitate to reach out if you want to know how to apply these concepts to your business. So until next time, I'm Tom Bronson reminding you to relentlessly execute while you Maximize Business Value.