Nolan Church

🚨 Brag alert: If you've attended one of our Adobe Express for Edu trainings in Utah, chances are... you've had the opportunity to work with Zachary Ordoñez, who is undeniably one of my favorite people I've had the opportunity to partner with since starting at Adobe. 💪 Zach is known as someone who will take a training from "professional development" to "a creative PD experience." He's known for his dad jokes, his "swag bars," his innovative approaches to weaving creativity into student work, and-- most importantly, his deep understanding of teachers, students, and Adobe Express. As the brilliant school counselor I worked with at my old school always said, "If you see something you appreciate, SAY IT. Compliments make people feel good, and they make you feel good too." So-- Zach, you are awesome! 👍 If you need to give a shout out to someone who you appreciate, do it!! (Silly AI picture of Zach & I featured below)

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When you hire someone in a new state, do you need to register to do business there when you use a PEO? If you ask most PEOs, they would say, "Yes - you should also register your entity with the state if you have employees there." But why? Technically with a PEO you are "co-employing" people. Typically PEOs don't handle foreign registrations or secretary of state filings for your entity, so that's on you. If you're not registering in a new state is because you don't know how or don't have time, Discern makes it extremely easy. You can complete your foreign registration filing in a few minutes directly out of our product. I don't know if I fully realized it when we were building the product, but it is by far one of our biggest points of value add for companies growing across state lines. Registering in a new state is a shockingly annoying process to do on your own. You typically need to get a certificate of good standing before you can even file, and sometimes the filing involves publication requirements where you need to advertise your foreign registration in an actual newspaper. We handle all of that behind the scenes. All you do is complete the digital form in Discern. IFYKYK

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What an incredible Denver Startup Week! 🙌 The energy, innovation, and collaboration in Denver's startup community is truly something special. Seeing leaders share genuine stories of both their successes and failures as entrepreneurs was a great reminder of the value of vulnerability in the workplace. Denver isn't just a startup hotspot— it's a city determined to stay on the map as a tech hub worth paying attention to. Now officially recognized as a tech hub for the quantum industry under the CHIPS Act, and with SpaceTech booming across Colorado, the momentum here is undeniable. 🚀 Special shoutout to some of my favorite presenters: Cody Moore, VP at Caruso Ventures (and former colleague 😁), shared the numerous applications for SpaceTech emerging in Colorado, from security and defense to climate change monitoring and efforts to make space exploration more sustainable. Brett Guy, Staff Software Engineer at Ibotta, presented "Finding Your True North," a great reminder that a fulfilling career is always attainable, even when the direction may be unclear. He also recommended a personal favorite of mine (perfect for those of us experiencing a 30-something identity crisis): "Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans! Stacey Feldman, CPA (Partner and COO of Full Send Finance),⚡️Roman Villard, CPA (Founder of Full Send Finance), and Jesse Randall (CEO of Sweater) shared stories and insights from their finance careers. As a Rev Ops professional, my favorite insight came from Stacey, who highlighted the importance of thinking about your data as if it’s going to scale. Answering basic questions about your business only becomes harder as you grow, so get your Rev Ops ducks in a row early, friends! 🦆 Thank you to everyone who made this week so memorable! #DenverStartupWeek #TechCommunity #CHIPSHub #SpaceTech #Innovation #revops

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Who's your favorite CMO / VP Marketing in Austin? We (the Exit Five team) are traveling to Austin in November for a team offsite, and we're going to host a meetup (happy hour, networking, etc.) I'd love to do a fireside chat with a B2B CMO for this event, but I'm not plugged in down in Texas. So: who's your favorite CMO in Austin? Who should be on my list to reach out to interview for a live podcast / Q&A with 100 B2B marketers in November?

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🔥 Trainual's annual Playbook conference is just around the corner! 🔥 If you're a SMB owner or operator looking to learn from some of the best business operators, strategists, and consultants...then you should be at Playbook 👇 💰 Get $100 off your ticket with the code SASHA100 @ playbook2024.com

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Joe's May Friday Follow: Inspiring Visionaries Mostly business, some tech, and maybe a couple surprises this month. 😁 The following six creators consistently inspire me. Check them out! 🔥 Chauncey Nartey, SHRM-SCP is true to his emoji with the 🔥 carousels! We've been friends for years, and recently I've been excited to see him ramp up content creation to help create a better job market and career outcomes. Jeetu Patel and I worked together at Box, and he is now Head of Product at Cisco. He's making sure Cisco builds on past success and stays on the cutting edge. He regularly posts about how to inspire, plan, strategize, innovate... and live a good life. Nick Mehta helped establish #CustomerSuccess as a core function within every business that cares about outcomes and long-term customer relationships. He's built a respected business and award-winning culture at Gainsight and inspires with his posts about business (and Taylor Swift). Dhruv Amin and I went to business school together, and his latest venture is building Create which strives to leverage AI in novel ways to make building software as easy as talking to ChatGPT. The business and tech are both super cool and are worth checking out as they really take off. Maura McInerney-Rowley is doing something almost nobody else is doing on LinkedIn - talking about death. She's trying to change the conversation and create better services and mindsets about this inevitable yet taboo topic. Adam Robinson is leading the way for the next wave of B2B growth strategies, centering a founder-led social media content creation and engagement motion. He's "building in public" and doing a bunch of other stuff that's fascinating, catching on, and probably worth experimenting with for anyone trying to grow a business in 2024. Thank you all for your #inspiring and #visionary #leadership and consistently sharing about your work! ---- PS. I'm Joe Ballou and I write about #LeadershipDevelopment, #BusinessGrowth, and my original framework of #TimelessLeadership. Once a month I shout-out a few great, diverse creators to help others build a more educational and impactful LinkedIn feed. If you found this helpful please repost so others can learn too! ♻ Have a great weekend. #FollowFriday #JoesFridayFollow

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Now that we’ve delivered custom workforce management solutions for a few contractors in California, I’ve had a chance to really see the folks in the field and the management issues that trace back to the days when laptops were a luxury thing. (I’m talking about small to mid-sized organizations here.) It turned out to be quite a conservative vertical, with many still relying on outdated stuff. Challenges Faced by Field Service Businesses: A survey by Verizon Connect highlights the most challenging issues: - Customer satisfaction (56%) - Profit margins (48%) - Talent acquisition and retention (47%) Other challenges include: Technology Alignment: Many companies use multiple outdated technologies that don’t integrate whatsoever. Operational Cost Increase: Dispatches generate revenue but also generate crazy overhead. Talent Pool: Poor technology frustrates field staff, leading to higher turnover. When it comes to field service management, some industries are particularly notorious for poor management. The top five industries that struggle the most with FSM are: Telecommunications: Companies in this sector often face challenges with scheduling, dispatching, and maintaining the vast network infrastructure, leading to delays and inefficiencies​ Utilities: The management of services like electricity, water, and gas supply is complex, often plagued by outdated systems and equipment, leading to frequent service disruptions and customer dissatisfaction​ Healthcare: Field service in healthcare involves the maintenance and repair of critical medical equipment. Issues here can severely impact patient care and safety due to delays in service and equipment downtime​ Construction: Managing field services in construction is challenging due to the dynamic and fragmented nature of projects. Poor coordination and communication often result in project delays and increased costs​ Manufacturing: This industry deals with maintaining machinery and equipment both in-house and at customer sites. Ineffective FSM can lead to prolonged downtimes and significant productivity losses​ TBC

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Ryan Westwood has been involved in 100 companies as an operator, investor, board member and advisor. He grew his last company to over $650m in revenue. His current company has quickly become THE RevOps platform. He’s played a big role in putting the Utah tech scene on the map. Ryan dropped so much knowledge in an hour. It’s impossible to summarize it all… but I promise it’s worth the listen. Ryan Westwood, Chairman and CEO at Fullcast, The Go-to-Market Cloud, is my guest for this week’s episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. I was introduced to Ryan by Nick Cromydas. On our first 30 minute call I ended up taking two pages of notes. Ryan’s obviously had amazing success over the course of his career. But what I appreciate the most is how thoughtful and deliberate he is about how to build a business and the ability he has to boil his strategies and tactics down into easy to understand nuggets. My highlights from this episode are: Taking 6 months to get into CEO shape - After selling his last company, Simplus, Ryan spent time investing, serving on boards and advising companies. Basically everything but operating a company. When he and his co-founders bought FullCast and he took over as CEO he had to get back in CEO shape. Everything from the hours he had to work, the number of decisions he had  to make on a daily basis, the dynamics with his family, his own health, really everything. Good reminder… the CEO job is hard. Talking to 60 RevOps leaders in two quarters - To understand his ICP and ideal buyer persona, Ryan met with 60 RevOps leaders in his first two quarters as CEO of FullCast. He learned so much about the persona he was building for, the way they think, what they’re responsible for, the challenges they face. By the end of those two quarters he felt like he was one of them. It’s such a simple thing, talk to your customers, but I don’t think founders/CEOs do this enough, both in the number of customers and the frequency. The power of the dream team - Ryan’s three co-founders are people he’s worked with before… for over a decade. He talked about how he’s been keeping a spreadsheet of every person he’s interacted with over the course of his career that he wanted to work with again and when it came time to recruit his founding team he knew exactly who he was going to approach and he was able to assemble the dream team. There is so much more: the power in a cap table, running a board meeting, product roadmap prioritization, defining an ICP, missing hip hop when he moved from Philly to Provo, why we’re seeing so many success stories coming out of Utah and more. Here are the links to the full episode: YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ey3AKu5w Spotify: https://lnkd.in/emKyjsBF Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eyXUJHvn If you enjoy the episode, please like and subscribe on your favorite platforms and share with your networks.

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Just a couple days away from our first Founders Only Sauna + Cold Plunge in Provo, UT this week - we have a few more tickets left if you'd like to come! (on Thursday) We have 2 hours reserved at the PLUNJ in Provo including breakfast. We're hosting this at cost so as many founders can come as possible. This really is founders only! I intentionally didn't want sponsors for this event so that we could focus on the human connections here. Founding businesses is tough. Sisu is the perfect practice to tie into startups. - Innoculate yourself against future stress through deliberate discomfort - Humbling practice - Tons of health benefits - Energizing and fun (not another stiff business handshake kind of event) Register here: https://lu.ma/fos93vu6

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6,555.27% With everybody posting about Inc. 5000, I thought I would share our 3 year growth as we do not participate in that survey. According to the Inc. 5000 site that puts us at #40 nationally, and #1 in Utah. Not good enough, maybe next year we will participate and I think we break top 10 nationally. <-Bookmark this post

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A reoccurring theme this week with the biz owners I meet has been progress vs perfection. Whether you are a scrappy startup founder or you're running a $50 million growing business, the questions are the same: 👉 - Did you send the proposal? 👉 - Did you get a "yes" to a new client? 👉 - Did you improve a system, hire the person, or learn from a mistake? 👉 - Did you take a day "off" (also a win). Small --> consistent --> focused actions day over day compound. But, what if you don't know where to start? Get crystal clear on your strategy and break it down into 3-5 key initiatives with a focused, task-based 30-60-90 day plan... Then, stay focused on that... chasing squirrels will kill the plan and progress. Keep building, community...

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🏢 We’re not just participants in the economy—we’re owners. With Resegregation GPT, Black ownership is no longer a dream. This AI helps us take charge of industries like real estate, manufacturing, and finance, empowering us to own what we build. Ownership is power, and it’s time we claimed it. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or an established business owner, this tool will guide you to success. Take the first step to ownership: https://lnkd.in/gZiuTShh #BlackOwnership #GenerationalWealth #ResegregationGPT #OwnWhatYouBuild #BlackBusiness

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Sharing 2 great job boards renewing their premium listings at JobBoardSearch 🔎 today! • Woody - Product Design Jobs Find your next product & design job today! (Sticky 📌upgrade + Landing Page) (6 months in a row 🙏🏻) • Remote Scouter The easiest way to land a remote job (Highlight🌟 upgrade) #jobboards #recruiters #jobseekers

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HOLY SMOKES that context switching is on 🔥 this week...and it's highlighted the old agage: know your audience. This week, we've been working on: - Converting from an LLC to a C-Corp. - Fundraising - Angel investor communication - Institutional investor pitches - Prospect calls and communication - New customer onboarding - Training partners - Affiliate & reseller partners - Product discussions There were a few times that I forgot who I was talking to - my message for one got blurred with the message for the next. I pitched when I should have inquired I inquired when I should have pitched I emailed when I should have called I sold when I should helped While it's all very closely related, different audiences need different things. This isn't a typical week, a little more chaotic than usual. BUT lesson learned - take a deep breath, remember who you are talking to, and know your audience. 🤓

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Something I'm learning that's necessary for community: decentralization. Example: letting members organize events vs. having our HQ staff do it all. This is HARD because you gotta trust your members and also empower them. For example, a member is hosting a golf tournament at Pinehurst Golf Retreat. Sold it out in 72 hours. Members wanted to golf together and another member wanted to lead the experience. So we helped the leader get Malbon Golf on board to make the experience awesome + let them use our platform to drive interest. If it goes well, we'll try to empower more members to do stuff like this and hopefully will increase out event output + quality. At first, I thought we had to be involved in everything to make Hampton dope. Now my opinion has changed. Letting members lead the org and make stuff happen might be the way. But its scary! Fingers f-ing crossed. BTW if you want your brand to be part of these events...holler: [email protected]

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The Pave acquired a fantastic paving company in Arizona. Here are 5 key things we've done post-acquisition. Many people are curious about buying a small business, but not enough talk about what happens after the acquisition. Let’s break down what I did. 1️⃣ Complete Website Redesign: The company had an outdated website with no inbound capabilities to drive new business, so we revamped it entirely. 2️⃣ Upgraded Accounting Practices: Small businesses often have inaccurate bookkeeping. We stepped in and embedded our own accounting team and systems to ensure accuracy and efficiency. 3️⃣ Recruited a New CEO: The founder transitioned to the role of president, while we brought in a new CEO to drive growth. For this, we worked with Michael Latas which specializes in our construction niche. 4️⃣ Implemented KPIs: Many small businesses don’t track key metrics. This is often why companies plateau. In my newsletter, I dive deeper into how we set and measure KPIs. 5️⃣ Embedded SOPs: Thanks to our advisors at The Pave, who run a nine-figure paving organization, we were able to integrate industry-leading standard operating procedures (SOPs) into our portfolio companies. There’s much more we’ve done post-acquisition, and I’ll be sharing the rest in my newsletter tomorrow! Link in the comments. If you enjoyed this like and share for other business buyers ✅ Sam Mahmood

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Thought of the day from the DC Founder’s hike: Your mental health as an entrepreneur is a multiplier on everything you do. — Imagine your business as an equation: Inputs * Effort = Results It feels simple…but…it’s not the whole picture. It’s actually: Inputs * Effort * Mental Health Multipler = Results. — The thing is, the multipler can have a lot of different values. It could be 1.5 or 2 or 3…you’re in a great place and you’re making strong decisions with a big sense of purpose. Everything gets easier. Or it could be 0.8 or 0.5 or 0.2…you’re in a bad spot and making bad choices because you can’t think or can’t see the whole picture. And the entire machine of business suffers as a result. — What’s the point? Prioritize your health. Your relationships. Your mental well being. And no, this doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. For most founders I know, it might mean working 70 hours a week instead of 80 (just being real). But that little bit of time you put into yourself and your loved ones can improve your effectiveness in your company, too. Anyhow, that’s it. Go get outside for a minute today. Take a call on your phone outside. Have dinner with your spouse. Whatever your thing is…do it for a little while. Cause all your business problems will still be waiting for you when you get back. But you might have a whole new frame on how to solve them. ✌️ MV H/t Shahab Kaviani Brian Wojcik

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We all operate in echo chambers & it's limiting our growth. Earlier this morning I spoke to the impressive Alexander J. Buckles from Forecastable, based in Florida. He's a serial entrepreneur, building product, partnerships, and value engineering for co-sell motions. Up until recently, we hadn't crossed paths despite having 426 mutual connections. Take this example 1. In 2022, we both attended Partnership Leaders inaugural conference in Miami, his home state 2. In August 2023, we both attended the Denver event No connections were made at either event or surrounding communities. Recently... 1. He saw I was a speaker at this year's upcoming event and reached out. 2. I heard him on the Friends With Benefits Podcast led by Jason Yarborough 🐻 and Sam Yarborough whilst out on a morning run 3. 🤝Will Taylor mentioned he was chatting to him 4. He is involved with the HubSpot growth partners program led by Christi Williams & Kelly Sarabyn, which featured Greg Portnoy last week. Jay McBain from Canalys says there are 7 x partner touch points to most deals these days. Your network is your net worth... This was further amplified recently when judging tech track submissions for SXSW Sydney, the depth of talent, offerings and capabilities of the tech industry. What you see and read here on LinkedIn is directly from your current network you're exposed to, the same will be within your CRM today.. If you don't continue to grow your network, pipeline, community then you cannot expect new opportunities to evolve. It's why we at Hockey Stick Advisory are committed to being top of mind through sharing partnership best practices and examples of our core expertise. That's also meant we haven't had to pursue any outbound motions to date. Friday question to our network 1. Are you operating in a silo of an echo chamber? 2. How are you showing up to grow who knows about you? #partnerships #growth #ecosystems

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A few months ago someone told me they would never consider 'a fractional COO because it's basically a lazy VP Ops' 😂 I really appreciated the honesty! But let me clarify a few things: 1️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 for everyone. For example, if you have a very aligned, organized, and strategic founding team, or if your founding team has worked together successfully in the past. You may not need a COO as you are able to replicate what you did in the past to drive performance. 2️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 a COO or a VP Ops. For the most part, we don't work day-to-day in the business. We don't own responsibilities fully end-to-end (for the most part). We come in to solve a specific problem. For example, you just raised a big round and your investors want you to scale at the speed of light. A fractional COO may come in to design your hiring plan, implement a new tech stack, and map out more efficient workflows. 3️⃣ The title COO is very vague. It can mean so many different things, and that's the same with a fractional COO. Some focus more on optimizing your financials, others on structuring your GTM. For me, 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. 4️⃣ The engagements vary as well. As mentioned above, we generally don't work in the business day-to-day, but sometimes that happens. We can be full-time, part-time, or project-based. Sometimes that changes over time as well. Many fractionals I know end up building very strong relationships with teams and join them full-time. But mostly, we're more than happy to hire our replacement and end the engagement. For some people, it's not ideal that the role of a fractional COO is so unstructured, but for others, that is exactly what they need. When you have a team full of people with defined roles and responsibilities, in times of growth it's ideal to have someone who can move around, be flexible, and slot in wherever is needed. I hope this helps clarify this a bit, and if you're interested in learning more about hiring a fractional COO, shoot me a DM 📩

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