Episode 73:

Hello everyone and welcome to The Upstream Leader. My name’s Jeremy Clopton, excited to be with you here today. We’ve got a recap episode, kind of where we’re at in the middle of the year here, which means I am joined by Heath Alloway. Heath, great to see you and have you on the podcast. 

Absolutely, Jeremy. I’ve been looking forward to it. I know we’ve talked some, but it’s great to sit down and have a conversation. 

Yeah, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re actually coming off of a time where we’ve seen each other more often than we typically do during the normal course of the year. We’ve had our New Manager Academy conferences, Emerging Leader Academy conference, had our Advanced Partner Academy, Headwaters, we’ve had a lot of conferences. We really, as we were talking just before we hit record, we’ve really come off of our busiest time of year, which happens after tax season, once everyone emerges from the busyness that is the spring, firms are typically pretty ready to start working on the business. 

So we’ve had a lot of interactions with firms, whether it’s in retreats, workshops, conferences, whatever it may be, and excited to just kind of recap where we’re at, what we’ve been seeing, what’s top of mind for firms, what’s top of mind for us as we’re going into the latter half of the year here. But one of the things that is common for both Heath and I is we’ve both come back recently from vacations. So I didn’t tee this up to Heath. He asked me what we were going to talk about, and I left this out intentionally. Heath, what is something you learned from your vacation, not necessarily conferences you’ve been at this summer? 

Yeah, well, Jeremy, sometimes it is easier to teach something than actually practice it, and at the time, you kind of referenced this, we’ve been on the road a lot, and I wanted to make sure that we practice what we teach, and thank goodness for Emily, my wife, she was very adamant about getting something on the books, and she did a lot of our planning, and Jeremy, I share that because I did at the time, I didn’t realize how bad I needed it. I hadn’t been with my kids as much, I hadn’t been with my spouse as much. And we went and spent a lot of time outdoors and disconnected. I sent an email the first day when I was in Colorado and you so kindly responded and asked why I was on email, and I took that as a signal to not respond to any more emails. 

Jeremy, there were some things, and it was interesting cause I disconnected. But there were certain stages throughout vacation that it applied so closely to, to what we teach. And I was sharing with Jeremy, we went on a sunset horseback ride in the mountains. I had my seven year old, my 11 year old, and myself, my wife, we’ve not been on horses very often. Actually, I’ve never been on a horse by myself. So we had a guide that was 20, one that was 18, and one that was 12. And I share that because they were the experts. They had been doing this their whole life. And it was pretty crazy how confident I got in their abilities to guide us throughout our journey.

And they did just such a wonderful job. And not only that, I was out of my comfort zone. I learned a lot through that. And I do have good news. We made it through it and it was a very relaxing and yet nerve wracking experience all at the same time. So it was good. It was just great to get out of my comfort zone. It was great to learn from other people. And I feel just disconnecting, being outdoors, Jeremy, it’s made a big impact and it’s just something that I think everyone needs to keep top of mind. It brings the best version of yourself back to the table. 

Yeah. And there’s so much value in getting outdoors and especially when you’re busy, you’re at conferences, you’re at retreats, you’re working with clients, whatever it may be, being outdoors. I mean, most of what we do, like most of our clients, it’s not an outdoor activity. It’s inside, it’s sitting, maybe you’re standing in the back of a conference room or a boardroom or something, but right? It’s not exactly getting out, out and getting some sun and just enjoying the great outdoors. So that is awesome, and I am glad to hear it was rejuvenating. That’s always key. 

Well, Jeremy, I do, as you’re talking, I do have one more quick example. We actually stopped at the Kansas City Chiefs training camp on the way home. And we lucked out and we were actually in the family area for where the Chiefs family get to sit. I heard that Travis Kelce had not stopped and signed any autographs, and we’re multiple weeks into camp. He stopped by and said hello to the kids, and actually Max, our son, was the first one to get an autograph. And I shared this because Max said thank you, and like, super excited. And Travis Kelsey stopped and said, you know what? Thank you goes a long way. Thank you for being here and showing your support. And just that attitude of gratitude, you could tell that it meant a lot to even someone like Travis Kelce that has such a, you know, NFL player, and I think everyone is aware of who he dates and things like that. So it was just kind of cool to see how much he appreciated that attitude of gratitude.

Yeah, it’s amazing what just a simple thank you can go such a long way. We had a similar experience. Our vacation was a little bit different, we were in the great outdoors and my family’s happy place, also known as Disney World. So we spent lots of time outside, but, you know, talking about that attitude of gratitude, one of the things my wife wanted to do was create some minifigs from Legoland. All the kids are into Lego right now. It’s, you know, my wife is into Lego. I’ve got Lego sets everywhere. I’ve got one in my background right now. So, we went to the Legoland and they have a thing where you can create your own version of yourself, right? You can customize all the things with the little Lego mini figure. And a control freak like me, it was a bit high stress because I’m like, I’m gonna screw this thing up, it’s gonna look, you know, silly at the end. My 10-year-old is standing right next to me, she goes, dad, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to do. What if I pick the wrong thing? It was so funny to me how stressed out the two of us got, you know, my other two daughters, my wife were like, you’re making this way too hard, which was true.

But the lady that was helping us was just so patient and, you know, worked with us and got us through everything. And, you know, we got to the very end and we left a review because she said, Oh, if you do that, it means something to us. It makes a difference. So we left a review online and I’m thinking, okay, it’s an online review like anybody else’s. And we had put her name in there. The general manager of the store actually replied via email and said, we appreciate, you know, leaving the feedback, I’m like, alright, here it is the canned response. But then actually specifically said what he was going to do to go talk to this person and share that feedback with them so that they know that they’re a valuable team member.

So speaking about the attitude of gratitude, right? It’s impactful for so many people and it’s impactful for leaders as well to hear how, you know, gracious people are for their people and appreciative just, you know, how much of a difference they can make. And I mean, it transforms your experience, right? Because we see so many folks where the gratitude isn’t there. Maybe it’s just more frustration and, you know, how different your experience can be. 

Yeah, well and Jeremy, I think too, in a world of busy, sometimes we forget to step back and take the time to do it and a lot of times it doesn’t even take a lot of time, but it just can mean so much to people and my guess is you will probably tell other people about that experience. Well, I guess we’re on a podcast talking about it. 

So I just told a bunch of people.

There we go. 

Yeah, but it was, I mean, it was really meaningful and it, you know, it meant something to the kids, you know, she had the little accessories that you can get for your figure and they’re like, Oh, we were really hoping to find a, one of my daughters wanted to find a dog. Right. For, to go with her figure. And the lady’s like, you know what, I think I’ve got something. She’s like going into her secret stash of little minifig things. And, you know, was able to, you know, give her a dog to go with hers. And you could tell it was because of the appreciation and just the positive interaction, which was so impactful.

So, you know, one of my big takeaways from ours is just the importance of experience and the customer experience, the client experience. And I know there’s a number of firms in our profession right now that are reading the book, Unreasonable Hospitality and figuring out, how do they implement that within their firms? And to me, that’s one of the reasons I love Disney as much as I do is truly the experience when you’re there. I mean, every detail is thought about. 

And it just reinforces that it’s like, you know, I’m disconnected like you were, except I didn’t respond to an email because I’ve made, I’ve done that before, and I had Georgia respond to me and say, stop checking your email. I’m like, okay, I’ve learned finally, it took a while. So I disconnected electronically, but it’s amazing to me how many times over the course of a vacation, my mind would jump to, this could benefit our clients, or this could be really impactful if we did this at a conference, or, you know, I wonder if people are thinking about their business from this lens. And it’s amazing how in those times where you’re not thinking about the business, you’re coming up with so many great ideas that can benefit the business and just the power of that disconnect that actually drives so much, you know, innovation and ideation and creativity that you wouldn’t otherwise get if you just keep going and going. 

Yeah, 100 percent Jeremy. I was trying not to think about work when I was on the horseback ride. I was trying not to fall off a mountain. But the whole time I was thinking, thank goodness I have someone. I don’t care if she’s 20. She’s been here. She’s done it for a very long time. And she’s making sure that we don’t have any kind of accidents. So yeah, very, much. Well, glad to hear you’re able to disconnect and had a wonderful experience. 

So Heath, let me ask you this. You’ve been, we’ve had a lot of conferences. You’ve been with a lot of firms. What are some of the biggest things that you’re seeing that jump out at you as important in the profession right now, whether they’re new or old or whatever they may be? What’s top of mind for you as we go into the latter half of 2024? 

Jeremy, whenever, just reflecting on the discussions, the retreats, the conferences over the past several weeks, there’s a few things that come to mind, but to me it still goes back to the foundational pillars and cornerstones that we talk about so often. I still see it aligning with culture, and then our people, our clients and firm growth. And there are a few things. I’m going to shift my order here a little bit based on what we’ve already talked about. 

But at Headwaters, my breakout session was talking about creating a culture of optimism and not fear. And I led off the session. I called it a game show, Guess That Year, and I hate to admit how much time I spent doing this, but I kind of went down a rabbit hole of looking at old articles, and the article that I shared was from 1990. I posted them from like the early 2000, around 2010, and it was crazy, Jeremy, the articles, you could place them up there, and you could almost put the year 2022, 2023, 2024. They were saying the same things about the next generation, the fear of the profession, you know, all of the things that we continue to hear about. 

And I shared that just to point out that maybe things aren’t as bad as what we tell ourselves. Or these are people that have now been in the profession from anywhere from 14 to 34 years. They’re the partners now. They’re saying the same things that were talked about or said about them. And so you look at what’s going on in the world and we hear so much about from a cultural perspective of fewer people wanting to go in, where will we be, you know, the impact of private equity and thinking about shifting that to telling a different story about all of the fantastic things that are going on in our profession, you know, the stats we use. Well, out of a hundred partners, Jeremy, how many do you think would do it all over again that are retiring and then, you know, over the last year or the next year? 

Yeah. It’d be almost all of them. 

I’ve yet to have anyone say, I wouldn’t do it. But that is, we talk about retention and recruiting. Think about their experience. You referenced the experience. If that’s what they’re hearing and that’s what they’re seeing, can we blame them? 

It’s a fair point. 

How can we change that? And so I share that to help as a profession to start telling a different story. I don’t know about you, but I think there are a lot of really great firms. I think there are a lot of really fantastic young professionals. I think about the new manager academy, the group that was there, they were fantastic. They were engaged. They were, you know, they wanted to get better. And I think most people want to be part of a winning team. They just have a different way of looking at that. So from a cultural perspective, that was a big one for me, Jeremy. 

Yeah. And that’s so important when it comes to the people side is shifting that mentality. And that’s consistent with some of what I’ve seen, which is I’ve noticed as I’ve done bench strength exercises with firms. And for those that don’t know, a bench strength exercise is where you say, you know, what retirements do you have coming up in the next five to seven years from either the partners or the key leadership ranks of the firm? And then who do you have that’s ready to step into those roles into the next five to seven years? 

And one of the challenges that I see is so many firms will say, well, we’ve got a lot of people. We don’t know that any of them will be ready in five to seven years. And what I’ve been starting to push back on is saying, okay, well, how long did it take you to make it to partner? And I’ve done this with several firms and many folks that are the nearing, we’ll call them senior partners, right? Closer to retirement than they’re closer to the beginning of their career. Alright, it took them maybe 10 to 12, maybe 14 years to make it to partner. And what I’m seeing is, maybe it’s a result of what we’re telling ourselves about people these days, right? Kids these days, I hate that phrase, but it’s used so often. What I’m seeing is the folks that are on their bench have 12, 13, 15 years of experience. They’re saying they just need a few more years. To me, It’s like it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We keep telling ourselves they’re not good enough. They’re not ready. It’s going to take them more. And as a result, it does. 

So one of the things that I’ve seen that I’ve really been pushing back on is, and I, for the first time ever, I think I had a, I know I had a slide and I think it was the first time I’ve ever done it at a conference last week. And I said, let’s go back to the good old days. And you know my thoughts on the status quo and how we did things when we were their age, Heath, and how much that just irritates me most of the time, is when people want to do that, but I said, let’s go back to the good old days. Why not? Just for a little bit. Back when we were 23, 24, 25 years old, and we were the absolute rock stars of the day, and nobody could wait any longer to promote us to partner. They just had to get us there as fast as possible. And I say that a bit tongue in cheek because I always share, I think the further we get from 23, the smarter we think we were at 23. Realistically speaking, the more experience I get, the more I look back and think, oh, no, I was really good. 

Look, I know I wasn’t a great auditor at 23. Jay, my very first in charge, you can ask her. I asked her what to do with cash doesn’t balance by three cents. And I thought she was gonna laugh me out. She didn’t laugh, luckily, but the look on her face was like, this is a dumb question, Jeremy. Sidebar there. But, you know, I asked them, I’m like, what made you so great? I mean, look, if you came out of college and you were truly just that amazing of a person, by all means, please raise your hand and tell me you’re just that great. By the way, I’ve never had a partner raise their hand, pat themselves on the back and say, I was just that great. Every time what they tell me is, I had a partner or some other key leader in the firm that cared about me, believed in me, and took the time to help me get to where I needed to be and where they thought I could be.

And there was a belief in the next generation. Not everybody, not the whole generation. We didn’t hire the whole generation. We hired probably two or three people, depending on the size of your firm, maybe 20. You hired a couple people. Somebody cared enough to get them to where they are, and then I ask, great, are you doing that for the next generation? And we’re just so darn busy, nobody’s taking the time to do it. Right? So building on what you’re saying about we’ve got to shift that mentality to optimism away from fear, right? There’s a fear that they’re not going to be good enough. I want you to change it and I want people to start adopting the fact they are going to be good enough because I’m going to help get them there, because that’s what somebody did for you. And that’s a hard fear to overcome, but it takes action. 

It’s worth letting go, Jeremy. 

It is! 

Taking something that we care about and then letting someone else take more of a lead on it. And hearing you talk about it, Jeremy, I’ll never forget this conversation. It was one of the turning points, I’ll say fairly early on in my journey, whenever I had the opportunity to lead a team, a partner that I know you know, and had a chance to interact with, he set up a meeting with me. Nothing was put in the appointment, so I figured it probably wasn’t great. And his advice to me was, Heath, like you, you’ve got some really great team members. You don’t have to do it all. He said, and here’s the thing in any situation where I’ve given someone an opportunity, they actually overachieve and do much better than what you even think they’re going to do. And he was right. And in a lot of ways, I was hindering my team or holding them back by thinking I was doing them a favor by trying to be involved with everything. And in fact, I was holding myself back, and my team members back. You know, I kind of regret that in a way because I do. I think I held them back and myself back and thank goodness that this partner had that conversation with me because it changed my perceptions on how I look at things. It’s no different than letting Max ride a horse when I was scared to death of a seven year old, and like, we cut him loose to do it. And you know what? He said it was one of his favorite days ever, and he had an absolute blast and did just fine. 

Yeah, and look, if you let a team member go and run with something, not let them go like terminate, but let them run with something and you let go of the control over it, and they don’t deliver, then you’ve got to accept there’s one of two realities there, right? They’re either the wrong person, which is possible, or you haven’t—you have failed them as a leader somehow. You haven’t done your part.

And unfortunately, I don’t know anybody that wants to accept either of those as the answer, but it’s got to be one of the two. And if you say, well, no, it’s on them, they’re not working hard enough, they’re not this, they’re not that, then you have the wrong person, because you’re not going to be able to, most of the time, change their internal motivation structure, their work ethic, and all of that, right? If they don’t want it, they don’t want it. You got to determine is that, are you okay with that? They’re either the wrong person or you’re not serving them as a leader the way that you need to. 

And that kind of speaks to what you said, right? Sometimes we just got to let stuff go. And remember, that’s one of the few things that I’ll go back and say, that’s what people did when they were our, you know, when we were their age is somebody let it go and said, you’re going to do this, and if you screw up, I’ll be there to help you through it. And I’m going to help make sure that you’re set up for success. That’s one of those things that I genuinely believe we need to pull forward from when we were their age. We need to do more of that. We’ve got to get out of doing the work of the firm and spend more time working on developing the people within the firm.

Yeah, well, and Jeremy, I think with what you said there too, of not only allowing them to take on additional responsibilities or new projects, but helping them in having discussions to help them understand how that’s impacting the bigger picture. How is that impacting our clients or our business or our communities? So it goes back to money is not always an intrinsic motivator. It may be from a, like, satisfaction, but it’s not an intrinsic motivator. A lot of times there are other things at work—finding purpose in what we do, knowing we’re making a difference, having new responsibilities. 

There was another example that was shared with me from, like, giving people those stretch goals. They did a study of if you try to have someone stay the same weight and have someone lose ten pounds, the people that are guided to lose ten pounds, see more success than those just trying to stay at the same weight. It’s just a change in mindset. 

Yeah. You get complacent when you’re trying to just maintain, right? It’s the definition of complacency and that’s really hard to do. That’s a tough place to be. What other key takeaways have you had this summer? What else is jumping out at you? Or I should say spring into the summer. What’s jumping out at you? 

Well, one other one, and I wish I had the, magic, you know, ball that I could rub and predict five years from now, what would happen or what it would look like. But the private equity discussion seems to be top of mind for a lot of, you know, how do you handle when private equity firms are reaching out to you or contacting you, it’s not only that, but how are we staying relevant? And I guess in a way competing with private equity firms. And there’s a lot of discussion. I think there’s a lot of unknowns, maybe some fear driving some decisions around, you know, this idea of, gosh, do we get left behind if we don’t go that direction? So that is one thing that I continue to see surface.

And Jeremy, I got a thought I’ll share and I’d love to hear how you respond to this, but in the scenarios that I’m watching, it seems that in a lot of ways, they’re not doing anything that independent firms couldn’t do—the growth strategy, it’s acquiring other firms or merging in other firms. Or maybe it’s trying to set aside some capital to invest in their firm. So I’m curious to hear how you respond to that. 

Well, I’m a believer that you can run your firm however you want to run it, right? It’s your business. In my view right now, right? Disclaimer subject to change because there is so much unknown out there with private equity and I mean, it’s just like, you know, anything, any other type of change. I genuinely agree with what you just said. I mean, firms can achieve the exact same things, remaining independent as they can, if they take on private equity. If they’re willing to wait a little bit longer to achieve it, that to me is the big differentiator, is if you want to grow 5X, whatever that may look like, whether you’re a 5 million firm or a 50 million firm, you want to, if you want to 5X the firm, you can achieve that. It may take you longer if you remain independent to do so. And you may achieve it a lot faster—we know a firm or two that’s done this—if you take private equity as a capital infusion, and you might be able to 5X in a year. If you get the capital infusion, then you have the strategy to back it up. 

In my view right now, there’s a few things into play. One, you’ve got to figure out what kind of firm you want to be, right? That’s the big thing is, and I talked about this at our Headwaters Conference, is if you’re running your firm like a business, which I would strongly advocate everybody should be running their firm like a business because it is, you’ve got to figure out what kind of business do you want to be? And do you want to be a high growth, national presence type of firm? And if you do, and right now you’re in one market, you’ve got to figure out what timeline you want to achieve that. And that’s going to help you determine what’s your strategy. Is it, we’re going to withhold a little bit of capital at the end of every year and reinvest it in the firm? Are we going to look to be acquired? Are we going to look to acquire? Are we going to look for private equity? Are we going to look for some other method? Maybe we’re going to, you know, go personally guarantee a large line of credit from the bank as partners, and we’re going to, you know, get that for the firm with personal guarantees on site. And that’s how we’re going to bring on capital. 

It depends on what you need. And I realize before anybody that’s listening to this jumps into comments or whatever exists in the podcast world, I realized private equity firms provide more than just capital, right? Many of them have the backend support system that helps with the administrative operationals. I get that. That’s one of the primary reasons that I see firms that have chosen to go the private equity route. That’s been one of their big things is we want to grow faster than we can accomplish on our own, and we don’t want to do a merger. And if that’s the case, hey. I’m not here to tell you it’s right or wrong. It’s an option and you’ve got to pick the option that is right for you. 

One of the things that I would say though, on this private equity discussion, whether you’re looking to take on private equity, whether you’re looking to acquire or be acquired or remain independent, you still have to figure out, how do you run your firm as effectively and efficiently as possible as a business? Because whether you’re looking for that outside investor, or you’re just trying to have sustainability to the next generation, you’ve still got to make sure that everything is in order and that you’re running the business well. that’s true across the board.

Yeah. I 100 percent agree, Jeremy. And it’s, you were talking about the growth side and what I’ve watched the past few months. And one of the other things that I’ve seen an uptick in over the past, I’ll say four to six months is the intentional growth and really, you know, you look at the past three, three and a half years. It’s been more of how do we keep up with what we have? And now it seems like firms are stepping back and kind of what you said, where do we want to be in the future, and do we have the right skillsets, do our up and coming generation, do they know how to drive intentional growth to perpetuate the future success of our firm, and what does that look like? So that’s one other thing that I’ve seen a lot. You know, in fact, I’ve, you know, had some individual engagements with firms just working on how do we grow in a wise manner where it’s healthy for our firm, healthy for our people, we’re bringing on the right kind of clients?

And Jeremy, the interesting part, you know, I think you referenced this earlier, is I think a lot of times we know what we need to do it, just then how do we execute and take the steps to get there? 

Yeah, that’s one of my big takeaways so far of this year and working with conferences and clients is we actually know what we need to do. In fact, we probably know a lot of the how, we just can’t figure out the execution. And at the end of the day, one of the best ways is to simplify rather than overcomplicate. So when I think about what you just said, you know, does our next generation know what it means to grow the firm strategically and profitably, right? Some firms are going to say no, and I don’t know why they don’t know, they should know, they’re just not trying, all these different excuses. You know what’s really simple? No they don’t, I should probably go teach them. It’s arguably that simple, right? If you’ve got managers, senior managers, they don’t understand the importance of business development, first and foremost, welcome to public accounting. Most of us didn’t know the importance of business development until you got there and somebody said, by the way, you don’t get promoted again until you figure this out and bring in a million dollars of business every year. And it’s like, hold on, A, a million dollars is a big number; B, what’s business development? Do I have to go to the Chamber mixers and pass out business cards? I don’t even know where my business cards are or if we even have them as a firm anymore. Like, what do I do, right? And people get really frustrated by that. Stop overcomplicating it. Teach them. And if you can’t teach them, find somebody that can. Right? 

So many firms, and they do it with good intent, right? I’ve had conversations with firms where it’s been, well, we need to create an internal program that tracks this and does this and pairs this person with that person and so on and so forth. Like, don’t get me wrong. I love a good program, a good process, some good, clean documentation, all day, every day, right? That is kind of in my wheelhouse and where I—happy place. At the same time, I could also say, you know what, Heath, I need to teach you about business development. Let’s go to lunch and talk about business development for an hour. And you’re going to be an hour ahead than you were before, right? Don’t wait to have the perfect program, the perfect system, the perfect curriculum internally to do it. Just go teach. And if you don’t know how, go find somebody that can help you teach. 

It’s actually quite simpler in so many of these situations than we’re making it. It is, people don’t understand the economics of the firm. Okay, well, when was the last time you talked about it? Well, we don’t want to share that much information. Change your mindset. It’s okay to teach how firms run. That’s not taught in college. At least, I missed that course if it was. I don’t know anybody that’s gone through an accounting degree and they had Accounting Firm Principles 101. Right? We don’t talk about the economics of public accounting. 

So, it’s quite simple, right? We know what we need to do. We wish people would get there. As leaders, we’ve got to take the action. And look, I’m not casting stones here without looking in the mirror first. I’ve had to do it over the years. I still have to do it sometimes. It’s easy to get frustrated and think, well, why not this? Why not that? It’s like, wait a second. Why not me being the change that I want to see? I don’t have to wait for something else. I can go do it. I can go teach somebody. Teaching doesn’t take as much effort and time as we think. Arguably, we could probably take all the complaining time, switch it over to coaching and teaching time and it’d be a net zero. What do you think? 

I’m guilty of that though, Jeremy. I’ve done it too. I’ve got to put myself out there. 

Me too. I mean, it isn’t as difficult as we think it is. Developing people. Take the time to care and be compassionate. Not wait for a CPE program that’s based on compliance and did we get the hours. Go teach them what they need to know, right? If you want them to have more knowledge about something, go tell them what you want them to understand, right? If you want them to take more of an initiative on something, give them the opportunity. And say, here, this is yours, go lead it. It’s simple actions. 

And Jeremy, I think that all impacts retention. 

Yeah. 

Finding purpose in our work, career opportunities. Yeah, I love that. So Jeremy, I know we are getting close on our time. We’ve talked a lot about the last five or so-ish months. What are you most excited about over the next few months? 

Ooh, what am I—I would say I’m most excited about, and this is an Upstream thing, is the next iteration of High Performance Firms. We’ve had one of our hallmark programs over the years is High Performance Firms. It’s historically been in person, whole leadership team, in person a couple times a year. We’ve recognized that it’s a little bit, you know, a big ask right now for a lot of folks to, to travel an entire leadership team in person multiple times a year.

So we’re in the process of reimagining that. So I’m excited to get that curriculum back out in the world and hopefully making it more accessible to more firms that are looking to adopt those principles and then have the opportunity to work with us here at Upstream to help them guide and implement that rather than, you know, just coming to a class, but instead kind of making it more of a throughout the year type of engagement and throughout the year type of relationship where we can, you know, help firms get to where they want to be. That has me pretty excited right now. How about you? 

Very cool. Well, this kind of plays to some of my passion points when we talked a lot about investing in people. There’s two sides: the Full Potential Coaching program really developed to help coaches become better coaches. And I, as I reflect back and even throughout our discussion, some of the most rewarding times that I’ve ever had, you know, in a firm at Upstream is whenever you’re seeing other people be successful and putting people in those positions to coach and make a true difference in someone’s journey. And I have this feeling when I get close to retirement and I look back, those are going to be some of the most memorable moments. So I’m really looking forward to that. That’ll kick off in September. 

And then I say, this is a little bit in the past, but also moving forward, I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a guide for a few people in the New Manager Academy, and that’s been a cool experience of kind of, I guess, in a way, being a teammate of a firm and helping some of their people through New Manager Academy, although it’s early on. I’m really excited about the next several sessions and those coaching interactions with them. So it’s been a lot of fun. 

Yeah, no, there’s a lot of exciting things happening. I know that, you know, we’ve got our programs are still our traditional programs that most folks are familiar with, but, you know, looking to figure out how do we make more of an individual impact and, you know, serving as a guide has been, I know, one that’s been really helpful for some firms that maybe they didn’t have the folks in-house that were able to do that. So again, we want to keep it simple, right? Start making a difference in the lives of your people. And if you can’t, I mean, find somebody that can help obviously here at Upstream. That’s what we do. We want to make a difference for your folks, for your firm, but there’s plenty of folks out there as well. And if you’re ever looking for somebody, you’re always welcome to reach out to us and we can help put you in contact with somebody that might be able to help you and help you achieve your goals. 

So Heath, as always, it was a lot of fun, unscripted, good times. So, thanks for joining me today on The Upstream Leader and we’ll talk again soon, I’m sure.

Alright. Take care, Jeremy. Good to see you.