CEO Coach: Building a Business for Eventual Sale is Just Good Business

Catapult Groups CEO, Brad Mishlove, was recently interviewed for the Rethink Your Business LAS VEGAS! podcast presented by Dave Hall. Mr. Mishlove discussed the benefits of belonging to a CEO peer advisory board and how working with a CEO Coach can help Chief Executives and Business Owners work through operational challenges.

What makes the group experience different and more powerful for entrepreneurs than simply working one-on-one with a business consultant?

In small business (defined for Catapult Groups as businesses earning $5 million – $25 million in annual sales), it’s the transition from entrepreneurship to professionally managed entity. In the implementation, the CEO gets better and has a chance to implement the ideas and practices. When they surround themselves with a group of peers, people who have the same job as they do, but come from a different industry, they get all sorts of ideas and best practices that they can take back to their businesses and implement immediately. As opposed to just hearing that the problems are, they end up with a solution and ways of implementation. Decisions and understanding the issues is part of it and implementation is probably most of it.

How can a business owner benefit from the peer advisory board process?

Most of our members are what I like to call, “Cowboy Entrepreneurs”: They’ve built the company and, oftentimes, the company has outgrown their skillset. Involvement in a group experience helps build on that skillset through business education, best practices, and the ability to bounce trials and tribulations off of a group of peers.

How do you know when a business owner is at a point in their career where they need a peer advisory board?

When someone says that they’re working ninety hours a week (and proud of it!), our Group Leaders challenge them with questions such as:

How is that affecting your life – both inside and outside of the office?

Are your systems working at the right pace?

Do you have the leadership right team in place?

Are you implementing predictive reporting?

Entrepreneurs, especially in the growth phase, struggle with having timely information. How can entrepreneurs make good decisions with the information they have at hand?

Entrepreneurial CEO’s have a good, innate sense of where their business is at. When they combine that good sense with good data, magic happens. They have hard facts to back their intuition. When you combine those things, you’re able to look at their business in a different way and make decisions that are sound and move the business forward.

How does Catapult Groups help business owners have a life around their business now that they’ve made their business successful?  

One of the challenges we have in our process is the challenge of slowing down enough to speed up. The CEO’s number one job is to ensure future cash flow for their company. The business climate changes very rapidly, especially today. The CEO can be so focused in the business and not look at it from an investor standpoint – or that 90,000 degree view – that it can be difficult to see changes in the market, current trends, or what your clients’ needs are. My encouragement is to take periodic breaks for company and personal analysis. If you just keep going, one day the business is going to change and you may not notice it.

Listen to the Catapult Business Growth Podcast: E002: Blending Strategy With Tactics Is Crucial for Success.

Brad Mishlove is a graduate of the USC Marshall School of Business and is a fourth generation entrepreneur. Having managed his own entities, including multi-million dollar concrete, landscape, and trucking firms, Mishlove formed Catapult Groups in 2011 to provide leadership training and business coaching to CEOs in a confidential and collaborative environment.