Why Culture, Not Strategy, Determines Whether Deals Actually Work

Josh Wilson: All right. Good day fellow deal makers. Welcome to the Deal Podcast on today's show. Uh, special treat for you guys. It's one of my really good friends. Christine, we met. At a C 12, uh, meeting, and, um, the, the guy who kind of facilitates it, Bob Shallow shout out to Bob. Mm-hmm. Um, he, he said that you, you all should connect and, uh, we, you know, we spent some time together and, uh, she's grown some really great businesses, but.

Some things I want you to pay attention in this interview today is her heart for, for business, her heart, for the culture, and the people behind just the revenues and stuff. Mm-hmm. And, um, just the, the things that you're gonna learn. If you're a visionary, listen in and if you're a private equity group, building portfolios, if you're a family office, buying and building like this is gonna be a great conversation for you.

So with that, Christine, welcome to the show. 

Kristine Goebel: Thanks, Josh. Thanks for having me. 

Josh Wilson: So let's start with this. Uh, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what's your role at your organization? 

Kristine Goebel: Okay. So, uh, Christine, obviously Christine Gobel. So my role early on, um, I, there was one thing that I knew and my job was to equip and multiply other people.

And so basically that, what that meant was take what I know. Share it with other people. And so what we do here is we work in workshops, programs, and coaching to restore workplace communication. And the reason for that is when we, we know if we get into the workplace and we can help them connect better and communicate better things like mergers and acquisitions, things like, you know, new people coming in, new old people leaving, things like that.

It can happen so smoothly without a lot of chaos if they know how to communicate with each other, if they can keep their emotions in check. And so what we do is we go in and we facilitate a teaching program or we facilitate conversations if, if need be. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. So what's the name of your organization? And kind of talk us through the.

The ideation, the origin behind it, and how it evolved from our conversations at C 12 to where it is now. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. So our company is a company suite, and so it, it originally started out where I was like, I knew how to be a chief operating officer, and so I approached every client with like, I'll just be everybody's, you know, fractional Chief operating officer.

And then it just became clear to me that. That as a business model wasn't as sustainable either because I, I'm me, right? Nobody else has my experience. Nobody else has all the, the depth of education and knowledge that I have just like you, right? Mm-hmm. I'm the only one that can do that. So what are the things that I'm teaching over and over and you know, it's like, you know, you, when you're in a field long enough, you know exactly what conversations are happening.

You can look at a room in 30 seconds and know what, where they need to go. Two in order to get all the moving parts moving together, so your systems and your people all happening at the same time. So then, um, my executive assistant from my previous firm, about a year and a half in, she was like, I'm all in.

Let's go. And so we took all of those, that approach that I had and made it into a repeatable, teachable. Methodology. And so that is, you know, everything from a series of workshops to more intensive programs with smaller groups of leaders. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. The importance as you started your own business, right? You, you came from, you know, your past experience working in automotive and the financial industry, and you kept on finding yourself in a.

A sweet spot, right where you were good at, at doing a specific type of action within a company to help it scale. How did you discover that about yourself and what was that thing that you found was your superpower? 

Kristine Goebel: Hmm. So I'll tell you a quick story. Um, which. Like repeated itself several times, every time we had to make a big decision.

So in, you know, in the wealth advisory firm, it would be, you know, a married couple, one's dying and one is, you know, living on, and so they had to have the conversation about if we know death is near what, what happens next? Or in the accounting world it was, Hey, we have to cut payroll. What do we do next?

Like, how do we tell them? How are we gonna tell the team that they have to cut payroll? But the thing that's similar in both of those was the relationship. And so once we figured out whether it's a married couple, it was the relationship we had to learn the dynamics of the relationship so that we could help them have the conversation that was necessary in a time of great sadness and grieving and all the things, um, and sickness.

And then in the companies, it was all about the people who were actually doing the job. So how do you pull that information out about. How do we not cut payroll? So those, I know that doesn't, they're to totally different fields, to totally different circumstances, but at the core of it was people having conversations with people and extracting what's true instead of what is a fear-based emotion.

So we're able to navigate a very complex situation, um, just by learning how to ask the right questions and. Uh, digging a little further to find the truth. And a lot of that I learned from the early days, um, with Toyota is where a lot of that came from, was 

Josh Wilson: learning from them. Okay. Unpack, yeah, unpack that a little bit because, uh, Toyota, you know, the Toyota way would be the, the number one book that Bob would, you know, tell us to go read other than the Bible.

That might be the close, close second to him, but the, um, you know, tell us about your, your journey there, because you didn't, yeah. You didn't start out as a COO, you didn't start out in the world thinking organizational theory and structure. So like, kind of like talk us through that. 'cause I think that will give light to your operational mindset.

Kristine Goebel: Yeah, sure. So, um, so I was 19 when I went to work for Toyota. So I dropped outta college, went to work for Toyota, and it was one of those things where it really wasn't. Something I realized was happening at the time, but you know, you get hired, you're a receptionist, and I just was able to organize the conversations and organize the keys and, you know, it was silly things.

But one of the, uh, managers there, the service manager, he noticed something that I had no idea even existed, right? So he is paying attention, he is asking the right questions. And so this opportunity came up. About a year or so after I started working there, and it was to work with Toyota Motors on implementing what was called the signature process inside of the dealerships.

And so they had to take somebody from their dealerships, send them to work with Toyota Motors to get this training on like process coordination and development, and how to ask questions to your customers, was always about the customer impact, and then how to get the team all on board to have a positive impact on the customers.

So that was, I guess it was about six years of doing that. And that alone, when you understand respect for humanity and can couple that with an operational approach, it's like, the best way I could describe it is everything starts to come alive. So it, you know, as I grew, people would always ask me the question like, aren't you so afraid?

Like, all that pressure of being responsible for the bottom line of an organization, like, doesn't that scare you? Isn't that a heavy burden? And I would be like, no, because that's not what I'm focused on. Like, I'm focused on the people and getting the people to execute at their very best, genuinely, right?

That authentic, like what is it that makes you tick? How do we make that come alive with what you do today? And because I was able to do that, and I think a lot of it was due to the training, some of it is a little bit natural, um, but it's been a lot of training and a lot of education, a lot of failing.

Right. Made a lot of mistakes along the way, but because I, I've always had that ability to do that and understand what's going on with people. I didn't worry about the bottom line. I worried about the people and they took care of the bottom line 'cause they knew I was responsible for it too. So they made sure everybody was doing everything they needed to do to to, to hit what we needed to hit.

Josh Wilson: Yeah, so. You've had a few pivots in your life. You've had a few, you know, evolutions of, of this business and one of your business models when you first started, because you are really good at operations, right? You, you understand what, what it is to grow a business scale, a business systems, processes the people.

And you saw that happen a few times in your life. And you know, there's been some, uh, great successes because of that. You're like, I'll be A-C-O-O-A fractional chief operating officer. So kind of like walk us through what a fractional COO does. And then you said you hit a ceiling in terms of like how you could scale it.

Mm-hmm. So first let's, let's start with what does a fractional COO do? 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. So from my perspective, what it does is it takes care of organizing conversations. So you've got all the operations of the business and, and so that facilitation of. People management, systems management. It's just making sure that there are the necessary conversations are happening and that we are eliminating any noise, distraction, rabbit holes, all of that.

So making sure you've got your leadership trained. The way that we approach it, when we do it, we do it in a very limited capacity. It has to be the right client for us to do it. 'cause it, it, you know, it's a lot on your brain. So I only work with select people to do that now. Um, but the, the key, the key here is that we're teaching other people.

So I approach it from a mentorship perspective. So I'm always looking throughout the organization in order to take everything that I know about what it is to operate a business and then impart that on someone else so that that business, whether I am. Alive, I'm dead. I'm working with them. I'm not working with them.

That there's somebody in there equipped to manage all of those moving parts because it's a, it's a, you know, it's kind of like, there's so many things to look at and think about on a day-to-day basis. Um, and so you gotta just make sure that they're capable of, uh, great communication with the people that are responsible for the different departments or sections.

Josh Wilson: Yeah, for sure. You've seen what, what, I love this question because it, it, it real, it, it uncovers my own weaknesses and faults. Right. So you've seen clients that are really great to work with. Mm-hmm. And then you've, you've also as a COO or focused on scale, focused on how do we get this thing to really grow?

You've also seen maybe some people like me who have been gotten in their own way in terms of scale or growth on their own. What are some characteristics that. Make, you know from the leader's, um, life that you've seen maybe get in the way of organizational growth in scale and profitability? 

Kristine Goebel: Yeah, it's emotion.

It, it's, it's just decision making that's driven by emotion, uh, primarily. And the reason that that gets in the way, it could be a couple different things, right? So some people, they're super risky and so like there's a thrill. And let me take a risk. Let me take a risk, let me take a risk. And that's great, as long as you've got someone in your corner saying, Hey, wrong risk.

Don't do that. You know? And so I love the risk, but you have to be surrounded by the people that will, um, just at least impart some discernment on the, that risk. The other times, um, it's fear, right? So it could be fear, fear-based leadership, and that that just makes everybody afraid. Then another one would be anger.

So these are people that are like emotionally explosive people and what, whether it's emotionally explosive, super risky, and it's like this fun adventure or they're totally afraid. Those are all extreme emotions and what happens is the culture that they're trying to build isn't what they say it is in words.

So if you have a mission, vision, core values, but your emotion doesn't match what you're saying you want it to be, it just creates chaos. And the only thing that is the culture is whatever that leader's behavior is. So their emotion is the culture, not the actual environment in which they want or desire to create, 

Josh Wilson: man.

So. The groups that we tend to work with are middle market companies looking for an exit. And you know, we, we found that the leaders have surrounded themselves with people like you're, you're sharing people that can offset their, their weaknesses. So maybe it's a visionary and they have A-A-C-O-O or they have someone who can do the operational side and they've gotten to a certain point.

Now we've also seen a lot of people that would like to get to that point. Mm-hmm. But there's things in the way, and when I, when I asked like, what do you think is limiting them? You said emotions, which is really interesting. It wasn't like, um, you know, as you've seen a lot of different companies, you didn't mention like market dynamics.

You didn't mention like value proposition. You didn't mention like lack of skill and ability to sail. Mm-hmm. Like it was emotion. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: Out of those risk, fear, and anger. Which one would you like to unpack that you think is maybe the, the most risky or not, maybe not most risky, the the hardest one for the founder to overcome in order to hit that scale?

Kristine Goebel: Let's just go ahead and hit anger. Um, and the reason I'm choosing anger is when we think about selling something. That we built, right? So if you're looking at it from, hey, they're looking to get out of what they're doing now and they wanna sell it to someone else, we easily get offended by a low offer or somebody that wants to come in and just buy it from you and take over and change all the things you just spent all your your life on.

Or if you are purchasing something. So the anger comes in the slow pace, or, you know, it could, it could be any one of those things. So I, I say anger more from a, we easily get offended and make assumptions. So I, I'd rather stay in that, in that bucket. 

Josh Wilson: Wow, okay. That, that really surprises me. But it, it, it tracks.

So when it comes to. Let's go on the emotion of anger. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: Where could that prevent the right hires? Where could that, if you know, within the founder, within the leader, where could, where could that underlying emotion of anger prevent from building teams, scaling teams, um, delegation. Where, where, what are the symptoms of anger within a, a leader's culture?

Kristine Goebel: Yeah, so delegation is purely. How are you delegating? Right? So a lot of times it's, um, like they're abdicating. The responsibility. So they just give it to somebody else and then they take off and then they're mad with it. So they, they don't like the outcome, so they take it back, or they just stay consistently frustrated because somebody couldn't do something that they were never taught to do.

And so if you don't understand, there's different phases of delegation and different ways to delegate, and it's all dependent upon the receiver. Of what's being delegated, you'll end up frustrated, disappointed, angry, and so anger. Keep in mind, this is everything from, like I said, frustration, disappointment, um, assumption resentment.

All those to me are bucket, we're bucketing them right now under, under an anger or frustration. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. When, when you have a, a leader with. Underlying anger driver. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: A high turnover, I assume is a, uh, a symptom of that within the business. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: Um, you know, if we're looking at doing a acquisition, right, let's, let's focus on the acquisition side.

We, we buy a company and we're integrating, like you talked about in the beginning, like the married couple, and we're starting to have conversations where could this anger under underlying anger, emotion. Even if the founder thinks that they're healthy, where could they underline anger? Like destroy the marriage of the merger of those two companies?

Kristine Goebel: Yeah. Well, what's usually what I see when that actually happens, somebody's acquired another, something of someone else's. It isn't always the owner that's angry, it's usually the. Team that came and is now tucked underneath because there wasn't a really good job of defining what some of the, uh, culture really was.

Right. And so the, it's, it's kind of flipped. So it might not be the anger of the leader. It might just be, uh, a lack of awareness of these other. 10, a hundred, a thousand, 40,000, whatever it is, right? All these people that are coming tucked under, underneath them, they come with a lot of anger and fear and frustration, and they feel like it's a big risk.

So you gotta remember, this person who has acquired them has to do a great job of farming these relationships. Be somewhat visible, authentic, and open to hearing them very regularly for the first year. And a lot of times they're not. And then they're frustrated. 'cause these people keep leaving and they bought this thing that was supposed to grow and now it's declining because the team's leaving and the clients are leaving and now they bought something worthless.

And it's just, it's, it's like time and time. I, it's like a tale as old as time. We'll just say that. That's what I see the most of. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. Mm-hmm. The uh. The culture clashes is, is something I've heard you say culture clashes of two merging companies. So you know, a lot of the private equity groups or family offices that, you know, we've seen merge two different groups and man, they could be same mission, vision, values.

Mm-hmm. Even, yeah. And they're like, oh, we're doing great stuff together. Why not do it together? We're in conversations right now with the group. 

Kristine Goebel: Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: And it's just like, what should I look out for? Mission, vision, values aligned. The work ethics aligned the. The type of work is aligned, so it's like, it seems like the absolute perfect marriage.

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: Like what are, what are some things that you think, what questions should we be asking or conversations should we be ha having to make sure that this is a good merger? 

Kristine Goebel: Okay, so. This is the kind of thing if I was approaching it, um, I would wanna get both of the leads from both sides together to make sure they're having the same conversation.

So it could be something as simple as accountability as a core value. Let's just talk about what does accountability look like here and what does accountability look like here? And if you can keep it all kind of, if they have the same mission, vision, values. Right. You gotta define those things and understand what examples of those things look like.

'cause I'll give you a perfect example is work-life balance, right? If you wanna figure out how to psychologically mess up an entire culture, you use the term work-life balance. And the reason I say that is 'cause it's a different definition for every single person who lives on the face of the earth. So you gotta get rid of stuff like that.

You gotta look at it more like, what are some of the benefits you have? What are some of the packages you have? What are, you know, it's like if you're defining it as work-life balance, you just, you just set yourself up for a, a nightmare. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. So get rid of the phrase, in your experience, get rid of the phrase work life.

Work life balance, because it really can set an uneasy expectation. 'cause you're having, you know, it's a, it's an objective way to look at something, I guess through the, the eyes of the employees. And they might all have a different definition of it, right? 

Kristine Goebel: Yeah, yeah. Well, and even the term itself is, is a conflict, right?

So you have work and you have life, and so now you just took your whole life and made it in competition with your work. 

Josh Wilson: Huh? 

Kristine Goebel: So in your brain, you're trying to achieve something that's unachievable when your career is just a, it's a part of your life. It's not one or the other. Right? So we don't wanna fight them against each other.

We just need to know where our levels of satisfaction are. That's what we're need. That's what we need to find out is like what that, what means what to them? Yeah. What's exciting to them? What is purposeful to them? And if it doesn't align with what you're doing. If I was gonna acquire a company, I surely would go in and have my team talking to the other people that work in the company to find out what their definition of these things are.

'cause those private conversations with the people that are actually doing the job that you're actually acquiring, those are the people that are gonna tell you. It's not the guy who's selling it to you. It never is.

Josh Wilson: Yeah. Interesting. 

Kristine Goebel: So you gotta know who to talk to, talk to the receptionist. They probably know what, they probably know the temperature of what's going on, and they're more likely to tell you 'cause nobody asks them.

Josh Wilson: That's really interesting. So that might be a good part of due diligence when you're, you know, looking to acquires, you know, see how, see how the. The receptionist is doing, and you know, look, talk to the frontline workers and, and see how they're, what's going on in their world. See if they're smiling, if they're happy, if they're whistling, you know, 

Kristine Goebel: just take a walk.

Take a walk through, call in, see what's going on. You know, see how you're received when you call in. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. What this is great now for leaders who may have that underlying emotions that are really preventing scale or success or multiples if they're going to sell their business, right? Mm-hmm. Like having these underlying emotions that could really be derailing them.

Risk, fear, anger, right? Those, those things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, talk about the self-awareness of a leader. Like how can, how can a leader. Maybe look beneath and see maybe these are the emotions that are driving them and maybe mm-hmm. Have a better way. 

Kristine Goebel: Yeah. So what's interesting about emotions? So first I'm gonna say this.

So we, uh, we know AI has taken over, right? So we know there's a lot of changes that are gonna be made to a lot of industries and a lot of jobs. And so the, the thing that keeps us employed or keeps our, our. Asset valuable is our level of emotional intelligence because that is the one human piece that is going to make us valuable.

So that being said, self-awareness is the first step in emotional intelligence. So you have. Awareness and then you have management, right? So it's a my, am I aware of myself? Am I aware of how others perceive me? Am I aware and in control enough of my emotions or my thoughts so that my behavior on the outside is pleasing to others?

And maybe not even pleasing, but authentic and consistent because the leadership people only. Will follow you or, uh, buy into what you're doing. If you're consistent. If your behavior's inconsistent, they're not gonna trust you. So they inconsistency. And I would say, you know, from a self-awareness perspective, that would be, that would be the thing I would be tracking my thoughts and emotions and my belief system long enough.

To get a good feel of what my behavior is, how my behavior is perceived by other people. So you just ask questions. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. 

Kristine Goebel: You know? 

Josh Wilson: Why do people hire you now? 

Kristine Goebel: Hmm. Well, people hire us, so we have a pretty dynamic team here, and people hire us now because they want to be better. So typically what's interesting is do we get companies that are messy and chaotic?

Yes. Like we do get some of those, but the most of, most of the time these are leaders that are like, there's something more here with these people and I wanna help them all grow and all level up and all like utilize their gifts in a way that's just gonna catapult us all. So we all benefit. So it's not, let's grow the company.

It's usually coming from a, I wanna help everyone grow and in doing so, we'll all benefit from it. Productivity goes up, everybody gets raises, everybody gets raises. Everybody's a little more engaged. Not that it's all money driven, but you get what I'm saying, like it's, it's just this cause and effect. Um, yeah, so I, I, I think people just need to pay attention to what other people, how they're perceived by other people.

And the only way you're gonna know is if you start asking people you trust are gonna tell you the truth. And if your team is telling you all good things, they're lying, they're not comfortable telling you the truth. Yeah. And so they, a lot of times too, they hire us Josh, because we are. There's no reason for them to not trust us because we go in saying, unless somebody's gonna hurt themselves or purposely hurt the company, I'm not gonna tell you what they tell me.

I'm gonna give you advice on how to grow your company, but I'm not gonna break somebody else's trust. So we earn trust. We take that. It's sacred to us. You know, if somebody shares something private with you, it's sacred. Um, and, you know, sometimes they're not a great fit for the company and we can have that conversation and most of the time we're just kind of uncovering some things that got swept under the rug.

We're just kind of lifting it up and taking it back out and dealing with it. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. Alright. I know that there's gonna be, you know, a COO or private equity group that's listening and, and they're, they're, you know, they might have this. This bent on saying, you know what, this sounds a little fluffy, right?

We're gonna come in Kumbaya. I mean, I could, I could almost see what, what vest they're wearing, why they're telling you this, you know? Yeah, yeah. This seems a little, you know, fluffy, this kumbaya. Let's hold hands, let's talk, let's do trust falls and such like that. And, uh, you know, you're, you're saying that it goes, there's a deeper level of that.

Like how do you overcome that objection or that kind of mindset? 

Kristine Goebel: So quick, funny story. I had somebody once say, well, is the juice worth the squeeze? And I said, well, I, I said, well, let, let's see what happens when you don't squeeze it. And they lost a, a great deal because what needed to be done didn't get done.

And so now it's like, well, what do you think? Is the juice worth the squeeze? Right? So meaning the juice. Um, that the result they're gonna get from working with us. So a lot of times, um, if I ever do get that kumbaya, kumbaya is usually what comes up. Oh, sounds so, so kumbaya. And I'm like, yeah. And imagine if everyone in your workplace had a calm sound mind and could make decisions and move at lightning speed, where would you be?

So if I can get rid of the chaos in their head, because I'm teaching them how to listen, how to ask questions, how to consider feedback from other people, how to give and receive it, right? If we can do that, we can teach them how to trust one another. Watch how fast your productivity increases. I, I mean, it's like you could not do it and stay where you are.

So it's kind of like. We get that pushback. But the truth is, is if, if they're not open enough to understand at this point in the world that we live in, it is not the same. Everything is changing so fast that the only way you deal with change management with human beings is if you get their mindset right.

Say that again. So that's what we're working on. Say 

Josh Wilson: that again. Say, say that again. 

Kristine Goebel: The only way. We deal with the pace of change that is facing us right now is we get to the human being's mindset, and if we have a sound mind, we can deal with change management if we do not have a sound mind. And most of our people in our organization do not have a sound mind because of risk, fear, anger, avoidance, silence.

Name, right. Frustration, disappointment. If we have, we have those things, we can't keep up with the pace of change, so we clear the mind, we keep up with change, and we just keep evolving and innovating with the changes that are coming. You become stealth, right? Like you become super a agile because your brain isn't lying to you anymore.

You've got truth in front of you. You've got facts. Two people might not like each other. That might be a fact, but they could still work together. One doesn't have anything to do with the other, and so we have to get them to see that like Yeah, the way they chew might annoy you because you're in the same space as each other.

Josh Wilson: Yeah. 

Kristine Goebel: But what if, what if you found a way through that? Right? What if you just told them it bothered you? 

Josh Wilson: So I love this change only happens with the mindset shift, right? Without that mindset shift change won't happen. You might have a temporary like compliance where they just might be doing that, and then it goes back to however it needs rubber used to be 

Kristine Goebel: the rubber rubber band effect.

Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. So let's just say, you know, they, they say, okay, we're, we want to do this because our organization, we, you know, as a leader, we think that. We think that this, we could be more profitable. We wanna sell this in three years, whatever the case may be. And to do that, we need to optimize our people. We need to invest in systems, processes, and our people and our team, right?

Like we've gotta do that. Mm-hmm. They go, how do we measure the ROI of, of this work that we do together? This, this kumbaya, you know, this, you know, people, culture and all that stuff to a. Results driven. KPI driven, C-O-O-C-F-O or uh, you know, PE group. Like that might be their thing is what's show me the, the ROI.

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, so this is the way that I would frame it. I mean, they could track it if they want to, uh, because productivity should increase, profitability should increase. The, the biggest game changer though is the environment. So because we're changing the environment that they're working in, they're automatically kind of like how I said earlier, I didn't pay attention to this because this took care of itself.

So if we set goals, we check goals, we are, we hold people accountable to the goals that they're setting, and we do that regularly. If that's happening, and we can teach that systematic way of doing things and holding people accountable, they're gonna hit the goals or be able to adjust and adapt together, collaborate.

If one effort isn't working and they're not seeing it, and we've already weeks and weeks have gone by and they're not seeing. The movement they need to see, well, if their relationships are solid and they communicate well, we're gonna come together and we're gonna find another way. We're gonna make a small adaptation to how we're approaching it, and then we start figuring out what's working and what's not working and keep moving it forward.

So you'll start to see the goals are getting hit. You're also gonna start to see that. Do you have the right goals? Like are those the goals you need to get to where you wanna go? And do you even know where you wanna go? Right? So if in three years you wanna sell, does everybody know that that's the objective or do they think there's these other objectives happening?

And so that's a whole other conversation on the whether or not your team should know that that's what's going to happen. 

Josh Wilson: What's your thoughts on that, right? Mm-hmm. So a lot of times when we're talking to a business owner, first generation, you know, business owner, and they're like, man, I wanna, I wanna retire, I wanna sell this.

My kids don't want it. The, the silver tsunami, the seller tsunami, and you know, the, and they're like, I want to sell this, but these guys have been with me for 30 years, 20 years, 10 years. Should I tell them, should I not tell 'em what did, what's your thoughts on this? 

Kristine Goebel: Well, I'm sure you could guess what my thoughts are on it, but I'm always about transparency.

And so in any company I've ever been responsible for, I've never hidden my profit and loss statement ever. None of my, my financials never hidden them. Um, and the reason is, is if you take good care of your people and you're just open and honest with them, they are. More likely to be open and honest with you and share concerns or share their thoughts.

And when you have that level of trust with people, they kind of automatically know that you're gonna get to a place in life where this is going to happen, right? If they've been with you 20 years, they know at some point in time you're going to want to retire. What you don't know is what part of that do they wanna be part of.

Do they wanna ride into the sunset with you? Well, that's better to know three years before you sell it than when you sell it. And part of the sale is contingent upon certain amount of people staying or a certain amount of clients being retained. If you find that out after the fact, you just lost millions of dollars because the payout, if it's prolonged for a long period of time, might be contingent on those things.

And if you surprise people and only give them a few months. Of knowing that the sale's gonna take place. They are just living in a terrified state of mind that entire time, which is why most acquisitions don't go very well, because the people are being acquired aren't, they're not connected. They don't necessarily want to be there because they haven't had time to adapt.

You know, entrepreneurs have one way of thinking. And then the people who are doing the job have another way of thinking. Yeah. And so if you are not putting yourself in their shoes and understanding where they're at, yeah, of course you should tell them. But if they don't trust you and you tell them they're gonna be finding a new job, if they do trust you and you tell them, they're gonna walk it out with you because it's enough where.

If they've got time to process it with you, especially if you're going to be leaving it in that three year period of time, if you're gonna be staying on longer, gives you a little bit more runway. But I mean, it's all circumstantial to whatever the deal is. But, um, more often than not, I would say at the very least, make sure your core leadership team knows.

Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: That's super interesting. Um, when it comes to the acquirer, right? So I'm buying a company and we're gonna be rolling it up, right? It's this almost like a stepmom, stepdad kind of thing. Yeah. You know, these hundred employees are now gonna be my employees and, you know, I'm on my best behavior 'cause I want them to like me and, you know, do productivity and, you know, make money for me and us and all that stuff.

Right. What is a, what are some strategies or some thoughts that you have on how do you how to integrate those teams from the acquirer standpoint? 

Kristine Goebel: So from the acquirer standpoint, integrating the new teams. So if it were me, I'd be doing a lot of activities that brings all the teams together and so I would be like co.

Mingling the two different teams before they become one team. So it would be super clear. It wouldn't just be like a lecture style rah rah, like, oh, we're all, it's gonna be so great. You know, like that's not what I'm talking about. I'm like, start integrating some projects, start integrating some think tanks, start integrating some real actionable things.

And yes, I would recommend like workshops and programs and things like that. For sure. That's getting them all on the same page. But the biggest thing is give them something real to work on together and see how they do and help them navigate it. So it's not just like we're separate entities one day and then one entity the next day.

Right. 'cause it's, that doesn't, it doesn't work. So you, you know, it's kinda like dating. You try some things out. You, you see what's working and what's not working so you can deal with it before. It has to deal with itself 

Josh Wilson: for sure. For sure. And you know, so you've now grown into this role where you're, you know, you have a heart for organization, you have a heart for the people of organizations, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, and I love seeing how you've evolved your own group. And when I asked why do people hire you? You said, no, people hire us. So you yourself had to grow past just Christine, the founder, Christine, the business. Mm-hmm. Christine, the, you know, the, the product into an us. Mentality. Mm-hmm. Right. And then, you know, so 'cause you hit some bottlenecks in your own organizational growth 

Kristine Goebel: mm-hmm.

Josh Wilson: What emotion did you have to overcome in yourself to start changing From the me to we? 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So at first it, it was a lot of, I wanted to be, everybody's everything, right? So when you go from having a team to being solo. Um, just desiring a team. So I, I became, like attached to a lot of the organizations I was working with.

And then, um, you know, as we, we've talked about it, there's the sustainability factor. And so because I understand that my brain is just as much art as it is science and that that's not necessarily a skill a lot of people get where you can like balance your emotion and your thoughts. A lot of moving parts at one time, and so I was like, well, what is the thing, the main thread that repeats itself over and over again, that if we could teach this concept, you know, like what I do as a, an area of expertise from a very complex level is different than what a company suite can do.

To get all the people in the organization able to communicate in a healthy manner with one another. So the, uh, the, from Christine to the, from me to we, right? That the biggest thing I had to overcome was my personal desire to go so deep into the complexities of relationships and or operations. It's like fascinating to me.

Like I'm like getting excited just talking about it, right? So I had to kind of say, well, what, what is the purpose of a company suite? And then what is it that Christine does? And so they're different. And so the we part came because I don't need to be the one talking about certain topics like hiring, onboarding, retention, termination, Becca.

Crushes it with that. 

Josh Wilson: She's great. 

Kristine Goebel: She's so much better. Um, not that I couldn't do it, but she really is the one that is built to teach that and have the patience to navigate how to do that well, you know? Yeah. And then when it comes to family dynamics. We might bring Chris in because Chris is really skilled at, especially with if you have teenagers and all of those dynamics, or if you're a man and you know.

You're just like looking at Christine going, is this Kumbaya? Well, hey, here's Chris. Why don't you talk to Chris and he'll talk to you about Kumbaya. Right? Yeah. So he's more direct and more just, you know, bold and, and you know, we've got Haley, she's in her master's program right now for mental health counseling.

So she understands a whole other dynamic of the brain and what the brain does and, and how to get over that. And so the we part, once I realized I wasn't. The end all be all to fixing all the things, and there were actually a system that we could create here that's ours, that's special for a company suite.

Once I figured out what that system was, I knew the people. But here's, here's the funny part of all of it, Josh, was I got, I got the people on the bus before I knew what, where the bus was actually gonna go. Hired the smartest. Um, took a risk. Uh, I'm a little less risky than you, right? So I took a risk by doing my first hire.

Um, but I knew that it was the right hire. So once you get the right people around you, all the other stuff starts to make perfect sense. Um, so it was, it was more just a prideful, um, if I'm being honest, right? It was the. I know what I'm really good at and I appreciated the effect that I, Christine could have, um, on something that's complex.

And so what we did was we just figured out a way to actually teach that in real time by teaching the most foundational ways that human beings communicate. Because if people can get that, all the stuff I do, I can teach it. I just didn't realize it was teachable at some point. Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: This is, I, I want to call this like the Founder's Mindset Paradox or something like that.

I'll, I'll, I'll create a clever name behind it, or it probably exists already as a founder. The need to be needed, the need to be valuable, right? Like it's, it's there. Like I think Pride gets us to the point of movement, traction, risk, you know, but I think pride limits us. In terms of growth, and, and that has probably limited, it's probably taken a decade or two off my, my career path.

But the, uh, I think the fear of not being needed is the reason I think a lot of founders don't scale. Mm-hmm. Uh, well then what will I do with my time? What will I do after the sale? Mm-hmm. What will I do? So the paradox is this, as a business owner, I know my business is more valuable if the business doesn't need me.

I know that, but yet I'll stay in that spot because it gives me joy, it gives me fulfillment. It gives me a sense of purpose. So let's talk about that founder who's similar to me, who's struggling with that identity and being needed. Let's just say it. It's just coming to the point where this person's gonna have to.

Walk through one day retirement or death. It's just, it's coming. Right? Everybody exits their business. 100% guaranteed. You'll exit, exit your business. 

Kristine Goebel: Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: You'll die. You'll retire. Mm-hmm. You'll hand it off. You'll do some type of succession. You'll be voluntary or involuntary. So how can, how can a person like me, a founder like me, prepare themselves emotionally and build the company of value so that they can exit it in a healthy way?

Kristine Goebel: So I'll start with this. So the first thing you need to recognize is there's Josh, and then there's this business that Josh founded. They are worth two totally different things. So your worth is, has nothing to do with the worth of your business, and the worth of your business really doesn't have anything to do with you other than your job to steward it well.

And so a lot of times we get so wrapped up, especially if we've created something like, you know, if anybody knocks what our creation that we made, that our blood, sweat, tears, lots of money, right? Decades of your life. When people start like criticizing it, it feels like a personal attack. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. 

Kristine Goebel: It's hard to listen to, like, well, are they criticizing it or are they giving me really good advice that I need to listen to?

'cause you can't discern between the two. It just feels like an attack on your soul. And so the first thing I would say is, let's separate the two. Let's figure out what is the thing that really defines your worth for you as a person. Let's talk about your gifts. Let's talk about all this stuff. And if you were able to give those gifts to other people, which now we're talking entity, right?

If you were actually able to create something that's sustained because you will at some point leave it, you already know that that's, that is truth. You're leaving at some point. So you, your question is, do you want it to go on after you leave or die, or do you want it to die with you? If you want it to die with you, well go ahead and keep doing what you're doing.

If you want it to sustain and be a legacy worth leaving behind, you gotta let go. And so we talk about steps to letting go. 'cause you gotta trust the person you're letting it go to. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. Uh uh. If you wanted to die, keep doing what you're doing. When we talk to a lot of first generational founders, especially like in the world of service industries where they've, you know, been working hard in the trenches, plumbers, contractors, um, blue collar workers, you know, like working their butts off in a field.

One of their biggest things, they're, what we've seen is the resistance of selling is I care for my people. It's not a numbers thing. It's like I want my people to do well. And so they'll hold on because they're like, nobody will steward and take care of my people better than me. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: But then what happens is you start getting later and later in life, sales start going down because it's a founder based sale.

Right. Or, uh, you know, sales model. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: And then it winds up hurting the people anyways. 

Kristine Goebel: Mm-hmm. 

Josh Wilson: Um, and that's, there's the paradox, if you really wanna take care of those people. You will work on a succession plan that blesses them and puts it in a hands that could take it to the next level. Right.

Growth. 

Kristine Goebel: Yeah. Yeah. 

Josh Wilson: But that takes self-awareness, Christine, and I think a lot of us get trapped in the, the fears and the emotions of it. So let's do this for, for people who want to. Maybe check in with you and have you take a look under the hood or maybe have a conversation with one of the leaders.

Where's a good place that people could go to connect with you and learn more? 

Kristine Goebel: Um, well, you go to our website, so I think that'll be on your, 

Josh Wilson: it'll be in the show notes below people. You could go there. 

Kristine Goebel: And that's a, a company suite.com. Uh, you could connect with me on LinkedIn. That's probably, if you want to directly connect with me, um, my LinkedIn profile is probably the best place to go to reach me.

Um, I love communicating with people on there. Leave a little note that you heard it on this podcast and you guaranteed we'll have a phone call. Um, yeah, I think that that's probably the best way. I mean, we have YouTube and Instagram and. I personally have it and our business has it. Facebook, you know, there's freebies, there's videos, all sorts of stuff that, resources that we have to give back to people.

But if you wanna talk to me directly, um, I guess suppose they could ask you for my contact information for sure. Um, or, you know, just, just connect with me on LinkedIn and I monitor that pretty closely. 

Josh Wilson: Yeah. What I love about our conversations is I've seen the results of your work. And I've seen the ROI, I've seen like companies that you coach and work with, produce, you know, profitable results and you know, go on, have some great things.

So it's like mm-hmm. I was always skeptical of this kind of stuff. It felt like fluffy for me, you know, but then like seeing it, I'm like, oh my gosh, I should have been paying attention to you for the last, you know, four or five years of us, you know, hanging out and working together. So like, I'm just so, I'm, I'm grateful for our friendship and I'm proud of what you're doing.

Uh, my encouragement to the audience is definitely reach out to Christine and her group over there. Um, it's super cool to see, like when you, if you truly care about your people within your organization, like. Like checking in on them and seeing the, the, a company suite of it, like the, the symphony that happens when people work well together and the profitability that that follows, uh, is amazing.

So reach out to our guests, say, thanks for being on the show, and if you have a deal that you'd like to talk about here on the Deal Podcast, or maybe a way you, you approach acquisitions or, or maybe you'd like to talk about portfolio growth within your private equity group, we'd love to have that chat here on the Deal Podcast.

Head over to the deal podcast.com, fill out a quick form. And maybe we'll get you on the conversation next, so then cheers everyone.