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Welcome to the Leading Beyond the Org Chart Podcast by Rise Results, where we bring you real-world strategies to improve employee engagement, boost retention, and accelerate team development - all with a clear focus on driving measurable business outcomes.
Each episode features leaders who’ve successfully navigated these challenges, sharing actionable insights you can implement immediately.
We’ll explore how better people practices lead to better business performance - and how to turn strategic thinking into scalable growth.
Hi there and welcome Josh.
Welcome to the podcast.
um Our guest today is Josh Salyer and Josh is currently the Chief People Officer for Watson
enterprise, focusing on innovative approaches and portfolio management.
His professional journey spans over a decade in manufacturing environments where he's held
various HR leadership roles with companies like Hitachi, Automotive, Sherman Williams and
Hyster Yale.
He also spent several years at Amazon where he played a pivotal role in launching and
managing large scale customer service operations, including pioneering work from home
programs.
He transitioned to Watson Enterprise where he now oversees and supports portfolio
companies and diverse industries.
So welcome, Josh, we're thrilled you're here.
Great.
Marilyn, do want to go ahead and get us started?
Kick it off.
we're going to jump right in.
Josh, you've had such a robust career trajectory from HR leadership roles in manufacturing
to overseeing portfolio companies at Watson.
um What inspired you to make that shift, the transition to working at a family office?
And how has your previous experience shaped your current role?
Yeah, no, I think when you look back at my career, like Kim mentioned, starting in
manufacturing environments, working with pretty large teams, I think it was pretty logical
then went to Amazon.
And when you think about big teams, that's probably one of the largest employers in the
country.
And so definitely scale at a different level.
So it maybe was a bit of an odd term when I went to supporting 11,000 people, Amazon
customer service to 11 people.
at a family office was a little different, but the experience that I had at Amazon, even
though we're being a really large company, was very scrappy and very entrepreneur where
you had to just kind of jump in and figure things out.
And, you know, they didn't oftentimes buy big systems or buy software.
You kind of had to build what you need.
And you may be sitting in a meeting today, you know, a month from now, you're all of a
sudden you're trying to solve a problem and you had no idea this was on the map at all.
And so I think that experience and trying to jump in and solve problems and figure things
out and kind of tackle the blank sheet of paper kind of starting from zero, that had me
really excited about partnering with early stage companies, startups, really companies of
all various stages.
How do you go from zero to one, but also maybe how do you go from 50 employees to 500 or a
thousand?
So it me really excited about an opportunity like that.
Terrific, thank you.
Yeah, which you did in a day, right?
At Amazon.
You scale up from 2,000 plates.
Yeah, yeah, there was definitely, you know, one experience they're preparing for what we
call peak season.
So, you know, all of kind of the holiday shopping, we had to bring in a lot of agents.
And we built to the point of actually hired 1000 people in one day.
uh So scale was not a problem once you've had to tackle that.
But yeah, a lot of preparation went into that.
But uh yeah, kind of crazy on the number of people you had to hire for an organization
like
That's a lot.
That's exhausting even just thinking about.
Can you share more about the innovative approach about Wesson
Can you share more about the innovative approach to the pricing of the cost tax and
supporting as portfolio programs, particularly in the lower stages?
And how do you determine the two main components of each program?
you
um I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time hearing.
I don't know it's just my speakers, but I'm getting a lot of background noise and it's
like muffling your speech.
Marilyn, do want to go ahead and ask the second question?
Sure.
Kim was asking if you could share more about the innovative approaches at Watson
Enterprises in supporting your portfolio companies, especially the ones that are at early
stages.
How do you determine what the unique needs are of each of your companies?
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good question and something to think throughout the 10 years of
Watson Enterprise that we hope we continue to iterate on and try to get better at.
But one of the things we try to start with is we write a press release.
When we're meeting a company and we're getting to know them, it's a mechanism that
actually some of us learned at Amazon, where it's a kind of a forward, you know,
view or kind of thinking about in the future state, if we were to say yes and go on this
journey with this company, what could success look like?
How excited would we be to put that in the newspaper or on LinkedIn and tell that story?
Yes, you know, so you know, company ABC, you know, goes public and hits this in sales and
like, how excited would we be to be along that journey?
And so we start there.
And then secondly, we kind of go into a needs assessment and needs analysis to say, okay,
Here's what we're hearing from you.
We heard that you're here and you want to get here in sales.
We think implementing a system like this and hiring talent like this and try to remove
ourselves from it to really determine what could this company, what value could be added?
What do they need to go to the next step?
And we found that it's not just about us then, hey, Lawson Enterprises is the answer.
But even if we decide or we can't work out that deal, that opportunity to partner with
them.
Hopefully we leave them with something that adds value.
But we've actually found it's a good way to kind of remove ourselves and just say, you
know, what are the needs of this company?
And then of course, we probably feel like we can add some of that.
Maybe we have some experience where we can add that value.
But, and every single company is in a different place.
They're unique.
And so it's not a one size fits all answer to say, hey, we're Watson Enterprise.
Here's steps one through 20 of how we get from here to here.
It's like, no, let us listen.
and there's some things you're probably doing really well that we want to be supportive
that we shouldn't touch.
And then maybe there's some things you haven't gotten to yet.
And here's how we've done that with similar companies and allows us to have a really
honest conversation about what we're seeing and hearing and hopefully then get on the same
page so that if we do partner that we can hit the ground running on what's important.
love a few things that you said there, Josh.
First of all, and probably part of why we wanted you on this podcast is because we work in
such a similar fashion.
One of the things that we feel works well for us, small and agile, is that we don't have a
standard template.
that we use and just impose on every company that we work with.
We don't say, this is our change model and you just have to sort of plug and play into it.
Or this is our model for progressing a culture and you just have to follow these steps.
Everybody follows the same steps.
that customizable meet people where they are.
And what you said about listening to where each company is and then coming up with a
solution
fits for them and that might be pulling from your experience of working with other
companies which that's why they're coming to you is for your experience and expertise.
That's why people hire us.
It's for our experience and expertise but it's not just saying here's the playbook.
use this template, use this playbook, it's saying we want to listen to you first and then
we're going to take you from where you are to the next level based on what you've said and
then using our expertise.
So I really applaud you for using that approach and I'll bet that the clients, the
companies that you work with
really appreciate that you're not doing a one size fits all model with them and other
investors may have tried that force fit.
So thank you for that.
Kim, do you want to go back and ask question, our third question?
Sure, sure.
I just want to touch on that too, because I think that was so important, Joshua, you said
about the listening piece and it's so important to culture from the very beginning, right?
And we talked to a lot of leaders and I think when you do that, when you start with that
and it's really a partnership between you and the company, right?
That that really does establish culture in the very early stages.
We all know that it's much easier to do that in the beginning than it is when you're much
bigger and try to go back and fix things.
yeah and we find that we take that approach where we want to listen and we want to hear
directly from them then you you do then build that trust from the beginning and say hey
they didn't think they were the experts or they knew something about my business that I've
been doing in the last 20 years you know a lot of times we say no you're the expert in
your business tell us how you got here
And then maybe we can bring some value from somewhere else in scale or, you know,
something that we've done that would be applicable.
But we don't come into the situation thinking we have all the answers.
A lot of times we want to learn from those partners.
And again, so we can be a partner in building something together and not just this is our
playbook.
It has to be this way.
Absolutely.
So we talked about in your intro around a thousand people that you hired in a day at
Amazon.
So and work from home is such a hot topic right now, whether people are hybrid or fully
remote or have to be back in the office.
We live in the Bay Area.
I can tell you Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays around here are pretty awful for traffic.
We're back to pretty much pre-pandemic, especially on Thursdays, pre-pandemic levels.
But you mentioned tackling work from home operations with Amazon before it was a
widespread norm.
And what lessons from that experience do you think are relevant in today's discussion
about hybrid work models and how much of your workforce is, that's just a building
question, how many em employees at Watson Enterprise are?
Yeah, we actually do not have an office anymore.
So kind of coming out of the pandemic, we had a couple of different offices throughout the
years in Chicago.
then pretty quickly, coming out of that experience, we realized that maybe we don't really
have to do that commute.
Maybe you don't have to get on the train and spend that 30 minutes or an hour in the
morning and the afternoon.
And then I think it paired pretty well with kind of maybe where some of the people were at
personally in our company as well, maybe starting families and different things and people
saying, you know what, I really value that flexibility.
And but you're right, I've been doing this a bit.
over 10 years now, so Amazon customer service, uh virtual customer service, we kind of we
tagged a job in a box.
And so it was kind of different at the time.
It was, you know, working from home before that was kind of cool.
And so really getting people's head even around the idea that you could work from home and
take customer contacts from home.
But then kind of solving some of those problems and having a box show up and you open the
box and says, welcome to Amazon day one.
And kind of then here's, you you start your experience.
So when we were almost educating people that you can do this from home to today, it's like
you said, people are kind of getting pulled back in the other direction.
And when I talk with people, you know, in the job market, what we're doing recruiting,
oftentimes, that's one of the first things they want to understand and talk about is the
flexibility.
And because so many people,
been in those environments and they've seen that it actually works and maybe I could start
dinner or I can start a load of laundry or do something with my children and then go back
to my office and you see they've seen that it works and so often times that's what people
are most interested in and what's the flexibility for this role.
So yeah, so it's definitely I think it's come a long way and it's almost trying to shift
back some of the pre-pandemic but I think the workforce is really thinking
to push and a lot of people do want that flexibility in the roles they look for.
when you talk about recruiting and you're talking flexibility is that generational
question is it across generations that people are asking about that or is it more Gen Z?
I feel like it's pretty much across the board.
And you may have some people that say they won't understand it and they're flexible and
maybe they don't have children at home anymore and so it's really easy.
And others you can say, you know what, it's really important that I can pop down to the
bus stop and get my kid off the bus at three o'clock and be back at my desk at 315.
And that makes the whole family, the work-life balance, the work-life harmony really work
for them and it's critical.
And so they would give up.
$5,000 or $10,000 or a bonus or whatever to have that flexibility.
So it's gonna be interesting to see what happens as you continue to, as you said, you
gotta get people to push back into the office.
They wanna see people back in the office, but I don't know if the job seekers are gonna
change what's important to them as you continue to hear about the flexibility it seems
like.
We do, we hear that all the time.
Yeah, you know what?
I think it's...
You've seen it work a lot.
You've also heard a maybe a lot of horror stories.
So it kind of depends on, I feel like the attitude and approach from the C-suite down.
And like, you know, how committed are they to that flexibility?
And, you know, because it's really hard, maybe in pockets to have, you know, everyone else
is in the office, but then I've got this department that works from home.
Or, okay, it's optional, but is it really optional?
And how is it viewed if you're not in the office and you're not as visible?
And so are you not up for promotion anymore?
because you're not mirroring the behaviors of the C-suite.
So I think it really has a big impact, you know, how successful it is on the culture and
the leadership and how body and they are to that approach.
I think it matters too.
mean, to your point, it models a C-suite, but often, you know, C-suites are distributed
now.
And so even if you have employees coming into the office, the C-suite can be distributed
throughout the country or the world.
And that creates a whole new kind of dynamic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
a lot about that as well.
Or mandated days in the office, you it has to be particular set days instead of flexible
days.
And there's just a lot of conversation around it.
yeah, yeah, and I guess all of the above can work, right?
But there's just pros and cons and there's challenges of it.
You know, and I think when you...
A lot of times you say, well this worked in office setting.
then, but when you, if you're going to support a virtual environment, you've got to adjust
those mechanisms.
And how do you, how do you connect?
How do you communicate?
How do you drive the culture when people aren't sitting in the same office building every
day?
Or certain groups are and certain aren't, you know?
So I think it definitely has to be, again, it's kind of a custom approach to how you build
those, culture and the communication, regardless of the environment.
Absolutely.
building cultures, in your current role, you get to play a part of scaling.
operations at all of the portfolio uh companies at the Port Coase.
And how do you approach defining culture and values, especially at the early stage
companies?
Because we've been talking a lot about the importance of culture um with hybrid work or
remote work and all of that.
So why do you see the importance of creating culture and values
early on in the journey for a company and how do you influence that across the portfolio
where you are now at Watson?
Yeah, it's really critical to determine and define the culture as early as possible.
And I've had that conversation with lot of CEOs or founders and I say, you know, there's
just a handful of us.
It's probably too early to do that.
And I would say it's never too early to start those conversations.
You know, because when I'm talking with them, we often say that if you don't define your
culture, it will define you as you add people, as things change, like norms are going to
happen.
standards are going to be set.
And if you aren't intentional with that, if you aren't ahead of that and telling that
story, it's going to happen for you.
And so one of the things that, know, one of the mechanisms we have in place that we often
do was, it's what we call our Watson Enterprise belief process.
And so we take your companies through defining what's really important to them and how do
they tell their story?
What's the mission?
What's the vision?
What do you aspire to be?
What are your core values?
brand pillars.
then at the end, you have an output, what is the logo and how does that logo support and
tell that story.
So it's a part of a bigger process that we want to do as early as we can when we partner
with the company.
Because again, I think it's as you again, if you're a team of two or three, and you add
and you hire two or three people, we just doubled your workforce, right.
And so it's only a couple hires, but it's really important then, that what is that
experience for those early hires?
How do you then teach them?
Here's how we make
decisions.
Here's how we hire people, here's how we promote people.
This is what we reward in this organization, not just results, but how did you go about
getting those results?
Here's what we value.
And again, the earlier that you can establish that with early hires, the better you're
going to be.
You're not going to have to fight any of those bad habits to kind of find their way in
because you didn't define it.
so much easier to learn than unlearn.
I loved what you said.
Back to you, Kim.
yeah, absolutely.
And um I think uh just a quick question around the company sizes that you're working with.
So are you going in in the very early stages of each company or are they a little bit
larger or just for our listeners to kind of understand what phase you go in?
I imagine it's.
Yeah, it is.
that's one of the things I love about a family office is that we don't have this thesis
that's really narrowed that says, you know, this stage company, this industry, it's a wide
range.
And 10 years ago, Boston Enterprise started as kind of, know, angel investing in pretty
early stage.
And then we've done everything from 20 year old, you know, kind of family run businesses,
there were a couple hundred employees, and then we double, you know, their headcount in a
couple years with growth, where we found that we were
most effective is maybe a little bit later stage we can really support that growth.
So maybe they're, you know, a handful to 50 employees and we're able to help them go to
100, 200, know, 1000, whatever that may be.
But again, it can really be a wide range.
We've done everything between a we would joke and say an idea and two guys in a truck, you
know, kind of very early stage.
to those first few critical hires.
But lately it's been a little bit more, maybe there's a handful.
Maybe it's a company that's been around 20 years and they have a lot of success and
they're profitable, but they've had a hard time growing from three million in revenue to
10 million.
And we really feel like we're uniquely qualified to say, here are some of the things we've
seen and here's our network, here's how we've seen this grow, here's, we can add value in
other ways besides our dollars.
Love that.
So speaking of companies that you've worked with, so you, I know played a pretty
significant role in building and taking pure cycle technologies public.
um And I'm curious if you could share a little bit about what they do and how in that
process.
Yeah, so PureCycle Technologies is a polypropylene recycling uh technology.
And so it was licensed by Procter & Gamble.
So they actually invented that technology.
They decided while it's similar to what they do, it's not core enough to what they do.
So it was something they had invented, but they weren't in the process of commercializing
that.
So one of our joint ventures called Inventure, what they do is they partner with
multinational corporations, find any of that IP or that technology that they've developed,
and then they become kind of that operational arm of that say, let us take that
technology, then maybe you would be a customer of that.
And so that's what we do with PCT.
And so to say it another way, so let's say you take a plastic water bottle.
And if that plastic water bottle is recycled under traditional methods, you may be able to
turn that into a plastic that you would use into an automotive part or a park bench or
something that maybe had some discoloration, maybe some odor to it.
What this resin technology does is it actually allows you to it back into a water bottle.
So it's a new type of recycling.
Cool.
And so it was basically a green field, no employees, they had a license, we had some
scientists, and we built the plant, we built the company, all the way through taking that
company public.
And so it was a great learning experience.
uh I would say if we had a type thesis that said, okay, you know, this is Greg Watson,
former CEO of Walgreens family office.
So a ton of background in pharmacy, retail, and then we're going to be a uh critical role
in a plastics recycling uh plant.
uh Those two things don't match.
Yeah, so that would not fit the thesis.
But we said, hey, we've had success.
We've figured things out in the past.
We've scaled businesses.
We know how to hire people.
We know how to bring in processes.
We'll figure this out.
And that's exactly what we did.
And so I think that's an example of what makes us really unique and makes it exciting is
it doesn't have to fit a certain thesis.
And then we've done on to do other similar things with, you know, robotics companies or,
you know, central field pharmacy, other businesses where you say maybe a couple hundred
employees and then allow them to grow really quickly with our expertise.
Great, thank you for sharing that.
All right, so I'm gonna ask one more question and then turn it back over to Marilyn.
So your work at Watson, I mean, you've talked about it, it's fascinating, especially, I
think the first time we chatted about PureCycle technologies, I was uh curious more about
that as well.
especially, it's fascinating, especially taking partnership companies from formation to
exit.
So as you're talking about Pure Technologies,
What are some of the pivotal strategies or decisions that contribute to successful exits?
Yeah, well, I think one thing that we've seen...
um
is we want to make sure that we incentivize the team that's really hands on and working in
the business, incentivize them the same way that we're incentivized.
And so I think how you set up compensation, how you set up long-term incentives are really
critical to that success because I think oftentimes and probably rightfully so, PE and
some other investment types can get a bad rap for kind of buying a company, driving a top
line number as fast as possible, getting a higher multiple and then
selling that business in a couple of years.
And it's really important for us to make sure that we're making the right long-term
decisions.
And so what we found is as owners, if the key people in the business are incentivized the
same way that we are, they have equity in the company, they act like an owner because they
are an owner, then we get the right long-term solutions.
And...
you know, again, so maybe that's an exit, maybe that's maybe it's they shouldn't exit and
it's a longer hold because the business, you know, there's some things we still need to
figure out to really unlock some additional, you know, type of business or something we
want to explore.
And so I think really not being short-sighted, making sure it's the right long-term thing
for the business and that we're aligning ourselves to the executives inside the business.
You know, again, our incentives are aligned, I think are really important.
Back to that partnership thing again.
And culture.
can talk.
Yeah, and you can talk about it all day long.
But if when we win, they win.
In the long run, I think that, you know, that speaks volumes, because then we have this,
you know, we care about the same thing.
And we're not trying to just make a quick buck.
We're trying to do the right thing for the business to grow it over time.
Love that.
So we're going to shift gears a little bit.
My next question is about employee engagement and retention.
And if you can speak to some of the challenges and opportunities you've had in that space,
engagement and retention across the portcos, how do they influence?
as we've been speaking about, uh companies capacity for growth and innovation.
And how do you tie those two together for the company's CEO and executive team?
So they see that connection of engagement and retention and to.
Is that a cat?
to make a, yeah, she decided to make a guest appearance.
She's leaving, she's leaving the room now.
Yeah, she's leaving the room now.
So typically if I don't close the door, she just meows at the door.
And so my hope was she would come in and leave quietly, but all but the quietly part.
So I'm sorry, Marilyn, if she stepped on your question there.
good.
But I think you got it.
It's about engagement and retention and how you tie that to really capacity for growth and
innovation because we see that connection.
That's why we do the work we do.
But how do you help CEOs and executive teams see that connection?
Yeah, I think one of the easiest ways to do it is with data, because oftentimes you're
going to be able to speak to those executives or speak to that CFO who sometimes you get
pushed back on some of those things.
one of the biggest things around engagement and employee satisfaction is I think measure
and measure often.
I'm a big proponent of like the Pulse surveys or the ongoing surveys communication
throughout the year versus kind of that the one annual survey maybe that historically a
lot of companies would do.
uh But I think just kind of having that data along the way to look for outliers, to look
for trends, it's really important.
even, and 2D allows you to respond more quickly.
So hey, we just had this announcement, we just had this change.
Okay, in the following weeks, I'm seeing this result.
I'm seeing this department having these results.
How can I then go have conversations?
So again, that's not gonna give you all the answers, but it's gonna maybe let you know
like, hey, maybe something's going on here.
Let me go have some conversations.
Let me inspect.
Let me spend a little more time on the shop floor or whatever the case may be.
So I think that's one really important thing.
The other part of it is I think when you're having scale, when you're driving change,
sometimes there's gonna be some attrition.
some turnover and I think it's to go into a plan and expect that turnover is bad is the
wrong approach.
Now you don't want too much turnover and you don't want turnover and play maybe key roles.
But I think it's important to be honest with yourself that if a company's been doing
something one way for a long time and then you're going to ask them to make a lot of
changes, you're going to ask them to be comfortable or excuse me, uncomfortable over this
next year.
Some people aren't going to make it and that's okay.
And you've just got to be able to prepare for that, have those honest conversations and
even have the conversations with some of those people like, hey, you add a lot of value
here.
I see you're struggling there and maybe they make it and maybe they don't.
ah But I think being honest with yourself, that's really important.
And again, continuing to measure what's working, what's not working, so that you can be
proactive and you can control that narrative versus allowing that to kind of happen to you
and be surprised by it.
And again, tying it back to listening, making sure that if you send something from, ah if
the data show that you've got a pocket, as you said, one department or one geography,
whatever it is, get in there and start talking, listen, not talking, but listening to
people.
So really important, an important piece.
Thank you.
Yeah.
mean, we're all about looking at the data because that's what tells the story and looking
for those trends and what's going on in a company.
it always tells the truth.
And then you do the listening sessions and the kind of qualitative piece that gives you a
little more information.
But the data certainly gives you an indicator of where you might need to look or what's
HR and people roles, we often get accused of kind of, you know, talking about our
feelings, you know, but it's hard to argue with the data, you know, it's, you know, say,
well, I believe this, I'm seeing this, okay, here's the data, and it says that our
employee satisfaction was nine, and now it's seven.
What's happened in that timeframe?
And how do we then address that and have those discussions?
don't know if you find this, but we find marrying up the quantitative and the qualitative.
um We heard someone say, um stories open hearts, but data opens wallets.
Yep, yep.
yeah.
you got to back up what you're asking for with the data But I think it is that Mert that
that marriage between the quantitative and the qualitative The the quantitative, you know,
sometimes we lean a little too heavy, especially in the tech sector We find we can lean a
little too heavy on just just you know, show me the data and the data is so informative
but it's combining that with
with the listening and the stories and that qualitative information that gives you the
nuance around the data and putting those two together.
helps create the solutions that keep growth and innovation happening.
And I think that's the bottom line is what we all want is to see, you know, our name rise
results.
We want to keep results rising.
So we've got to find a way to make the combination work.
Thank you.
Great, great information.
Yeah, and I'll just say one more thing.
I think the engagement survey is so important and good for you for being, you know, an
advocate of poll surveys too, because it can really give you information in between those
annual engagement surveys as well.
And we have a...
Go ahead.
I'm sorry, I was just gonna say, especially with a company with a lot of changes happening
quickly, or a lot of scale, a lot of growth, things that are moving, say, okay, we're
completely different today than we're gonna be six months from now or a year from now.
And so we've gotta really understand how people are feeling about these changes and what
they're going through.
And like you said, Marilyn, you, you one, that data is kind of a starting point.
Let me go have that conversation and listen.
and then you can kind of be fully informed by those conversations you're having as well as
that data that you're getting.
Yeah.
everybody wants to know how their company is doing though in moments of transition.
but with that, yeah, okay.
in the sand only works for so long.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we know that you see the value beyond just the financial investment in your companies,
but what do you think sets Watson Enterprise apart in its mission to promote businesses
doing, I love this, doing good in the world?
We talked about that the first time we chatted about doing good in the
Absolutely.
Yeah, we, uh you know, any investment firm, you know, need to make money to stay in
business, right?
And so that's a part of it.
We want to make good investments.
ah But we also want to, you know, we do well by doing good.
And so how do we make sure the work we're doing is having a positive impact?
And I can definitely think of situations where we evaluate a business and you say, hey, I
think we can make money and maybe there's some good people working in this business, but
at the core of what they're doing is that really aligned with what's important to us and
where we want to spend our time.
And we've said no, simply for that reason alone, even though we think we could have made a
lot of money in a short amount of time.
And so, you know, I think, for example, at the pharmacy automation company that we were
founders in, you know, IA is what that called Innovation Associates.
And we felt like it was really helping to solve one of the big problems in healthcare is
where there's less pharmacists today and there's a shortage of pharmacists.
They're oftentimes really overworked and spend a lot of their time in the stores, counting
pills and filling scripts.
And if you're doing, you know, central fill pharmacy, then a lot of those recurring
monthly prescriptions can be filled in that center like that, melt to homes or melt into
those pharmacies and then allows the pharmacist.
to be more available to the patients.
And so that was something, well, yeah, we've got experience there.
We feel like, this solves a problem.
This is really something that's critical to the healthcare industry in the United States.
And we think this has an impact on it.
So every time we make a decision, we write that press release, we do that needs
assessment, we really try to understand what that opportunity is.
We also want to make sure that it's doing good.
And that's really important to who we are and what we're about.
Love that.
So you have at Watson Enterprise, you have a real focus on uh agility and leveraging um
resources effectively.
How is your strategy of staying lean?
directly impact the companies you invest in?
And does that translate over to the work that you do with them?
And how does it impact how large a team you have that works with the portfolio companies?
Yeah, that was a bit of early on you guys asking about the why or the change in thinking.
I mean, come from larger companies to a small company.
That was something that was different for me because at Watson Enterprise, because
historically most of our resources were full time hires.
People that we went out, we hired, they were on our team full time.
What we learned at Watson Enterprise, I think we want to keep a pretty lean, we say small
but mighty uh team, internal to Watson Enterprise, but then leverage our network and
experts around us that can then go in and be really hands on with some of our partners.
And we've seen that model work really well.
maybe I can come in and I can be the HR person for some period of time.
We've got a marketing group, they can come in and they can do these things.
But then, past the six month, 12 month mark,
I've got this person that I've worked with before, I'm going to plug them in here and they
can provide this resource for you.
And they don't work for us, but they're in our network.
We've worked well together.
We know that we approach problems in a similar fashion.
So I think that's been kind of something that's changed for me compared to what I did
historically, was how do we build that network around us and those resources around us,
but they don't have to be maybe part of, you know, on our payroll or a part of a full-time
member of our team.
or your portfolio company's payroll.
That is actually the way that we work.
I hear your little kitty again.
uh Climbing in.
You know what?
The more the merrier.
We're excited, That's part of this part-time workforce.
One of the great things about working from home, can take care of the cats as I need to,
right?
of the cow.
ah I think that is the new way of working.
And it also is the new way so many people want to work.
There are so many people.
you know, small boutique firms like ours and so many people who want to work when they're
needed, but don't want to be inside of the company.
They don't want that corporate role anymore, but call on me when you need my expertise.
Like our company, we get called on to come in and we don't want to be there for two years.
No, if we're there for two years, we're doing something or five years, we're doing
something wrong.
We're getting you dependent on us.
That is not our job.
Our job is to help in the area where we bring expertise and then to translate that to you
and back back out.
So I think that is a really smart strategy and it does, it keeps you lean, but it also
teaches that model to your portcos.
So I think that that makes good sense.
Yeah.
Well, and to your point, I mean, you're seeing more and more people that are taking their
careers kind of in their own hands and say, you know, have a point in my life for whatever
reason where I want to work 10 hours a week and I've got a lot of great experience and
they're really talented, but I don't want to do this 40 hours right now, whatever stage of
life I'm in.
So yeah, so how companies like us leveraging that and finding that fit for them.
Yep.
and someone who was a CMO doing a marketing strategy that you wouldn't be able to afford.
Or someone like us who does culture work that you wouldn't be able to afford us in-house,
but you don't need us in-house.
So I think it's a brilliant way of modeling that for your clients, your portcos.
Yeah, well, and to that point, too, there's a lot of times where someone needs a resource
for like a project, but they're not prepared to have a full time HR manager, you know,
today, they don't need that they can't afford that.
So how do we then bring in those resources on a project or a temporary basis?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
All right, Josh, we have two more questions for you.
Actually three.
The first one is what's the name of your cat?
Yeah, that's Margo.
Yeah, yeah, I she's exited for now.
So, yeah, trust me.
All right, so the second to last question was, um could you highlight some of the current
projects or companies within Lawson Enterprise portfolio that excite you and reflect the
innovative culture that you're helping to foster?
So what do you got going on now?
yeah, I'm really hands on with a company called Healthcare Horizons right now.
Watson Enterprise and another group purchased Healthcare Horizons in January.
It's a medical claims auditing company.
So I never thought I would be excited about an auditing company.
uh But they have been, yeah, really, yeah, crazy exciting stuff, right?
uh
But they've been in business for 24 years, been extremely successful.
The entire time that they've been in business, they've been under 10 employees.
And so the customer base that they serve, they are the experts, they're great.
And so our job is to say, hey, how do we replicate that and be able to help more people
and take all the great things that you guys have done and building process and...
But maybe it's been really hard to hire people when you're really heads down and the
experts on the team are also the ones trying to lead the team and they're the ones doing
the audits and we say, okay, well, and how can we help with some of that?
And so again, we're super excited where they can go.
We've just been working with them for about nine months now.
ah But yeah, you really excited about the scale and how do you then take that what makes
them so special, how focused they are on customers and say we're going to be able to do
this in a way that doesn't ah compromise quality.
But also maybe we think about the work a little bit differently.
We leverage technology.
We use AI to solve some of these problems, but not skip the human touch and the human
expertise at the end that makes us unique.
And then we just took them through the entire belief process and we defined like, hey,
what have we been historically?
What do we want to be?
What problems can we solve?
What other customers do we want to able to help?
How do we tell that story?
So again, another small but mighty team we think we've partnered up with and really eager
to see where that can go in the coming years.
It's really exciting.
Thanks for sharing.
All right, the last question.
And this is more of a reflective question, but if you could sit down with your younger
self, what would you tell them to hold on to and what would you tell them to let go of?
I would say that one thing that I think I've learned in doing this for 20 years is you
should expect to be uncomfortable and being uncomfortable is good because that means that
you're growing and that you're learning.
But I think it took me a while to figure that out.
I probably wasn't by nature the first one to raise my hand and say, know, picked me?
But I think in my career, as I did that, and I said, okay, yeah, I'll try that.
I have no, you know, I don't know how I'm going to do that.
I've never done that before, but let me go figure it out.
The more rewarding that it was.
And I think it really then set me on this path.
Okay, I can do things I've never done before.
You could say,
I don't have maybe any reason to be working for an investment firm and evaluating what
opportunities that we're saying yes to and no to.
ah by being curious and willing to be uncomfortable, I you continue to challenge yourself
and learn new things and bring more expertise and that experience into those new
opportunities.
So I definitely would say maybe I should have done that sooner.
ah The part about just being willing to let go is I would say that it's okay to make
mistakes and I think you know...
probably early on in my career or throughout my career, you you want to do things right
the first time and you want to get everything exactly right.
But if you're operating in an environment that it's okay to fail, it's okay to make some
mistakes.
You know, I guess there's certain ones, there's kind of what we call one way door and two
way doors, right?
There's some things like if you mess up, you can't go back.
You'll never get that customer back.
But there's a lot of other decisions that we make that we can have 70 % of the information
and we can make the best judgment call.
But if we're wrong, we can go back and we'll fix it.
And I think being able to evaluate those opportunities and knowing that it's okay if we
have to go fast and be bold and we're going to make mistakes along the way, but most of
the time we'll get it right.
So I'll say that's definitely one thing that I've learned.
Try to talk to you about our founders and our portfolio companies as they're going through
that change and that a lot of times of being uncomfortable, you're going to make some
mistakes and that's okay.
We're partners that we're not going to say, no, you messed that up.
You know, we don't want to work with you.
No, we're going to go as fast as we can go.
We want to win together and there's going to be some times we don't get it right and
that's okay.
I love that.
Thanks for sharing.
Marilyn, do you have anything before we close out?
No, I think this has been just a wonderful uh opportunity to learn from you, Josh.
And clearly, the companies that you work with uh benefit from the opportunity to...
learn from your experience and your mistakes and the opportunity to know that they can
make a mistake and in partnership with you grow together.
I learned a lot.
I took some notes, things that I can follow up on in my own work with companies.
And I'm sure that those who are tuning into this podcast will have some uh good takeaways
and nuggets to follow up on.
day.
In addition to as echoed by Margo, I think it's really been a privilege to have this
opportunity to chat with you and look forward to future conversations.
No, yeah, it all my pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much, Josh.
We know you're busy and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
I also took a lot of notes, so I look forward to the next conversation and um thank you
for joining us and bringing Margo along occasionally.
That just makes me, it's life, right?
I mean, remember, right after the pandemic, were like kids showing up and dogs.
It's just life.
And when you've worked fully remotely, my doorbell rang right when we were in the middle
of this.
um
It's life and we appreciate you being here.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay, don't.