Taking your business to the next level with Vistage

I joined Vistage because I wanted my role within the organization to change from a tactical and day-to-day operational type person to more of a strategic contributor to the company who could set the direction of the business. I wanted to move from being an employee of the company to an owner of the company and, as the owner, be able to establish the culture of the business and the standards of the company. I wanted all the people in the organization to be able to take ownership of that process and to be accountable and responsible for all parts of the business, not just one section of the business. 

So that’s why I wanted to get into Vistage, because I knew that I didn’t have any experience doing that. Being in a peer group of other business owners who have had to do those things, who have had to take ownership of all aspects of the business and be accountable for everything within the organization, was important to me so that I could learn from them and establish the right standards and to develop the right structure and the right culture of the company so that our business would be successful.

When I started with Vistage, our business was very different from what it is today. We were converting our business into more of a service-based organization, and it required us to build a stronger culture, have more controls and processes in place, and make big investments in our company to create a business where people wanted to come to work for us.

Through my experience with Vistage, I was able to learn from industry leaders who come in and meet once a month and talk to you about what the best-in-class companies do in the way of building a strong culture, what the best companies do to help create better employee engagement, what the best companies do to help with organized benefit plans and attract the right employees.

Vistage has helped me develop as a leader because it’s really given me a peer group to bounce ideas off of about the things that I do as the president of the company versus the things that I could do as the president of the company.

In order to grow your business, you have to learn that your growth and the success of your company will be very limited unless you learn how to delegate and learn how to do things that only you can do as they relate to the company versus things that other people can do. Vistage helped me be a better leader in that I’ve been able to learn when to delegate and when to get involved. I have a peer group that helps me with those decisions by processing complex issues that come up within the business, learning from other people within our group and the business community, and seeing what they’ve done to be successful so that I can learn from their experience.

 In Vistage the role of the chair is to create an accountability structure for the head of the company. Often, in our business, we do a good job of creating goals and responsibilities, but there’s not always that personal development, or personal developmental goal that we have as business leaders. So the role of the chair, I think, is to really hold us accountable to our own personal goals, the goals that we have with the company—the higher level goals of becoming a better leader, to be able to learn more from other people, and to grow in our careers versus just grow the business.

I also think the relationships that you develop with Vistage help in a lot of different areas. There are social relationships. You make friends with people who are business owners in the community that you operate and that you support. I think it’s important to have those relationships at the executive level. I think it helps us with the ability to communicate at a level that’s different than a day-to-day operational level. It helps us be able to communicate with other people who are thinking more strategically within their business. Those relationships are important because you meet other visionary leaders, you meet other people with really big ideas that you can learn from, and you can also share your big ideas. That’s one of the things that, over the last 10 years, I think has been beneficial to me.

If you are working in a business, and you want to be able to do more for that company, or you want to be able to do more with your career, or you have ambitions or aspirations to own your own business someday but don’t have a lot of experience with it, I think Vistage is important because it puts you in a group of people that are already doing that. Most of them are running businesses. Most of them are growing their businesses and thinking strategically. It gives you a chance to be in a group like that, to ask questions, to learn from them, and to hear from speakers who come in as industry experts. I think that it is a very valuable aspect of being in Vistage and helps you grow and learn your skillset to reinvest in your own knowledge and experiences.

Join a peer group

In a rapidly changing world, you need a trusted group of non-competing CEOs and business leaders to be an “inner circle” that challenges and supports you to lead with confidence.