Building a Values-Driven Company

Intro 0:06

Welcome to the Growth + Exit podcast where owners of privately held middle market companies talk about founding, scaling and exiting their businesses successfully. Learn how to maximize and monetize your business on your own terms. Let’s get started.

Susan Kearney  0:31

Hi, I’m Susan Kearney, the host of the Growth + Exit podcast where middle market owners, CEOs and experts tell their stories about finding, scaling and sometimes selling or transitioning their businesses. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Newport. Newport’s a team of seasoned business owners and C suite executives who work with CEOs of private companies to help them build more valuable businesses and ex in them on their own terms. You can learn about us at newportllc.com. Today I’m talking with RJ Blake. RJ is the founder and CEO of the Blake Willson Group, which is a CPA firm focused on leveraging technology to improve financial stewardship for federal defense, civilian and intelligence sectors. So this is a government contracting agency that’s trying to do its best to help the nation spend its money as wisely as possible. RJ himself as a CPA, he wore the uniform for a number of years before exiting the military, practicing in Big Four accounting and then founding the Blake Willson Group. So as RJ says to me, he’s gone from boots to the boardroom over the course of his adult life and career. So RJ, welcome. We’re so pleased to have you today.

RJ Blake  1:45

Yeah, thank you so much. It’s certainly an honor and privilege. And think highly of you guys over there in Newport, and appreciate the platform and time to talk

Susan Kearney  1:54

great. So I want to start with a little bit of professional talk here. Tell me, RJ, a little bit about your career. Are there some threads that kind of run through your career that are important to you?

RJ Blake  2:08

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the the threads really have become our values as as an organization. Um, when I think of my professional career, I actually think about it starting in the United States Army, and I had the fortune of being at 10th Mountain, which is a light infantry division, and ended up in combat in deployments that shaped me in ways that kind of define the value sets that we live by here today at Blake Willson Group. And that is not just me. There have been other senior leaders that have kind of added to that, and so we call it sledding, but it’s the biggest there, and no one’s more important than the other, but it’s service to others. You know, leadership, integrity, diversity, dependability and grit. These are things that when we defined and told stories of the best about Blake Willson Group, the best of our people, in our experiences, largely driven by me as the founder to start. It was, it was those values and those threads just consistently drive who we are, what we do. And I think what’s, what’s the best about us as a differentiator, really those values. And I would say that that’s kind of the thread, and then we actually evaluate ourselves against those we hire based on that, that value set and reward people based on that, and how they’ve defined that in their own ways, through a kind of performance metric based,

Susan Kearney  3:41

you know, my experience is that most government contractors, not always, not all of anything in this life, are mission focused. Yes, they view themselves as public servant the nation, not by being direct employees, sure, but in other quite valuable ways. And I know that Willson Group is quite mission oriented,

RJ Blake  4:00

yes, yeah. So absolutely, yeah. I mean, our mission is hardest. I think you mentioned earlier in the introduction, which I appreciate you know, we harness technology to improve financial stewardship for the welfare that civilian sector, right? Defense, DOD and national security that that’s the intelligence community and so, so the way we do that, and you’re exactly right, we have passionate subject matter experts or individuals that, for the most part, come from those sectors. So they have deep domain expertise. We have a former comptroller from Joint Special Operations Command, right? He knows the defense community. He also knows as a comptroller finance and budget. And then we harness technology, we put that together, and that’s how we’re able to really do what we we do. It starts with people that are passionate about the mission, and those missions differ, right? The mission in this. Civilian sector, depending on the agency, is a little bit different, but it’s all at the end of the day, supporting our country. And so it’s former, you know folks, whether they were in civil service or in uniform, we all are based on people that care about service to others in largely in those three three lanes.

Susan Kearney  5:22

Yeah, I really, I respect and admire that about you and about your team a great deal. So how did you come to start Blake Willson Group? You were working in big four county, which is a place to be, yeah, it’s a very different life as an entrepreneur. How’d you come to make that decision? What made you take a leap,

RJ Blake  5:41

go on your own? Yeah, yeah. That’s a great question. I like to you know somewhat the star is sort of aligned, but it wasn’t by mistake, so I think it really traces back to my roots. I can maybe get into that later, about how I became an entrepreneur at a very young age, but really, I had an entrepreneurial spirit. And then I think I had the fortune of having some people in my corner that whispered over the shoulder, kind of as a coach, you know, teacher mentor, while I was in the Big Four, whether they were in other big four industries, or government contracting or just, you know, had they all were entrepreneurs at one point, and they saw that in me and realized that I had leadership experience from the military, in particular in combat where lives matter and things are tough. Um, I had all the tickets from from the government in the cleared space. And so there was sort of the Whisper on the shoulder. Hey, you should consider doing your own thing, going out on your own, hanging a shingle, and and, and then at the same time. You know, being in the Big Four was amazing. It was great. I learned so much. But I think, you know, when you have an entrepreneurial spirit, sometimes that can clash, right? And this is not a finger pointing or mudslinging. A lot of what I’ve been able to do I attribute to my experience in the Big Four it’s more about innovation and moving faster and doing things differently. That doesn’t always work right. And kind of the lot of the entrepreneur journey, and in spirit there and thinking, I can do it better, faster, for less, or maybe I was just very passionate about the warfighter and So, long story short, I was in the intelligence community, and there was an opportunity for me to go to another agency, and I was probably one of Five. So a little bit of luck here in that I was one of five that had the skill sets, the knowledge, the know how to go to that agency, and another big four had one that away from the company I was currently supporting, and they tried to poach me back, and that conversation turned into a subcontract. Long story short, yep. And so the stars align right now. The reason I was given that opportunity was because I had also worked at that big four previous to where I was at the time. And, and I worked hard, you know, and, and I think that came back to to serve me well and and, you know, they gave me the opportunity. I think there was some trust established right with the leaders. They knew, they knew I’d work hard and get the job done, and they knew I cared about the mission, and that’s what they needed, and that agency needed at the time too. So sort of stars aligned and off to the races as a one man band. Certainly everyone else thought I was crazy. And then I had a great thing going in the Big Four, right? I was at Deloitte at the time, and great thing, right? Great future there, you know, and my wife was pregnant with our second on the way, actually ended up in the NICU, and my wife had emergency surgery, the kind of scary times and and I only had $35 to my name at that point. So non traditional path all my savings, I saved in my time seven years in the army, I had spent in getting back on my feet and going back to school, getting the CPA working part time jobs. You know, living expenses in DC are much higher, so I kind of depleted the savings. And thought, yeah, why not start a company, right? And I’ve always lived by this motto of, if not now, when, and if not me, then who? And so it felt right. It lined up, and I had the opportunity from from the other big four to start as a subcontractor and start building the foundation that was in April of 2014 so over 11 years now, I’ve been on that, that grind, and it’s been exciting.

Susan Kearney  9:59

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So when you, when you jumped ship and took that subcontract, did you have a vision for a company, or did you just have a desire to try on your own, and you figured it’d work itself out?

RJ Blake  10:12

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. There was a lot more thought to it. So there was about a year. So I started Blake Willson Group, the LLC to file the paperwork. And really had thought about this strategically, right? I knew I wouldn’t be able to start and win a prime contract, and I would have to start as a subcontractor, but the intent was always to build it to scale, right, to do things better, and I recognize that small businesses are amazing. I think they’re the backbone in this country. They account for a lot of the job growth, and really help this country be strong, you know, which starts economically. But I wanted to, I’m more of a I’m an all on or all off, you know, build it and go big, or don’t do it at all, kind of person. And so I did take some time to think strategically behind, okay, I’m gonna need a handbook and think about HR and get smart on contracts. And so there was a lot of reading and planning and thinking, and I probably attribute that to my time in the military too, right before It’s life and death in combat. But you know for those reasons, you really you value planning and being strategic and bending the ear of those who’ve been there before to ask what you need and what you don’t you realize so many people out there are willing to help if you just ask, right? And building that village and tribe mentality, I was very fortunate, too, with the mentors and and other folks who had been there and done that before to kind of suggest, you know, hey, you’re going to need to think about your infrastructure. And you can’t do it all at once, you know, you got to start from zero. And so how do you get there? And so still, I learned a lot of lessons along the way. After 11 years, goodness, it’s been a roller coaster ride, but, but yeah, from day one it was, you know, build a business that is sustainable, that is good. It’s always. Build something that matters, and they can take care, not just me, but other senior leaders and people that can come and have a place to call their home to not just build something that matters, but but have impact and and do good things. Super small mom and pop shop,

Susan Kearney  12:42

yeah? And it seems like 11 years on, you’ve done a nice job of building a sustainable business with a strong leadership team and a good client base of folks that really appreciate the work that you

RJ Blake  12:53

1. So yeah, I certainly think, think so, and appreciate you saying that, yeah,

Susan Kearney  12:57

yeah. So let’s do talk about some of the zigs and the Zags every everybody’s entrepreneurial journey includes some near death experiences and some mountaintop singing. And, you know, tell me a little bit about some of the the tough times, some of the challenges, some of the transitions the company has been through and handled those.

RJ Blake  13:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I’ll try to start from, from the beginning here, but I mean, just off the top of my head. I mean, in just the last five years, a lot of businesses have, you know, covid, and now you have Doge, but, but kind of from the beginning, the the struggle to start, and something that I always tell new entrepreneurs is to, you know, with the will, things can be done, you just have to plan carefully, be strategic and thoughtful, then you got to work hard. But, you know, the beginning, the issue was, cash is king, cash flow, the cart horse game of, okay, I’m going to start myself, and I’m going to have to bill a ton, right, just as much as I can. From a TNA, T and M standpoint, I had a lot of personal challenges. Unfortunately, my, I come from a background we can get into later, maybe. But my, my older brother was going, was getting incarcerated. Unfortunately, my mom was going to hospice. My brother had three kids. I had a second on the way. There was all these like personal challenges, right, which were very difficult. And I found that’s life, right? All humans struggle, and so balancing that was, that’s just my story that was very difficult, but I believed in the company, and so it was just taxing from the number of hours I had to put into the company in the first five years. Because it was me, right. I get bill on the client site because I couldn’t get a loan. I, you know, neither here nor there, but I didn’t have money in. Didn’t have financial backing, I was able to, you know, what possessed me to ask for this was just thinking, I’m going from a paycheck every two weeks or twice a month to maybe a 60 day to get started. How can I help with my cash flow? So I negotiated net 15 payment terms, billing twice a month as a subcontractor. And I to do that. I shaved my rate down. So I said, Hey, I’ll do How about you know, I’ll come down, I don’t know, five or $6 an hour, if you let me do this, or maybe I did more. I can’t recall at this point, but they worked and we negotiated it. Now, once we grew to five to 10 people on that subcontracting, we renegotiated like, hey, we can’t, we can’t do that anymore. Let’s, let’s go to net 30, but, but that was the beginning. Was just cash, right? And not having a line of credit, getting the cash the that game of, you know, you got a 60 day turn. You got to pay people day one, but then you don’t receive the cash for 60 to 90 days. And being very thoughtful with the terms and conditions on the contract, the subcontracts, and being very frugal with the dollars, right? You know, I see so many companies, and I was close to being a victim of some of the, you know, you gotta, you know, we use QuickBooks for 899, years, you know. And we could have gone to some of these very expensive systems. We’re like, you gotta have this as a gov con. And we, we certainly made some of those mistakes in various ways of thinking when we needed to spend a lot of money to, you know, be a government contractor, but, but you often don’t, that was the challenge in the first five years. You know, I think in this second half of the company’s history, it’s been covid was certainly difficult and scary for various reasons, I think largely the talent pool that’s willing. You know, as a defense and intelligence contractor, you have to go on site, right? And you got to be in skips, and that’s scary, especially the early days, no one knew, and people are dying, and then there’s all these debates, and there’s division and politically. And it just it’s very difficult to try to stay middle of the road and say, these are our values. This is what we live by. All people are welcome at the table. And so it was this challenge, I think, from covid and even into Doge, of reminding ourselves that we’re driven by our set of values and we are a community that respects all walks of life, right? I mean, my background and and, you know, diversity is one of our values. That’s not just people think diversity immediately. Think of race, creed, religion, you know, or these, like kind of talking points that are, that are high, it’s everything is literally everything, you know, sometimes we have a lot of veterans in this space, but it’s diverse ways of thinking and backgrounds. And we have people with degrees that maybe started in history, or where we have school teachers that, I mean, have have had amazing careers, whether they retired, and then kind of, you know, came into this space technologist as well, and so just figuring out how, as we kind of put the we got more mature in our infrastructure, and realized, okay, we we need to have a strategy. We need to, you know, cultivate and harness, you know, an enthusiastic culture and kind of divine define our value set and our mission, and get everybody on the boat rowing in the same direction with that passion that drove us when we were smaller, right? It’s easy when it’s just me and my passion. But how do you get a group of people together and get buy in, right? Because I don’t believe in ruling with an iron fist, or this we were joking earlier, you know, just about, you know, I’m not a dictator here, right? We want to influence. And I think there’s, that’s the difference, right you have. You can lead by power and demands, and some leaders do, and some are you could say effective, I would disagree. I think or you can lead by influence. And I think that. Starts with defining who you are as an organization and saying, Hey, this is our community. This is what we’re about. This is our culture. This is our mission. And here’s how we’re trying to go, here’s where we’re trying to go, and this is how we’re going to get there. And I believe in what gets measured gets done, and so people have to know along the way, Hey, am I succeeding in what I’m doing in my seat on the bus or on the boat, in the direction where we’re we’re rowing, and rewarding that along the way too. And so I would just say that second half was getting that right was not easy. I understood the concepts right, and I understood from my time in the military what good and bad leadership look like, and you have to have followership and you have I wanted to build something that matters and getting the right leaders in place, and that kind of delegating and elevating as we matured and grew, we grew really fast between 2019 and even now, we’re still growing. We’ve been on the ink list seven times in a row. Now, I guess that seventh one’s not official yet, but we’ll be on it, and it’s hard to grow fast. I mean, growth is expensive. Fast growth is very expensive. And I don’t mean that just monetarily. It costs money. You need to make sure your cash is, is, is really good. Your lines of credit are bigger than you think. You need for that fast growth. And then it’s it’s all about the people. I don’t care if you’re building widgets or you’re delivering services, it all boils down to the people and the interactions and making sure, you know, I don’t believe that there’s any bad people. There’s just the right people for your organization. And so for us, the challenge was getting that right and systemizing it in a way that from beginning to end, we could recruit the right people that for us, we would say they are a players right and making sure that was the right culture fit we had, then the right incentives and HR policies and initiatives and programs in place to keep that culture enthusiastic, which from that, I believe innovation is just born. You don’t even have to do anything, it just happens. And then then the clients and the customers love you, and it’s because you’re doing things that matter, and you’re helping them, and then, and then you’re then they’re happy to pay right? And that leads to sustainable profits, which allow you to then fund growth. Because again, and I know you’ve experienced this and seen this, it’s expensive, and so you need those sustainable profits. And so that last half has just been the growing pains, the growing pains of building the right infrastructure and organizational chart with the right people in those seats. And we’re constantly stretching the limits and the boundaries as we grow and double in size again from last year to this year, you know, we might need to play, you know, shift some seats around. Right that seat that was great for that person might not be great anymore. And even for myself, trying to hold myself accountable to say, you know, a CEO of a 50 person company is very different from 100 or 500 right? And the skill sets and the things you need, and the leaders that you need, and just the programs and initiatives and incentives, they change and they expand, and you got to change with it. So just staying Smart and Being flexible and willing to adapt and overcome and just recognize and reach out for help, I think, was what has allowed us to navigate through those growing pains.

Susan Kearney  24:01

Yeah, and so you’re kind of leading to my next question. You talked a lot about the business and the transitions that it went through. I can surely tell that your CPA background came in real handy, absolutely, in doing that, among other things. But I’m also interested in you as a person, as a professional, as a leader, yeah, transitions that you had to go through in your leadership, in your perspectives, as you built the business, and the team got bigger and the customers got bigger and the dollars got bigger. How have you, how have you transformed?

RJ Blake  24:38

Oh, goodness, it’s been, it’s been so much, I mean, I mean, in a couple ways, I because I built, I started the company day one with with a vision to grow. I never had an issue with control and a desire to micromanage, but, but there was a lot. Thought that I had to learn about respecting the complexity, for instance, of my knowledge and know how and experiences, the way that I would see or do something might not be apparent to one of my leaders in the company, whether they had an entrepreneurial spirit like I did or not, and so I had to learn how to slow down sometimes and say, Okay, wait a minute. We need I need to respect the complexity of my decision making skills and either try to systemize it and then coach, teach and mentor or continue to take that on. Right? Not was it Jim Collins talking of like passing the vine, or maybe that’s the EOS model, or one of those books and systems out there, you know, realizing that there was that, that that sort of balance, and so in, I guess, the other piece to this was, you know, I started out, you know, even from from childhood, as sort of a rebel, you know, if someone told me I couldn’t do something, I’d prove them wrong. And there’s something to be said for that mentality, that entrepreneurial spirit, that just we think we can do it better and we’re going to go, set off. And of course, in this hero’s journey to do it better and save the world, or whatever we have, and it leads to some amazing things, whether it’s inventions or all the innovation that’s this occurred in this world, often was driven by that maybe rebel mentality that’s that is not always great. I think once you build to a level of maturity where you you need an HR department, and you have programs you need to put in place and incentivize people, and it’s just going from like a small speed boat where you can kind of zip around, to like a bigger ship Where things take time, and you need to be patient. And so I’m not always the most patient person, but I’ve learned to trust my leaders. I have great people, right? Like, I’m very fortunate. I don’t think by my own doing. I think I’m just fortunate. And you know, had good people, and they attract other good people, and doing something that matters, and getting the people with the same belief structure, obviously, is part of that. But yeah, yeah, just, Am I answering the questions here? Yeah, I got a lot of thoughts, a lot of thoughts within this.

Susan Kearney  27:37

Yeah, that’s kind of a loaded one. Maybe one day we’ll have to have dinner or a drink and continue to dig in. That’s a that’s a rich vein to mine. But let’s move on and talk a little bit about you personally, I’m interested in that. RJ, where were you raised and what? Like? Where you grew up?

RJ Blake  27:54

Yeah, yeah. So I was raised on the Eastern Shore. So you got Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, kind of all touch and come together in that point on the East Coast. You know, looking back, some would say I grew up very disadvantaged, below the line of poverty for for sure. You know, it was tough, but in a lot of ways, looking back, it wasn’t that bad. I think I was fortunate in having so I grew up a single parent mom. There was a lot of, you know, things I learned later in life. You know, both of my my parents had sort of either my dad was an orphan and grew up in very poor Appalachia area, and then, and then, you know, my mother had sort of an orphan spirit as well. Was on her own at a younger age for the most part. But with that, I think what you get is at least from my mom was very resourceful, independent mentality that drove my entrepreneurial spirit at a very young age. So it was this sense of pull yourself up and figure it out like and you can do it. And the rebel mentality in me that I was just born with didn’t listen to the naysayers. So growing up below the line of poverty, there’s a lot of sadness, there’s a lot of alcohol abuse and drugs and all these things that obviously people lean on because times are tough and life’s hard. I thankfully rebelled against that didn’t go in that path and found my entrepreneurial spirit by the age of eight, where they got told the story many times where I was I used to cut across again as a rebel, maybe a juvenile delinquent, part, partially here we cut across this golf course. And these gentlemen, I thought, we’re trying to. At me with the golf ball, and it bounced in the pond, and as I kind of taunted them on the other side, I realized they didn’t get the ball. They went into the pond, they just dropped a new one and kept playing. And I thought, How much does a golf ball cost that you could do that right? We didn’t have money yet. Yes, I would. I would scrounge money from people’s couches and every pay phone I passed when we had those in vending machine, I’d look for change, but realized pretty quickly I couldn’t do the things that my friends were doing, who maybe had an allowance that my mom couldn’t afford to give me. And so that was the first time, you know, long story short, I got to my friend’s house and realized we should look into this pond and see how many golf balls there might be. Maybe we could sell them back to the people that probably put them in there to begin with. And we did. We started to sell them. We cleaned them off, put them in empty egg cartons and sold them back at the clubhouse at the golf course. We got ran off there eventually, because I don’t think you know, they would actually go in there and clean the balls out. We didn’t realize that at first, we had that racket for about six months, and then it was on to other things, right? Selling baseball cards, comic books. EBay came around in the 90s, and it was selling cars. And it just got bigger and bigger until I was 18 and joined the army, but I was hooked in realizing I could provide for myself right, and how to be resourceful and creative and thoughtful. And my mom used to always say, and this still lives with me every single day, is there is opportunity and adversity. You just have to look for it, right? And so when I look back on my life as a young kid that became an entrepreneur, yeah, I didn’t feel this way growing up, necessarily. But, you know, people would say, Oh, you you had an adverse situation, right? Growing up without running water at times in, you know, heat and where was my next meal? You know, I still have live with some of that, that scarcity mentality and in hard times. But I was always looking for not accepting that, what can I do about it? And then realizing, wow, I can, just like, make money as a young kid selling bushels of crabs or golf balls or whatever else. And so it gave me this sense of confidence in a sense of agency and independence that, you know, my future was not predetermined based on how I was born, right? And I could do something about it. And to this day, I’ve, you know, I really care about at risk youth. I was one fortunately lost my brother to that he he did not have the rebel mentality I had, and later passed from from drug overdose and and things like that, which is unfortunate, but there is hope. And I grew up with that certainly. And am proud and feel very fortunate that I had that upbringing, and then, and then, by 18, it was off to the Army, Army Reserves. At first, went into electrical engineering, and then 911, happened and that, that changed the course of my life dramatically. And then I went active duty. Ended up at 10th Mountain, which is a Light Infantry Division, as a scout doing reconnaissance for a larger brigade. And that was just tough, right? You know, losing we lost our commander, a lot of notable events and things that they now teach in West Point, and there’s been movies and books written about our time out there at this point, but I got, then at that point, to learn about who I was as a human on this earth, and really thinking about, you know, what am I going to do with my life if I were to survive, right? And then I did survive, things, some some bumps and bruises. But, you know, it’s interesting, you know, I went been through a lot of near death experiences, unfortunately. And you know, I like to say there, I’ve never met a non believer in a higher power in a foxhole. And so at a time when I thought I was going to die. We were getting overrun. We didn’t even have a base. It was just 17 of US and in these makeshift foxholes, and we were doing observation on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. And I thought for sure I was running low on ammo. This is it going to die? And I made a promise that if I was able to live through that, I would dedicate my life to doing good things. I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t care what it meant. I just I will do it right. And made that promise to God, and then we I live. Have to write. And accounting found me as I was getting out. I ended up getting I went to Officer, to an officer program, and because of some bumps and bruises, they were not going to commission me. So I went to medical discharge route, and was faced with, I thought I was going to do 20 years in the military. Now, now I’m back to, you know, reality of what will I do with my life? And on an accounting I took accounting one on one course, the professor took interest was like, Hey, you’re an accountant. And I thought those were fighting words. How dare you call me an accountant? Aren’t those, like nerds that just sit in the basement somewhere and do stuff, and I had no clue that there’s an entire industry, and that accounting is pretty fun and cool, and I was good at it, and so then that was off, off to the professional career in the Big Four and whatnot. So yeah, that was kind of my upbringing, and a few bumps and bruises along the way, but I think gave me a good perspective to think positively and focus on the things I can control. And again, you know, it’s back to building something that matters, and if not now, then when, and if not me, then who? That was, kind of the theme for joining the military and then building a company that we have today as well.

Susan Kearney  36:21

Thanks for sharing that. That’s an inspirational story. I think another thing it sounds like he got from your upbringing is scrappy, which is always helpful as an entrepreneur, right? You can’t, you can’t have all the things. You just gotta, you know, get some chewing gum and baling wire and somebody with another finger, and you gotta just pull it together. And, yeah,

RJ Blake  36:40

you got to muscle through it sometimes. And yeah, there’s some. I mean, honestly, if I had to do this over again, I don’t think I could. You know, it’s, it’s, there’s no rest for the weary. It is very difficult to start a business. I’m very thankful that we are where we are, and it was not of my effort alone, right? This is not a, this is not a one man band. I started that way, sure, but, but it takes a village, takes a village, for sure. And it is. It is not easy, especially it’s never easy that the challenges just become different. They look different, they are different. Sometimes they get a little scarier as the dollars get bigger, but it is certainly not easy, and you need to have people in your corner and just a good attitude and mentality and no expectations. You’re just, you know, it can’t be about money, right? You can’t, oh, I’m gonna go build a business so I can be a CEO, be rich? Maybe that works. I don’t think it does. And that would be, you know, if that’s how you’re going to going about it, that’s going to be a tough ride.

Susan Kearney  37:55

Yeah, I think you’re right. So last question, any you know, any advice you would give, particularly the first time entrepreneurs, but to all entrepreneurs, you know, what lessons have you learned that you don’t want anybody else to have to learn?

RJ Blake  38:08

If I were to give advice to those that are thinking about starting a company, or are in their earlier journey of starting and not yet, maybe built for scale, if that’s what they’re going for in what we’ve done, you know? I think it’s, it’s really pausing to think about the future. It’s hard to do that when maybe you’re just starting out as a one or two person show, or you have a bright idea and you want to change the world, you know, but I think it’s really important, and something I learned later in life is, you know, understanding what you want in the end, are you going to build for scale? Are you going to have a lifestyle company? There are some financial motivators within that. Obviously you’re taking risk, and there should be a reward and exchange there. But thinking about the future is a good thing, and I think too often, and maybe I did this. I’m thankfully I did it. I’ve done it at this point right in understanding also the capital markets, they’re going to be your competitors at some point or another. And so even if you don’t want to build a company and do M and A and sell or merge, they’re going to be your competitors. Some, some way, shape or form. And so understanding the capital markets and how that works, and then, and then, I think, defining, you know, the basics, what are your values, and what’s your what’s your value as an organization, if we’re going to build a scale and have multiple employees, you know, what are they joining? What? Who are you? What’s your why? What’s your story? What’s your value proposition? You know, I think a lot of times people rush into business and they don’t really think about what is the true value proposition? Why is someone going to. To choose you. Whether you’re a subcontractor or a prime or you build and sell widgets, there’s probably always someone else that also does it. Why would they choose you? In thinking about that, crafting that narrative, and then living and breathing it, you know? And I think we’ve done some amazing things on the technology front to kind of technify our financial management space. We have an entire innovation lab with technologists. We just started an amazing internship program. We have four amazing college aged individuals between undergrad and grad levels that are building some really cool stuff, and that’s all because we does. We determined early on that our value proposition we’re not going to go toe to toe with the big companies and and say, Well, I guess our rates are better. I guess our people are better. I believe they are right. But what is that hook like? What is the true value proposition that’s going to differentiate us and so, knowing that in our space, 80% of the workforce reached retirement age in 2019 I very quickly understood, oh, we’re going to have a workforce labor shortage here. We have got to force multiply through technology enablement. Ai enabled. Technology is our big thing right now and then moving towards that Gen AI to agent. AI is the plan we’ve gotten. We’ve got to do that right? So it’s it’s thinking early on, it’s going to take you while to get there, right that those are big dollar investments that we have today, that I would have never been able to afford five years ago. But I think having that mindset that I sort of maybe developed later than I wish I would have looking back is just what is your value proposition, what is your differentiator? Why would you hire you if you were where you want to be in 10 years from now or five years from now, build to be that and be something that matters. Maybe you’re a low cost provider, okay, then be that, right. Maybe you’re some disruptor or some revolutionary technology. Great. Be that. But know who you are and what you want to be, and then go, be that.

Susan Kearney  42:24

That’s great. I love that answer. So this is the growth and exit podcast I’ve been talking with RJ Blake. He’s a first time entrepreneur and a quite successful one, a co-founder and CEO of the Blake Willson Group board, director, a public servant, a dedicated public servant. We thank you for all of that. RJ, any last thoughts before we say goodbye?

RJ Blake  42:49

No, just appreciate the time. I love business, the entrepreneurial spirit. I always root for small business. I obviously root for America. I think it’s great what you guys are doing over there at Newport as well. I appreciate the encouragement and the support, the advice. yeah, thank you.

Susan Kearney  43:13

Thanks to you too. See you soon.

RJ Blake  43:15

Awesome. Take care.

Outro 43:21

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