Ep. 607 - Optomi Professional Services COO Nick Murphy - Our People Are Our Inventory

0:00There's no way that as a facilities leader, I could have a pulse on the business if I'm not out there in it. I've got my team there clearly, but I can't support them properly if I don't see it and feel it live it myself. Well, I think that there's things when you're in the field with the team members that you pick up that no matter how many conversations or how on top of things your teams are. There are just things that they aren't going to think to share with you. Even going to visit a lot of these facilities, I'm in there for a couple days at a time. I don't live in this communities. I don't spend extended time at periods in there. So as I come in for a couple days, it's very beneficial, but I still rely heavily on my team that lives it. The communication channels that we talked about, the willingness for someone to reach out to me and say, Hey, this just doesn't make sense. We've really loved A, B and C emitting this building because of your ties, culture, retention. The employed experience is hugely important. Welcome to the Second and Command podcast, produced by the COO Alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herald.

1:01In the Second and Command podcast, we talked to top COOs who share the insights, strategies, and tactics that made them the chiefs behind the chief. And now here's your cohost, experienced driven growth strategist, former chief strategy officer, an author of, no one needs another company mug, Lindsey Smith. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Second and Command podcast. My name is Lindsey Smith and I'll be your cohost today's special guest is Nick Murphy. Nick serves as chief operating officer of Optimae Professional Services, a 100% U.S. based technology firm operating through two different brands. Optimae delivers high end IT talent through staffing and team augmentation, while Provalis provides IT and business process consulting implementation and manage services through its centers of excellence located in Marl America before joining Optimae. Nick built his career across investment thinking, retail and technology. He started with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, focusing on consumer and retail and then spent close to a decade at the Home Depot,

2:06progressing through finance, merchandising, e-commerce, and marketing as the strategic partner to the CML. During his time at the Home Depot, he also played an instrumental role in developing what is now known as Orange Apring Media, Home Depot's retail media division. Later, he took on a senior finance position with IBATA, a consumer cashback and performance marketing platform. Nick joined Optimae in 2023 and developed multiple functions, including FPNA, marketing, PR, and enterprise strategy, before being appointed COO in December of 2025. His focus has always been on connecting strategy to execution and building the team that will operate with clarity and purpose. Nick is a graduate at Indiana University and a proud father of two children. Nick, we're so excited to have you on the show. Yeah, absolutely. And you said, be on. Why don't we get started and you can share a little bit with our audience about who you are and what makes Nick Murphy.

3:06Nick Murphy. Yeah, so I was at Murphy, and we're a COO of Optimae Professional Services. So we do IT staffing and solutions under two brands. There's the Optimae brand, which does your prototypical IT contract staffing. And there's a ProValus brand that does managed services, professional services, so outsourced IT solutions. What you think about that one in particular is everything is done 100% onshore from the US, the communities by to 15 to 20,000 individuals. And so that's where we operate. It's a bit of a departure from the usual outsourcing approach that a lot of companies take, but that's what we believe makes us special. And I really love that, Nick. And as I was preparing for our show, I just thought about the impact that that has on the lives of people inside of rural America. But before we get to that, let's talk about who you are and what brought you to this position. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's this kind of a strategy in the staffing space that nobody seeks seeking the staffing. They just kind of find themselves there, and I'm no different.

4:08It's not my background. I didn't come from the human capital space. My background was initially in investment baking. And then I spent about, you know, 10, 11 years, kind of dancing around retail. So it's been a number of years with Home Depot and various roles. Another couple of years at I bought a, which is very retail tangential. And so for me, I really only do the direct to customers, very direct consumer space prior to coming in here. But for me, that I worked with years ago at Home Depot, connected me to Optemy a few years back. And, you know, I initially took the call as a favorite to him, but loved it where I met with and found particularly the mission of the company really compelling. Now, it's not, it's not often that you find a job that really kind of touches both the, the career objectives and also the kind of personal feel good side of everything. And so for me, it was really appealing. It was an opportunity that I went and explored. And your background isn't in typical operations. So to speak, you've had it as pre-oriented exposure to different things. Talk just a little bit about what that looks like.

5:11Because I think in the COO role, so many people are disillusioned and think it's just ops, but there's so much more that goes into that. No doubt, no doubt. So for me, most of my background is kind of oriented around finance. And that's ultimately what I grew up in. I'm a star of Alchistead and Investment Banking, but pretty quickly, after leaving that, well pivoted into what's really largely a strategy background. So kind of incubator concept type of roles and embedded within larger organizations. But even in those roles, it was very project oriented. So everything was very different. You would touch different parts of it. Home Depot was a massive enterprise. You would touch different projects and different parts of the business, some in marketing, some in operations, some in customer data. There's all kinds of different facets that as a finance background also wasn't my specialty. But I have always been a critical thinker. And you know, those new types of projects and opportunities to learn and try something new are really appealing to me. That's where I find the most engagement. And so for me coming into both this industry and into this role, it's no different. Now I actually entered as the director

6:15of FPNA. You know, we didn't have it formalized FPNA practice. And so I brought him to stand that up. But from day one, it's very transparent with the management team that if you were looking for somebody to come in to just be that transactional finance partner, that wasn't going to be. I was going to be more worried, you know, it wasn't going to last that long. I'm happy to help get the table stakes set up. But I've always found the most successful finance partners are ones that are business partners first finance partner second. So did that for about a year and then took on marketing right at the time of the year being here. Again, you know, I've done some marketing strategy projects and kind of marketing tangential work with, you know, rebuilding a loyalty program, staining up some retail media concepts, but not direct marketing. But again, happy to try new challenge and take one on. So did that for about another year before I took it to turn this year over the facilities and field state operation. Again, a new territory for me. So I found that, you know, and I think a lot of COO's would agree that there's very blurred edges as to

7:16what we're at, you know, COO purview would end and what would what wouldn't could be tossed under it. And I think it's interesting how so many different companies utilize different terminology to say the same thing. You're the second in command, whether you're a COO, a CSO, I know that in my former organization, the Board of Directors actually met to figure out what to call me because they didn't want to limit it to operations because to your point, I touched so many different things. And so they decided that chief strategy officer was most appropriate. And so it's interesting to me to hear you talking about all this strategy because that really is the foundation of a good second in command or a good COO as far as I'm concerned. It is. And you know, strategy is probably the the cleanest part of my background. You look at my track record and some of the projects that I've worked on. Ironically enough, we had the same conversations for me, whether it was going to be chief of staff, chief strategy officer to COO. So I can relate. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so you get into this role and you've had numerous iterations even since you've been with the company over the last couple

8:18of years. What does your day to day currently look like right now? So right now, you know, particularly we'll start on the provolestide of the house because a lot of my days really come split half and half one with supporting each brand. But on provolestide of the house, we're we're rapidly growing business. Our mission has really captivated our clients. We're getting a lot of great national media attention over the last call it eight to ten months. And so we are in expansion mode. So I find that a lot of my time today is focused on finding new sites first and move into and partnering with the local cities and states and vocal leadership to help bring our sites to life in these small communities. That's probably the top of what's what my time to always today. You know, same thing from marketing standpoint, as we're getting this additional media attention, we're trying to figure out how to make sure we are being selective with where we want to spend our time and where we want to push for that exposure for us. You know, digital marketing is a part of our strategy, but the PR aspect is vastly more impactful. And so it's a bit of a departure

9:19from what I knew coming from, you know, the direct consumer, as particular retail where that was completely flip-flopped. I think what's interesting is that so many people assume exposure exposure, all of the things put yourself in all the places. But the reality is you can spend less time by being more purposeful in channels that are going to be true to your mission, true to your company, and ultimately reach the right consumers. So I really love the focus on PR rather than the traditional social media marketing, as I'm sure you know, it's saturated. There's a million things everywhere. It is. And to be clear, you know, we play in that space too. It'll be naive of us, not too, but you know, and this really transcends for both of our brands, but we're so focused on being raw and real and shutting exactly who we are. You know, you go into these small, rural communities and it's not always polished around the edges. And so we don't want our messaging to convey that. So if you look in here, our web properties, any of our ad sets, it shows our real people. We do not use stock imagery to the extent that we absolutely can avoid it.

10:22You know, we want to showcase the individuals that are living this every single day in the ultimate way of bringing the mission to life. And even on the optimist side, the same thing applies. We want we want people to know coming in exactly what the life is going to be like. And so it's we're very focused on trying to be intentional and real and organic with who we are. And we're also not pursuing any sort of paid placements outside of traditional degree, like from a PR aspect, we're focusing singularly on earned and organic. And you had a really big win. Why don't you talk to us about what that looked like and what your role was? You know, yeah, we did. So back last October, we had a feature story in the Wall Street Journal all around us bringing jobs back to the U.S. that historically been offshore. And so they spent about two days in our telequa Oklahoma site. And they spent time on our site. They spent time when the community talking to local businesses, the coffee shop down the street that is now does a delivery service because of the volume that we've brought the bar across the street that we do a tremendous amount with when we have, you know, events and clients in town. And that was

11:24really just an incredible win for us, not necessarily even from a business standpoint, but a validation in those communities of everything that they stand for and that they believe in and putting, you know, bringing to light the mission that we have been touting since we started. You know, it was seeing the reporter walk around the site and you can just watch all of the agents that live there, walk past the conference room two or three times and they're almost levitating to see this kind of attention exposure being brought to their small town. What is it like when you're able to impact people in a way that literally changes their life? It's incredibly rewarding. You know, we like to say that we're a company of first and you know, you can go to our YouTube page, you can go to our LinkedIn page and you can see countless stories and testimonials for individuals, but you know, we'll take clients around and and community leaders for prospect cities around our sites and say, pick somebody, pick somebody out of the crowd, have them tell their story. It does not matter who you pick. Every one of them is a pretty compelling message that sells

12:28our mission better than we ever could. You know, which would be people say, this is the first time I've had a job inside. First time I've had full benefits. First time I available by a car. I got my first apartment. I bought my first home and it's time and time and time again. And so from our standpoint, that is immensely rewarding. It feels like something you almost have to have on a wall or a banner wherever you're talking to. Right, all of their firsts and yeah, yeah. Take that with your capillaries. I mean, we do a lot of sharing those stories because we want it, we want it to be there's no better validation than seeing someone in your company that she'd known, experience that kind of opportunity and take advantage of it. You know, we don't, we don't hand these things out to our to our teams that are in these communities. It is, it is around, we give them the opportunity and we find it in rural America. There's a tremendous amount of on top talent and capability. The juice is an opportunity. And so by springing it there, we're giving them what they have so lacked for a long time. And it's just a chance, just a chance to come and improve themselves. We'll provide the training. You provide the

13:32the will and the grit and the intention and we'll make sure that we're successful together. And why don't you talk to us a little bit about what it looks like when you go into one of these new rural areas? What are you looking for? What are you bringing? And then how do you source the teams that you put together? Yep. So when we go in, we've got a pretty prescriptive process of what to look for in a community. If we just boil it down, it's most simple. We won't want to be too far, or too close, excuse me, to a major metro area because the worst thing that we can do is come to these rural communities, train up these individuals and they get poached by a metro center that's an hour, hour and a half away. So rather than being additive, we start gutting the community. So, geographical proximity is first. We're looking for communities of five to 20,000 giver take with the commutable population of about 50,000. Oh, we know there's a workforce to be had. We don't want to do is come in and overlay tax an entire community of workforce. We don't understand other industries in the town that we look for communities that maybe had a lumber bill that has since closed.

14:37The manufacturing plant that has since closed, where we know there is a need and a want for us to be there to provide the opportunity is either deffer resistive or or have since departed. When we come in, we'll start laying, you know, the the training and the recruitment groundwork before days before the doors even open. We'll partner with local Keith or 12 leadership, Lions Club, Rotary Club, Church Groups, what have you. Just to start to get the word out to say who we are, here's why we're coming. As we're working with local economic development, we are very transparent. We want everybody in the community to know that we're coming, we're going to be excited about it because that builds that groundswell of of our crudeable base and desire once we ultimately do over our doors. So you right now are taking care of facilities, correct? Yes. So how do you find the facilities in these rural communities? I would imagine that they're few and far between. They are and that is being one of the biggest challenges in getting into a community. We actually have a very close partnership with every local community

15:41that we go to and we are hyper specific about. We must be in the Main Street corridor. We have no interest being five miles outside of town next to the Walmart and an office complex because it doesn't then support the rural revitalization mission that is core to what is it we're trying to do. For us, the best thing in the world is we come into a desolate Main Street. We put our center of excellence downtown. We build it up. We start to employ some individuals. You start to see a coffee shop pop up next door, a dry cleaner, two doors down, a piece of parlor across the street. What have you to us? That is an absolute success. Well, you're not worried just about yourself or your product. You're worried about your team members and the community in which they live and the people around them that also are being able to be successful because of what you're bringing. That's right. We only have to be. You know, you think about going to these rural communities. If we're not really intentional about how we take care of our people, there's not hundreds and thousands of people that then follow them to replace them. We can't just churn through these people.

16:44Nor do we want to do that just from an employment reputation standpoint. But for us, the word of mouth and reputation goes a long way very quickly in rural America. Everybody's got a mother, brother, sister, cousin, one, have you that also lives in that community. And then they've got their, their points of contact through the local baseball leagues, what have you. So we want to make sure that we're taking care of people. That way they can take care of their people. And then the community and in itself thrives. It would be really fun for you to explore statistically. How many lives you actually impacted, right? By just like looking at all these communities, how many locations of Provella's are there today? We have nine sites today currently for end development. And we expect to grow at a pretty similar clip. We have pre-Lofty Eurothane missions. And we're finding that, especially after some of the publicity we've had between Wall Street Journal and Fox Business and News Nation and News Week, that we're getting a ton of inbound requests for information and visitation from other communities across the country. So we

17:50we think we've only scratched the surface. That's incredible. And so when you had the opportunity to be featured in all of these publications, what was the catalyst that started that? Was it somebody that reached out to you? Were you reached out to them or something else? Yeah. So you know, mentioned the PR was really kind of a central tenant to our draw marketing strategy. So we engaged a PR for about 15 months ago, give it a take. And it was just for Pitch Air message. We needed some added muscle to get our story out there. And thankfully for us, there was interest from our reporter with Wall Street Journal. And then once she had time to meet us, kind of prospect, what if the story was real? Have us was really there. She was interested. She took a publication from that. It just took off. And on in the span of about four weeks, we had had Wall Street Fox Business and News Nation all visit a couple of sites on it or to do similar stories with different angles, but continuing the the coverage of the mission. One thing that's really critical for businesses is when they choose partners, such as your PR firm, that you have to make

18:51sure that they're really aligned. Was there a certain vetting process you went through to make the decision before you brought them on board? There was. I would say the process itself was no different than I think most would go through. But once we found our partners, you know, they really resonate with us. They had done other sort of, you know, mutually beneficial client arrangements where the client would benefit in the community that the client operated and would benefit. So they weren't, you know, it wasn't the concept of our mission wasn't completely needed to them, although our execution for it was. But there's a smaller group. You know, we met with a number of the major players in the PR space. And it was a mixed bag of kind of what the team structure would look like at the level of attention and care we thought we would get. But we went met the group that we're all intimate with now. They immediately understood what we wanted to do. They immediately understood the heart of our mission. And then they pretty quickly were able to rearticulate our story back to us as if we were telling ourselves which to us was a validation that they were the right partners to move forward with. Absolutely. Because everybody can say your story, but everybody can't relay your

19:55message. And I think that that's a that's a really important thing. So thinking about you. Go ahead. No, no, I'm sorry. No, no, they do it great. And they've they've helped us figure out how to also more succinctly tell our story and make sure that, you know, it's easy for us to get really excited. I'm sure you can hear me here in my voice around everything that is a part of what we do for our mission. You know, I think what's a little bit unique that I briefly touched on earlier is we we pay 100% of the benefits for all of our agents in these communities, 100%. And for most, that is a completely new and foreign concept to them. And so for us, we'll start saying, we do this and we do this and here's what our community is benefit. And here's where people benefit. So we get excited and they help us, you know, really refine what that message needs to be. Oh, back a little bit. Save a little bit. That's right. That's right. So if you look at the organization with the two different brands and you're the COO overseeing both of them, I'm sure at some time at some point it can feel like a juggling. How do you handle prioritizing not just inside of an organization,

20:59but between brands on a daily basis? Very question. You know, it is, you know, both brands functionally, they're very different where our our Optemy brand operates with contract IT staffing and other talent-based solutions, but they operate in major metro areas. And we've got match. We've got offices, primary offices, three major metro areas and a couple smaller offices as well. And you know, the big other part outside of the zone, rule America. So culturally, there's differences from a business standpoint, there's differences. But at the absolute core, the mission spans both. You know, we are hyper focused on supporting our communities. The communities here look a little different than they might in rule America, but at their core, they're one in the which helps as we as we build the company, we bridge these bands closer and closer together, there are many more commonalities that exist between the two than they may appear from the service. We're reaching to similar clients, we're reaching to similar levels of buyers,

22:00we're co-selling together. If you need the totality of a managed service with some staff augmentation alongside of it. And so it is difficult to balance between the two, but as we grow as an organization, they're moving closer together than further apart, which ironically not actually makes my job easier. Absolutely. I love that the mission is the same. I really didn't consider that because most businesses think their mission is, I'm going to provide the best IT services, the best staffing services. But when the mission is to support the communities, the product almost doesn't matter because you're going to operate at the core the same way. That's right. And you know, for us on both sides, it becomes a very easy concept to relate to, because for us we think about community in a number of different ways. You have your physical community that you reside in, you've got your work community of peers, you've got your familial community, you may have your church community, you may have your, you know, local feedback community. What have you? There's a number of different ways that someone can apply the community concept to their jobs. And they do, you know, we are ultimately in the employment

23:05business. Our contractors that we deploy on the staffing side are on our payroll. And so we're giving them jobs and opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have found or they wouldn't have had. And so, you know, a lot of managed services, I would take in these careers and opportunities rural America where they never exist. And so for us, it's, it's very easy to get behind that. We are quite literally putting people to work. AI is not about chasing the latest tools. It's about driving real business results. That's why we partner with Codray AI. They help leadership teams build and execute AI strategies that increase efficiency, profitability, and revenue. Check them out at CodrayAI.com. Across the span of everything that we do. What does the career path look like for somebody inside of your organization? Yeah, I can go a number of different ways. You know, the most, the most

24:06obvious one is on the man's service side. If you come in as an entry-level agent, you can continue up the billable side where you start as an individual agent. You become a team leader. You progress at the leadership track. At any point, you could pivot over into a shared services role. We tried to be very intangible across the whole company to promote from within, give opportunities to move laterally internally to get a broader set of experiences. You know, we found a lot of time and effort into finding our people. It's what we want to do. Everything you can to keep them, rather than give them these very prescriptive career paths or put them in positions where there is no path. How many team members are there today between the two brands? Between the two brands is probably around 3,500 give or take between the two. And so you certainly aren't directly responsible for all 3,500 of them. How many people are on your immediate team? My immediate team there are right about 20. 20 people. And how do you do juggling

25:11that? I mean, I feel like 20 is a lot of people to manage. So a lot of your time must be spent in managing. It is no question. And you know, you think about with the ownership of facilities and the real estate portfolio. It's not only people, but it's geographic disbursement. We've got we've got admins across every single one of our sites. We've got facilities, maintenance operations across all of the sites. And then the extended network of vendors that our maintenance team is working with. So it becomes a lot and it's, you know, spread fairly thin. But to me, it's really exciting. You know, I'm inching closer and closer and closer to the operations of the true operations of the business with as my career is progressed here. And that's something that's always been really interesting to me. I'm a natural curious person. I like to see how things take, what makes them tick. And to me, seeing the air workings of how these facilities come together from developing the capital stack, from physically putting them together, from then how they operate the feedback of the teams once they start to reside in the building for a little while. To me, that's really

26:13rewarding. Let's talk about feedback. How does that get implemented inside of an organization of your size? You know, it is a large organization, but, you know, a lot of the, a lot of those individuals are contract consultants, whether they're deployed on clients, they're ultimately our employees. And then double-able agents on the promulgis side. And so the actual shared services operation and the internal team was relatively small with respect to the size of the company. And we operate even smaller than that. So it's a, there's truly an open door policy. I'll have people pop by my office. I think you're in time to ask a question. And we believe in the fastest path of communication to get answered, rather than retaking something down a couple steps into my team, moving over to the team that we did info from, moving it up that team and then back down the over. It's just, you know, it's a nonsense school approach that is this kind of corporate glut that gets in the way of productivity. And so for us, communication's fast, but to do that, you have to have the years that are willing to have those open doors. You have a conversation with anybody who's got a good idea.

27:18And, you know, I'd like to say that I'd be that well, but I can tell you, on a quivically the rest of my peers in the company do. When you're spread out in several geographical locations as you are, how often do you get to be face to face with your team members and with the, the split agent? And much as I can, you know, because being close to the business is really exciting to me, I try to go, you know, as often as I can, I obviously sit in one of our opting offices, which I spend as much time on the road with the provolous teams as I can, there's no way that as a facilities leader, I could have a pulse on the business if I'm not out there in it. And that includes, you know, I've got my team there clearly, but I can't, I can't support them properly if I don't see it and feel it, live it myself. Well, I think that there's things when you're in the field with the team members that you pick up that no matter how many conversations or how on top of things your teams are, they're just things that they aren't going to think to share with you, right? That's right. That's right. And, you know, the reality is,

28:24even going to visit a lot of these facilities, I'm in there for a couple days at a time. I don't live in this communities. I don't spend extended time at periods in there. So as I come in for a couple days, it's very beneficial, but I still rely heavily on my team that lives it. And, you know, the communication channels that we talked about, the willingness for someone to reach out to me and say, Hey, you know, this just doesn't make sense. We've really loved A, B and C, I'm editing this building because of, you know, to us, culture, retention, you know, the employee experience is hugely important. I think that employee experience is often overlooked as companies are focused on the transactions and the profits and the things that keep the company's fueling. So I really love when someone talks to me about that employee experience and they mean it because it really does make a difference. We do. We do. We do. And we have to make it. You know, we don't we don't have physical inventory as retailers do. We don't have a complex supply chain network. Our people are inventory. And, you know, any good retailer worth a salt is going to take

29:27an inscare, but it's inventory and understand what's working, what's not working, do editing that can to to make that experience in the process better and we're no different. Right. So we need to make sure that for us it's exacerbated because they are our people because they are core to the mission on an every aspect of our business, they're core to what we aim to achieve. And so it has to be taught by my friends center. What would you say has been the most exciting moment in your career today? For me, no question. It was the media coverage that that Probalis got at the last fall, you know, just just being there. It was it was it was a great PR way, no question about it, but so much more than that, it was seeing the reaction of the agents that live in those communities to just to see them just glowing with the kind of national media attention that we got. You know, we had we walked the reporter down to lift coffee, two doors down from our telecom, local home office. And we're sitting there with the manager, the reporter is

30:28interviewing him and one of his braces comes up and springing coffee to the groups they're chatting and he stopped and said, do you know this woman is this woman's here from the Wall Street Journal and you know this reporter turning ghost or the the the the breeze to turn ghost wise, you're so excited she couldn't contain yourself and so it was just to me to those little inconsequential moments are what make that so validating. It seems like you know inconsequential of a surface, but you know that is stuck with me I can picture it vividly and that was you know one of five or six comparable reactions as we walk in through the community is in met with our our local collegiate partner there as they met with the ballroom there across the street was just time and time again seeing the validation of the community for the work that they put in alongside of us was was so rewarding. So how does this company even start? What was the initial vision of the founder? Yeah so so Optemy was founded initially the company is you know Optemy is

31:30into company name it was started initially as a staffing company but you know it started in 2012 it started grew up for several years before the concept of provolice came about. So our leadership at the time knew they wanted to do more you know we we have made a mission first company for a long time but they knew that there was more that we could do and a more tangible impact that we could have even outside of the you know the metro communities that were in and so there was a lot of services background in the company at a leadership level some of it was what experience with all short work and so we knew like okay this better way to build this mouse trap and so the idea of provolice were born it was tested out in our first site in Bruton Alabama so provolice gets started in 2017 you know we're really in our our infancy in many ways but as soon as we got the first part as soon as we got burden in Alabama to believe in the mission and partner with us and make this thing a reality it took off from there. Talk to us a little

32:33bit about the relationship you have with your CEO. Yeah so we were great together where you know we talked frequently you have a close relationship actually he was personally a big reason why I opted to come to the company you know he he saw a greender vision for what my role at the time could be you know even outside of just me that's not you know testament to myself necessarily as like he knew that there was more that this role could offer and they had to find the right candidate to fill it and so you know I'll give him all the credit in the world as well as the other leadership that was here when I first started to you know lip with their might over their mouth is they really really believed that we needed a business partner in that role and so we got off from for the day one on on you know the best path like he challenges me as he does the rest of his team you know that he like any other good CEO probably suffer from some executive amnesia where they'll have one idea you know a couple weeks later the ideal pivot a little bit but I

33:34actually really appreciate that because it gives me a ton of comfort that he is constantly thinking much further out than any of the rest of us are really equipped to be on any given day it's his job he does it well he has to have some of these abstract ideas that he then tasked myself or some of my peers up with figuring out how viable they are and then ultimately taking to execution I love the term executive amnesia I've never heard that but I'm pretty confident I know for any of people who suffer from that sometimes I might suffer from myself to yeah I'll call it not if he likes that term but you know I look Chuck has been tasked to get think I think the world of him how do you can you make it to him when he brings an idea to you that you're like this isn't going to work what does that look like we got a really open communication he what I think he appreciates is I'm willing to challenge an idea you know I know if he firmly believes and that we'll spend some time understanding why and we'll kind of have that academic discussion there've been plenty of

34:37instances where we flat out disagree and he doesn't have problem with that I don't have a problem with that and that's what makes it really healthy that's what makes us able to evaluate things that are pretty sticky sometimes or that are that are not fully vetted if it do it effectively how do you get by in an organization if he has an idea and brings it to you and you're like yes this makes sense how does that then cascade down so you know my personal approach is to start socializing as much as I can with the people that will be impacted affected would have to subsequently buy in you know how long the flow would go and I really try to do that out of both respect and understanding because they ultimately look at as the COL and if Chuck is the CEO we've got ideas we'll build them will ultimately take them out to the organization but we're not the ones that that live these decisions every day and so you know I really try to be very intense with both with my team and any

35:39of my business partners to understand very clearly what goes on in their world what what downstream implications some of my decisions or some of my concepts or ideas might have and work through it with them you know I realize that every decision isn't necessarily going to be popular but I do think it can give them comfort if they know that I understand what affects them what their jobs look like particularly with my team where their pension points are where they get hung up with just slow processes what have you that's you know I'd love to think that that's an organic and original thought for me but I've had really good managers in the past that I saw that firsthand and that gave me a lot of comfort knowing that they had my whether or not I grew the decision I at least had kept it knowing that they understood how I'd be impacted by it have you ever had a decision for you know new product and new service a new something that you've rolled out and then realized quickly or before it finishes roll out that this isn't the right decision and we need to pivot thankfully nothing that's been just outright throwing decision I think we've

36:44definitely had some instances where either the the approach wasn't the right one or the timeline was unrealistic and so we've had to there's been a lot of stop-stars no question about it but you know we've we've done our best to really evaluate and think as comprehensively around a new decision as we can you know whether that's getting into a new technology platform partnership or figuring out the best way to take that to market how to ultimately penetrate that in market there's there's certainly been missed steps along the way but again I really appreciate the nimbleness of this organization to say okay we may have misfired on this approach let's peel it back let's take a different tactic rather than to continue down an untidled path or to just throw in the towel like that's I think it's that's I think we found a really nice healthy balance there that's certainly important and it's great for the teams to know that you're not so hooked to the the idea that you're gonna just keep pushing without realizing there's there needs a couple of speed bumps in here before we can actually get to the end yeah and thankfully you know like I'm surrounded by a bunch

37:50of all stars across both brands there's a ton of experience industry experience you know related industry experience on both side of the house that there's very few things that any of us are seeing namely them for the first time and I rely on them a lot you know I I as a COO to your point I you don't have some components of where traditional COO responsibility will be classified as operations in some of the art and there's plenty of things that are otherwise classified as operations that are outside of my direct purge you but for my business partner was that you know those aspects we were really both together and I rely very heavily on their expertise and ultimately they're the ones that live in the facility decisions they might see makes on a daily basis and so you know having that support network and that trust is invaluable what cadence of meetings do you have with your direct team weekly and individually yeah yeah with my with my two my two primary leaders weekly with the larger team a little more a little more

38:54infrequently than weekly probably every couple weeks I would say I say probably because there's a lot of non-scheduled ad hoc calls that come up and I would much rather that's kind of how I want my team and myself to operate like if there's a decision that needs to be made let's just get together let's just make it I don't want to spend a much of time swapping emails waiting on the delivery of his wife let's just get to the heart of it let's get it done that's my favorite too I really enjoyed just making the decisions and not having things needing to be in a formal box of a meeting to make a decision I think that that allowed progress to happen faster and it kept things from becoming bottlenecked it does and I probably have both a blessing and a curse of not being you know a subject matter expert in marketing or facilities you know or some of the other the other aspects of my domain but you know the blessing in a sense that I've got a great team underneath me and so I I rely on them and they've done great so far the curse in the sense that I have to

39:56rely on them right and but I think that's a healthy position for me to be and if I'm ultimately the one most equipped to do an exercise or make a decision then we're probably not in a great place as an organization because that means I haven't staffed up my team appropriately or that we've got resources in this place or what have you okay I if I at my level in the bottleneck in the process then we've got a busted process you've experienced a lot of different departments and domains over your career what would you say specifically has been the most interesting for you to learn for me it's probably been this facilities side I mean you know if you think about marketing everybody everybody has had some experience with it whether you've worked in marketing you can substitute you understand what it is to be marketed to or to try to get your message across to someone else you know I think my team will tell you yeah everybody thinks they're an expert in marketing but the facilities aspect was completely new to me and a uniqueness of our

41:02model particularly what really on the provolicide is the partnership that we get locally from our sitting in state partners and having to you know partners local economic development organizations partnered directly with the city the community at the state that was a completely new uncharted path for me and that's been it's been a really good experience it's a ton that I've learned I rely very heavily on my team that has an economic development background but it's been interesting it's been interesting to see particularly to see the excitement that these communities get well where we go in and we know we're going to stay in up a new side and they know they're on the back into this project what that can and we'll ultimately do to their to their communities where are up to me and provolous headed what's next hopefully up we now we you know we there's there's really I think there's a couple of ways of momentum that we're really writing strongly on right now you know everyone depending on you ask I think Clea would tell you that AI is changing the world for

42:07the better or it's all doom and clue you know for us on that particularly on on the tunnel solution side it's a it's a completely new growth vector for us like there's the amount of interest in new projects that companies are able to take on and we can ultimately provide the talent for is hugely exciting and we we think it's important that we continue to be able to offer the shoe an element of what this tool can unlock we think it's going to be tremendous the adivance versus kind of the negative connotation that I think you know certain people in the marketplace might have on the provolous side is no different you know we we're using AI to train and upskill and equip our people and get us to points of information that we would never been able to get to in the past with any sort of speed you know we've got we're building any given week a new tool platform training training solution to make our people more and more effective at what they do and you know

43:07increase their their career rate their career trajectory they're upskilling so we think it we actually think it's you know truthfully supported of both our mission as well as the business which is a great place to be I was sitting with the business partner the other day and our conversation was about this exact thing and we were talking about how AI is the data it can give you information that it would take you months and months and months together very quickly but that data can operate without the right prompts and without the right human being behind it manipulating and then utilizing it to make decisions that move forward and so I occur with you AI is a support that can give us greater capacity because we've got more information that there are fingertips that we ever have that's right and look you know ultimately we are in you know the IT Services and Solutions space since we deal with some very sensitive systems and workflows and

44:08processes and the tooling is critically important the the technology to be immensely supportive of what we're trying to do but you need that oversight you need that nuanced understanding particularly some of the sensitive projects it'll work flows that we ultimately do for our clients so for us we see it as we see it as a tremendous growth boost that we really can only scratch the surface of absolutely and is that something that you're training your teams on or how do you know that they're utilizing it in the way that aligns with your missions we try to you know we're very intentional about when and how and where we want to use it we don't want to just send it out of the ether unfettered with also without any guidance you know again we're working with some pretty sensitive workflows and data and information and processes and access to more clients and so we need to be told to do with this so for us we're really focused on you know tooling we're appropriately for client engagements where it makes people more efficient more intelligent more accurate more

45:11capable prior to that we went we were trying to use it to get really sharp around okay let's let's as quickly as we can find the best that communities were want to expand to let's then use that to properly evaluate the candidates that are coming in that way they know what they're getting themselves into we know what we're getting from them and it ultimately is a match for everybody and then once we have our folks internally let's use it to give them the best training that possibly can you know we've got role-play scenario builders where we can give our agents reveal examples of what a production environment would look like before they ever step forward on their floor that you can never get just from doing peer-to-peer role-play you're never going to be as tough on someone as an NC client or an NC business partner is going to be on the other end in that line so it's pretty demonstrative what lives can look like and then we go feedback you know we're monitoring what the signals are that that defines success what a successful person looks like what are the commonalities that we get extract from that sort of better evaluating

46:13talent from it and that we're pivoting our training to to course direct those individuals more towards that path of success when you were a young kid I'm certain you never said I'm going to grow up and be a CLO why were your asses not it's actually really funny you asked that and I think my I think my mom would probably have a stroke if she heard me say this on this podcast but I was a kid I wanted to grow up on what would be a school bus driver I was we were talking especially with back to school coming up we were talking about how children have this imagination but yet their curvy of what's possible while infinite is also small you can be a princess you can be a superhero you can be a teacher you can be a school bus driver a police officer and maybe an MBA player but like that's all that exists in the world and they think they can do all of those things so you're you're perfectly spot on and in line I'm glad you're not a school bus driver because you're doing great things in this world but I'm sure you're

47:16impacting I think it's a little bus drivers in your communities I am yeah no question you know it's it's funny that you're asked what did I think I was going to be as a kid you know I don't know I'm going to be in the next five years five ten years part of this I didn't know what I was going to be as demonstrated by kind of the the curvature of my career arc but it's been really exciting and I think for me as just a naturally curious person I wouldn't have it any other way well keep being curious keep changing rural communities and we can't wait to see what happens next for Optima Improvallis well thanks so much Lizzie I appreciate it I appreciate you being on the show today thanks Nick you've been listening to Second and Command brought to you by COO Alliance founder Cameron Harald if you enjoyed this episode please be sure to like share and subscribe to us on Apple podcasts Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms for more best practices from industry leading COOs visit COOaliance.com all right listen up if you're the COO or a second and command leading a company doing

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