How to Become a Transformational Leader

Episode 894: How to Become a Transformational Leader, with Eric Thurston

How to become a transformational leader? Time to listen to Eric Thurston and start your journey on how to become a transformational leader.

Eric Thurston has enabled many of the world’s leading organizations to leverage technology solutions to drive business performance and taught them how to become a transformational leader. He is currently President and CEO of Personify, a market-leading technology platform that helps organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue and optimize operations. In his role at Personify, Eric has led the company through a founder transition, successfully acquired three new technology solutions, executed a major product rewrite and positioned Personify to be sold from its private equity sponsor Rubicon Technology Partners to Pamlico Capital.

As host of the Planet Leadership podcast, Eric meets with leaders, influencers, and movers and shakers in the association and nonprofit market to explore the issues and topics keeping up executives up at night, such as how to drive efficiencies within an organization, leverage technology to be more effective, and stay on top of trends in a rapidly evolving market.

Eric has a wealth of experience in the software industry, serving in leadership roles at Mitratech, P2 Energy Solutions, Oracle and SAP. He lives in Austin and enjoys boating, hiking, and fishing with his family.

What you will learn from this episode on how to become a transformational leader:

• Eric Thurston’s journey to owning private equity-owned software companies
• Learn how to become a transformational leader with Eric’s guidance
• Why Eric describes himself as a “Transformational CEO”
• How Eric transformed and grew Personify since 2013 when he became CEO
• The vital priorities Eric’s leadership team planned and followed in order to grow Personify and why they plan over a five-year time frame
• How Eric build out his leadership team within Personify
• Two reasons why the topic of leadership is important to Eric
• The types of organizations that Personify serves
• Business owners can learn how to become a transformational leader by using these two ways
• Inside information about Eric’s new podcast, Plant Leadership and his decision to start a podcast
• The reason why Eric chose the name ‘Planet Leadership’ for his podcast
• Eric’s influential lessons that he learned from his mentors and how that lesson helped him become the leader he is today

Resources:

• Website: personify.com
• Visit Eric’s podcast and learn the advanced methods of how to become a transformational leader

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to this podcast and learn how to become a transformational leader through values

 

 

How to Become a Transformational Leader: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners and leaders so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI will. You’ve probably been hearing me talk about it over the last several months, but we’ve been rebuilding and scaling our free resources section on PredictiveROI.com, so you can now download free and practical and tactical guides for everything from search engine optimization to how to use LinkedIn to generate leads.

 

We’ve added in several new ebooks to be a helpful organization. Everything about the Trojan Horse of sales B2B podcasting. How to build out your client avatar is a brand new handbook and other success strategies. So we’ve compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests. Just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources, and whatever your quest, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Eric Thurston’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Eric Thurston.

 

Let me share some additional context about why, when Eric said yes, why I was over the moon excited Onward Nation for this conversation. This is a conversation about scaling. This is going to be a conversation about sales growth. This is going to be a conversation about products and making sure that you have the right mix. This is also going to be a conversation around service and being so dedicated to your customers and helping them grow, because that’s how committed you are to your mission in Europe.

 

All of that around your customer. Eric is the president and CEO of Personify Corp. In his laser focused Onward Nation laser focused on helping nonprofit organizations leverage tech, leverage technology to fulfill their missions. Eric has led Personify through a major product in operational transformation, and we’re going to talk about that. Everything from positioning the company properly, everything from focusing on the right, if you want to call them niches, the right segments, everything from member based nonprofits, donor based nonprofits, health and wellness nonprofits.

 

And they’re fully committed to that. Eric’s leadership at Personify has produced product advancements, significant sales growth, improved customer satisfaction, and even reduced total cost of ownership for clients onward. So with that said, I am so very excited. Eric, that you said yes. Thank you for joining me. Welcome to Onward Nation, Eric. 

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Eric’s Path and Journey

 

Thanks for having me. And greetings to Onward Nation.

 

Well, thank you again for saying yes. Greetings to you too, my friend. And before we dive into all the questions that I want to fire your way and get your insights, your bio, impressive what you’ve done at Personify. Obviously impressive. Your team is awesome, but this incredible bio and pass is really only a portion of your story. So.

 

So take us behind the curtain here Eric. Tell us more about you. Tell us more about your path, your journey, and then we’ll dive in. Sure. Happy to do that. I think that’s a great start. I’ve been in the tech industry for over 20 years, and it’s interesting. I got my start in larger technology companies. I worked at Oracle and SAP and at some point wanted to get into smaller organizations.

 

I just felt like you could make a bigger impact in a smaller company than some of these really large ones. And so I got involved in private equity and software companies, which has been this really amazing experience with, you know, why does private equity exist? How do we help transform companies? How do we help them grow? And so I spent the last ten years as what I would describe as a transformational CEO.

 

So I’ve got a skill set. And coming into, software company software and tech enabled services. So I tend to do both. Typically we’ll buy companies from a founder and then look at how we grow them, how we scale them. And so really my experience and larger tech companies gave me great insight into processes. You know, how do you build infrastructure, how do you build scalability, how do you measure performance?

 

And so many of those things that I learned in the earlier part of my tech career, I’ve been able to use, you know, with the smaller companies. And it really is all about how you bring some maybe big company thought leadership to these smaller companies to help them scale and grow. And I tell you, it’s just amazing, you know, and how invigorating it is every day.

 

I know that what I do makes a difference. And for me, I come from a very entrepreneurial background. My family always owns small businesses. And so there’s something about bringing that entrepreneurial spirit as well to a company that maybe I didn’t founded. But that founding moment for Personifying myself really comes from 2013, when we bought the company.

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Founder Transition in Personify

 

And so we helped the founder transition out and have done so many things that we’ll talk about, you know, in the podcast today. And so how long had Personify been in business before the 2013 sale, that transaction roughly, 15 years? Yeah. So I’d been around for a while and it had grown to a certain size.

 

And there’s a saying that, you know what got you here? What doesn’t get you there? And that really was the case with Personify, the founder. It said to me, you know, I knew how to run the company. What was 5 million, 10 million, 20 million. But it’s gotten to the size where I just don’t know what to do, and I need to get out of my own way.

 

Okay. So when you and the team took over in 2013, if I’m giving you the timeline. Correct. So now we’re talking about six years. What is that net result being in how the business has changed. Right. So we really have completely transformed the business. And you mentioned this in the intro. We’ve rewrote our core product.

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Transforming The Company and Making Great Progress

 

We’ve got an enterprise product that goes back over 20 years now with the company. We’ve completely moved that from, perpetual not to use too much, industry jargon, but an on premise software, perpetual license to be a SAS product. We have acquired additional companies to build out our portfolio of products so that our customers can use more from us.

 

It’s integrated. It just makes their lives easier. And then we went through an operational transformation of really a barely profitable company to being a nicely profitable bill growing at double digit rates. You know, where it was. It just was kind of stagnant. So we took it from being stagnant to twice as big as it was when we bought it through organic growth and inorganic growth as well as, you know, as you mentioned earlier, transforming the company, making the customer experience better, our brand perception has improved dramatically during that time period.

 

For example, Okay. So that sounds like and that sounds like it is a significant list of priorities, right? Yes. So how did you become a leader? And I know that you didn’t do this in a vacuum. I know that you have a great leadership team and, and fellow executives working in the trenches with you. But how did you and your team decide?

 

Okay, these are our most vital priorities first. And then next quarter or whatever time period is, we’re going to tackle this, but this is what we’re going to be laser focused on first. How did you decide that? Right. That’s a great question. So at a macro level, we knew what we wanted the company to grow from a gross revenue and a profitability perspective over a five year time frame.

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Aim For Progress, Not Perfection

 

So we tend to plan in five year buckets. We then had a very detailed analysis function by function within the company. So think about sales professional services which is our consulting arm, product development, where we went through gosh, I think thinking of the spreadsheet, it was probably 10 to 12 tabs with 30 items per, per tab, and we would rank it.

 

This item is very important, medium or low. And then we would rate, where we think that particular item is now. So it could have been our contracting process and what do we need it to get to. So I scale from 1 to 5. Maybe it’s 2 to 3 right now. We want to get it to four.

 

We’re not you know it’s progress not perfection. We don’t need to get it to a five. And then is it very high in priority or impact on the business. You know high, medium or low. And so really we created this matrix and said here’s the top things we need to focus on function by function. And we just reported out on those every quarter and kept moving the needle.

 

And you know it’s funny when you get something where you want it, you just go to the next one on the list and you continue to add those. And so what it does is it gives you this great long term strategy. Here’s why we’re doing this. We’re going to fix the product. We’re going to fix our services. But here’s how we’re doing it.

 

And so it became a great mechanism to move that ball forward and communicate with people as well. 

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Organizations Thrive on Good Leadership

 

How did you either structure, restructure, bring in new talent, like how did you build out the leadership team within Personify? Right. Great question. So the founder remained with the company for a short period of time from a transitional perspective and we kept the executive team in place.

 

That was there when we bought it and really went through a period of, let’s call it 6 to 9 months to evaluate their ability, their talents and those sorts of things. And what I always tell people is when a founder transitions out of a business, it’s difficult, especially into a private equity environment. It’s difficult for other people to make that turn, as we like to say.

 

So I’m not the founder. I don’t do things the way he did. And it’s not right or wrong. It’s just different. And so we spent a lot of time with the leadership team, who share the same strategy or philosophy around what the changes we’re going to make in the company. You know, do you buy in, do you not buy in?

 

And over the course of time, some people opted out. They just weren’t the right fit. I would say that we had an executive. We at least had one person from that team still with us 2 to 3 years later. So it was kind of over time. And then, you know, somebody would leave the organization. We would recruit in and try to find somebody that really potentially came from a private equity held software company, understood what we were trying to do, and would buy in for that.

 

I tell people, sometimes you have to suspend disbelief. Just because it was done this way in the past doesn’t mean that was the only way to do it. And so it was a gradual process. So let’s talk about leadership. Because I know that you’re a student of leadership. I know that leadership is something that you teach, that you speak on, that you have a depth of thought leadership around that topic.

 

So why is that topic, that leadership topic so important to you? You know, I think over time it has come to mean so much more to me. You know, when you’re a young leader, when you’re growing in your career and you first get certain levels of leadership and you’re kind of doing what you think you need to do or what somebody else told you what to do.

 

And the further I’ve gone in my career and the further I’ve transformed organizations, it really becomes humbling from the perspective of its hard work, it’s very systematic. You have to, you have to develop talent. You have to assess talent. Organizational excellence and teamwork just doesn’t happen. I think early in my career I thought, well, it just kind of happened.

 

You put a bunch of people together and, you know, they get along and they work and they execute the strategy. It’s just so much more deeper than that. And I look back at some of the things I did early in my career and I think, well, I kind of cringe a little bit, like, why did I do that?

 

Oh, that wasn’t good. And so, you know, it’s just a passion of mine because, you know, it might sound a little corny, but that’s how organizations succeed. It’s that special sauce. It’s the way you bring a team together. It’s the way they work together, collaborate and grow. And so I’ve, I’ve just developed incredible passion. The other part is I have access to such unique leaders across our customer base, across our competitors.

 

These are people that have founded companies serving our industries. Have CEOs or executive directors I meet with. They’re passionate around. How do you cure Alzheimer’s? You know, how do we fix that? And so it really just, you know, you see leadership plans play such a critical role in that. So let’s give, if you could give Onward Nation some additional context there.

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Organizations That Personify Serve

 

So when we’re thinking of the types of organizations that Personify has this privilege of serving every day in the trenches, who are some of those organizations that come to mind? Yes. So there’s three buckets, associations, nonprofits, member centric nonprofits, and then health and wellness organizations that are also nonprofits. So when you think about associations, the American Nurses Association, the American Bar Association, the American Trucking Association, you know, on and on and on.

 

So we tend to serve some of those larger brand name associations from a nonprofit. So think more of a fundraising organization. Alzheimer’s Association is one of those American Heart Association and Habitat for humanity, and we’re helping them in a variety of ways. We help them manage their members. We help them do fundraising, do advocacy, and increase volunteerism.

 

So behind everything, when you really think about it as technology. And so our products help do that. And then the final group is YMCA and Jewish Community Centers. So they’re not 24 hour fitness. These are, you know, health and wellness organizations that think more about the whole individual and the family and have, you know, great fundraising needs.

 

And how do we serve that constituency better? So those are the types of organizations we work with. And we provide both software and services that go along with enabling that software, implementing it and using it. Awesome. That’s super helpful. For that context. Thank you for that. So let’s go back to the leadership piece. Again. And so as I’m thinking about our Onward Nation business owners who are listening to you right now and if they want to become like if they see, okay, this is interesting about being a transformational CEO.

 

If I want to take some of that and I want to and I want to, you know, I want to learn how to do some of that in my own organization, my own business. What are some of the skills that you would recommend that they that they really fine tuned, that they hone, that they work toward excellence in mastering in order to become that transformational leader?

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Finding The Right People to Help You

 

Right. That’s great. Great question. So, you know, several things I would lump into that. Number one is find somebody that can mentor you and can help hold you accountable, brainstorm with you. You know, a lot of times, CEOs of, you know, you started the company and maybe you don’t have that kitchen cabinet of people to help you, so to speak.

 

There’s professional coaches that can help you. And I would highly recommend that. I think another thing for you is to realize what are your individual skill sets, and at what point do you become the limiting factor for your organization? I truly believe the limiting factor for personifying growth and success is me. You know, I have to constantly get better.

 

Yes, I’ve gotten us to the point where we are, but if we’re going to double in the next 3 to 5 years, I have to keep getting better. And part of that is just not being set in your ways. You know? Boy, I remember when I did that job and I did it just this way. And we need to keep doing it that way.

 

I was talking to a founder recently who said, I just can’t get my company profitable, and it’s a $10 million company. And I said, you’ve got to be profitable. So let’s look at your business. Let’s look at what you’re not doing. And really, there were 3 or 4 key things in that business. And I said to this person, you’re going to have to let go of that.

 

You’re going to have to say, I don’t have all the answers for that. I’m going to trust that we can do it a little bit differently and then embrace that change and drive that change, because what fits into what got you here isn’t going to get you there. And at some point, whether it’s 10 million in revenue, 25 million in revenue, those are real hurdles in scaling your organization.

 

And so, you know, get somebody to help you and get over yourself from the perspective of, you know, I don’t always have the answers. I think that was a big moment for me when I realized, I don’t have to have all the answers for this. I just need to find the right people that can help me. So going to the founder story that you just shared with us, and that’s a great one.

 

So the $10 million company having a conversation with the founder, so those 2 or 3 areas where he needed to make some adjustments, how many of them and maybe all of them actually pointed back to him? Well, I think they all did, because this was a company that was founded in the basement, literally. So it’s the typical great story there.

 

And, and they felt like they had to provide service ad nauseum to their customers, to the point where they’re providing more service than they really should be. It’s not a profitable service. Instead of saying, hey, when you buy our product, we’re going to give you 40 hours of service. It comes in the price. It’s all packaged in. They didn’t define that because they had this intense fear that we’re going to lose a customer if we don’t continue to hold their hand.

 

And so you create this really, really difficult dependency to break because, you know, they’re giving them 80 hours of free work, just for example. And they’ve got to bring them back to 40. They have to have a tough conversation with that customer and their entire customer set about that. So, you know, it does come back to them. It comes back to their fear of, gee, if we lose a customer, we have to make sure we win another one just to stay even.

 

And so I think, yeah, there’s some real inherent challenges for a founder that this particular person, definitely comes back to them so recently. 

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: The Planet Leadership Podcast

 

Thank you for that. So recently you decided to launch a brand new podcast, Planet Leadership. Yeah. So, take us inside your decision first and then we’ll kind of slice that apart in a couple of different ways.

 

But take us first into your decision of, you know, I need to do this. I need to have a voice around this topic. Like, why did you decide to start a podcast? For a lot of reasons. I think passion is really the one that’s behind it. I started seeing an absence in our industry of thought leadership, so particularly in the association industry, there were so many founders that had founded their companies, grown them, and they were kind of the people everybody looked to within the industry, most of them have sold their companies.

 

They’ve moved on. And I just didn’t see anybody really speaking out in our industry around leadership. The other part, as I mentioned earlier, is I have access to some amazing individuals. Some of the companies we’ve bought had unbelievable founders. And when I sit down with them as we’re buying their company and I hear their story, I’m like, this is something people have to hear.

 

If you want to be a business owner, you want to found a company. Listen to what this person did and they happened to do it serving the industries that I work in. So there’s a great connection there. As well as you look at several, you know, we work across thousands of nonprofits and you see some that are just performing incredibly well, like, how are they able to have such great events or raise so much money or get all of these volunteers?

 

And then you look at some that just struggle and they can’t do it. And so, you know, to me, if I can shine a light on how to do those things better, that’s worth it to me. I don’t want to capture this in my head, and it makes me feel good because I see what people are doing, and I have more and more people coming to me.

 

They say, boy, you’ve run a company, you’ve transformed, Personify. You work with private equity, which is a real mystery to people. What is that like? And so the more requests I get around that, I thought, you know what? I think a podcast is a great way to get that out there. Well, it’s such an interesting name to Planet Leadership.

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: The Purpose of Doing a Podcast

 

So why did you decide on that as the name? Really simple Personify where I’m at. And our customers are changing the planet. We have customers around the globe, and when you really look at the missions of these organizations, the causes, the members that they are, they’re making a difference in people’s lives around the world. And I think that’s another part of doing this podcast is that, you know, sometimes we don’t think about that because we’re a smallish company and we’re working with, you know, these organizations.

 

You’re like, man, how can we help emphasize doing this? Around the globe? We have customers expanding into China, for example. And so they’re trying to figure that out. Our nonprofits are raising money around the world. So it just seemed appropriate planet leadership or changing the planet, one constituent at a time and helping some great organizations do it.

 

I love this conversation. I mean, what you’re bringing to this conversation is not only a lot of thought leadership around leadership and in helping teach that to unrelated business owners. But you’re being a great mentor. And you’ve mentioned mentorship a few minutes ago. So let me turn the mentorship table on you for a second and ask you to share with us the most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors. And then how has that lesson helped you become the leader that you are today? 

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Most Influential Lesson from a Mentor

 

There’s two people in my career, and I’ve told them this that have made a material impact on the trajectory of my career. I look back and I can think about the time I spent with those two people ten years apart, and how they helped me with what I needed at that time.

 

And it’s amazing, you know, the trajectory that that put me on. One of the things that the first one really helped me to do was to find the good in people, you know, understand that everybody comes from their own paradigm. You know, you’re in a work environment. Maybe you disagree, or you agree, but just understand everybody is trying to do the very best that they can do.

 

Your job as a leader is to embrace, you know, what they do well, make them feel good about that and accentuate that with them in the workplace. And by the way, you need to do that with yourself. I’m an engineer by degree and so touchy feely stuff doesn’t necessarily come to me. But it was this whole concept of and he said to me, if you can influence someone’s emotions, they’re going to work harder for you.

 

They’re going to be committed to the cause. And maybe this is that boss to leadership transition, where you know you’re younger in your career and you want to just tell people what to do and truly they’ll line up and salute the flag. And they don’t. And that was a big moment for me, realizing if you can impact people’s emotions, if you can inspire them, which is a tricky word, they’ll work so much harder for you, for the company.

 

And we can go further and further. So that was a huge lesson from that individual. The second individual that really impacted me helped me understand business models that are successful. So I’ve talked about how you are a transformational CEO? This individual taught me what that end result looks like. So I’ll tell people sometimes I know we’re going to be successful.

 

Here’s what the end looks like. I have absolute confidence. How do we get there? Might be a little bit bumpy, but if you got the right strategy and if you are consistent and in your strategy, your execution, you’re going to get there. And so those are two really, really important people and lessons for me. Exceptional conversation I know we’re getting short on time and I’m grateful for you taking time out of your compressed schedule.

 

But before we go, Eric, before we close out and say goodbye and any final advice you want to share with us? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell us the best way to connect with you. 

 

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How to Become a Transformational Leader: Final Advice and How to Connect with Eric

 

Yeah, I think the best advice will come through the podcast, so we’ll have to get everybody to tune into those.

 

No. I would come back though actually to, you know, get people around you, surround yourself with someone that can help you as a CEO. Understand what that ends. You know what the five year strategy for your business is. Don’t do it all yourself. I know when I figured out that I didn’t have to have all the answers and got the right people around me, it made all the difference in the world.

 

And yeah, I mean the podcast is Planet Leadership. So please go out and subscribe. And all the normal places will have a website PlanetLeadership.com. And I’ll invite CEOs, executive directors, friends, third parties that I’ve worked with that I think will provide interesting insight into, planet leadership and how we can change the planet collectively.

 

Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Eric’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do, the key is you need to take these transformational lessons, take them, apply them into your business right away and accelerate your results. And Eric, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day.

 

And again, I’m grateful that you said yes, came onto the show and been our mentor and guide to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you very much. 

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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