The best advice we ever got

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“Every day’s a jump ball.”

This sage advice from a longtime friend and colleague proved to be excellent counsel over our past two decades as business owners. It reminds us daily not to take anything for granted.

As a husband-and-wife team in business together, we have been fortunate to receive a great deal of advice over the years. Much of it helped shape our leadership style and the way we run our company.

As we celebrate our firm’s 20th anniversary, we wanted to share the top five pieces of advice that continue to guide us today, in hopes that others can take something away that helps strengthen their own business.

1. Always stay focused on your values and culture.

Even when our team was small, we knew how important it was to focus on culture. As most people have at a certain point in their career, we have experienced our share of both supportive and unsupportive leadership.

With two young children and aging parents, we understood the importance of flexibility and compassion, and we incorporated this thinking into delivering excellent services. We only hired people who understood the importance of mutual respect, and in turn, intentionally created a unified and positive workplace that now supports nearly 100 teammates and their families.
At an early strategy session, led by well-known business coach Jack Skeen, we embraced the notion of blending culture, values and mission, which enabled Marie to craft a unique new concept: the Book of Dreams, a compilation of our employees’ personal and professional dreams. It remains the driving force behind our corporate culture.

When we are open, appreciate what motivates or discourages us, and are vulnerable with each other, it brings us closer together and helps us function better as a team.
Employees look to leaders for cues on how to behave, handle conflict, and approach work. When leaders are a couple who exemplify mutual respect and integrity, these values trickle down and strengthen the entire company.

2. You’ll never regret hiring good employees.

Shortly after we launched, we hired an accountant who specialized in small business, Tom Bowman. We were starting to get work, but we felt we couldn’t afford to bring on another employee to help.

Tom encouraged us to hire our first employee to complement our strengths, which turned out to be a great decision. As an advisory firm, it was critical that we hire talent that brought experience solving problems that were critical to our clients, not just learning on our clients’ dime.

3. Focus on what you’re good at; don’t try to be everything to everyone.

We’ve heard from many midmarket CEOs that, when it came to technology, they “didn’t know what they didn’t know.” We knew executives would benefit from an independent adviser who could guide them through technological decisions, but we didn’t know if that type of business would succeed.

A few colleagues encouraged us to consider branching into other areas of technology, including software, system support and help desk. Thankfully, we got other advice from trusted advisers and clients, such as Mary Ann Scully, now dean of the Sellinger School of Business at Loyola University, who encouraged us to maintain our independence and stay focused on what we did best.
When leaders have a clear, unified understanding of what their company stands for and where it’s headed, decision-making is easier.

4. Get good at hitting singles and doubles. Don’t always swing for the fences.

Every business owner wants to hit the home run that allows them to double results year over year or even better.  A longtime friend and adviser, Charlie Maskell, helped us focus on strategies to grow aggressively and still be profitable.

We had seen companies around us grow exponentially in a short amount of time, and we were sometimes envious of that growth. Years later we learned that some of those companies were forced to downsize or regroup as much smaller versions of themselves.

We’re proud of our purposeful and consistent growth over the years and how we’ve been able to serve our clients, take care of our people, invest in our business, and create value.

5. Know your numbers. Understand the key metrics that drive your growth and profitability.

As we’ve grown our business over the years, we’ve been very proud of the fact that among our leadership, none of us have ever been in roles equivalent to the roles we were playing at Hartman. We were all doing this for the first time.

We knew that sometimes we needed help from more experienced advisers, and that sometimes WE “didn’t know what we didn’t know.”

About seven years ago, we sought out a coach for ourselves and our key operational leaders. We got far more than that. We hired a strategy adviser, Rob Ryan, and his advice and guidance literally changed our firm.

We had always paid attention to metrics, and we knew our business model was unique, but Rob taught us to embrace models and metrics that were long-proven standards in the professional services world. That enabled us to accelerate our growth like never before.

We’re proud of the work we’ve done for our clients and the trails we’ve blazed within our industry. But we know that much of our success wouldn’t even have been possible without some great advice from these and other mentors and advisers along the way. Thanks to each of you!

Dave and Marie Hartman are the founders of Hartman Executive Advisors.