The Profiles in Leadership series features conversations with organizational leadership experts to discuss important lessons they have learned and what “Hiring for Good” means to them. This series helps us better understand how leadership drives positive transformations and growth for people, organizations, and the world around us.
This episode features a conversation with Bill Nootenboom, Managing Director of Pragma Group, LLC. Bill loves to help business owners stick the landing upon exit. For 30 years Bill has been starting, running, growing, and exiting business. He has a passion for helping business owners do meaningful, important, and difficult things with their life’s work. During his career Bill has served as a trusted advisor in a number of capacities: as a board member; a CEO/COO; strategic consultant; an M&A advisor and an attorney. But his favorite thing to do is to help business owners find the exit that best matches their values. For most people, it’s something they only do once in a lifetime, and it will be the thing everybody remembers.
Bill also currently runs a small private search fund looking for businesses to buy, specifically to convert to employee ownership.
Bill’s Contact Information: Bill@PragmaGroupLLC.com | 503-706-9959 | www.PragmaGroupLLC.com
Profiles in Leadership Transcript
Suzanne Hanifin: Well, hello, I am Suzanne Hanifin with Acumen Executive Search, and I’m excited today to have Bill Nootenboom as a guest on Hiring for Good Profiles in Leadership, which is a podcast on best practices of leadership.
I’m only going to share just a brief outline of Bill’s background, but Bill is a JD, and he has been a business owner and a business transitional coach for a number of years. He has been a CEO of seven-plus organizations that have transitioned in an A Deal—some successful, some worked fabulous.
So we’re here to really kind of talk to Bill about his learnings, best practices. Bill, I just highlighted, barely scratched the surface of your background, so I will turn it over to you to really kind of tell us about your journey and how you got where you are today.
Bill Nootenboom: Yeah, thanks, Suzanne. It’s really great to be here, and I really enjoy your podcast, and I’m honored to be included in them. So thank you for having me.
I have been kind of following a circuitous journey for a long time, and I kinda find myself in, you know, unusual situations that I would never expect to be in. Basically, I went to…I came to Portland to go to law school, and while I was in law school, my wife and I were expecting our first child. I got a job offer from a major global firm two days before my son was born.
What I realized is that at the firm, there were a lot of people getting divorced, there were a lot of people working Saturdays and Sundays, and not a lot of people spending time with their families. I realized that family was the most important thing to me, so I turned down a job with the law firm not having any other plan in place. And thought about what I really wanted to do, and for me, it was family. So, I started a family business with my brother. It turned out to be the first of, I don’t know, six or seven family businesses that we founded together. And that started me on my journey.
For the last 25 years, I’ve either been starting, running businesses on my own or helping other people to start, run, and exit from the businesses they’ve started. And it’s just been a tremendous amount of fun.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, you’re truly speaking to the choir as a mom, wife, and business owner.
Well, we all had these very formative experiences that really shape who we are, and especially with all the transitions and starting a number of businesses. When you look back, Bill, what have been those formative experiences?
Bill Nootenboom: You know, I think there were two. There was that moment that I described when I realized that having the big corporate law job in a skyscraper downtown wasn’t as important as my family. So, I think that was really the first formative experience that I had in my career. And the second was probably 10 to 12 years later when it came time to exit the first business that I started with my brother. We were in the auto repair industry, and we were in a very specific niche. We did the market research and realized that our niche was just not going to be there any longer. So, I came up with the idea to sell the business and we could move on. We had several other businesses we were running, and we could take the money out of one business and put it into another and it would be great.
So, I found a buyer who was willing to pay a lot of money—several million dollars. At that stage of my life, it would have been meaningful. We got down to the end of the transaction, and there’s this moment of truth that happens in every transaction. My brother looked at me and said, “I don’t want to sell my company to these guys. I don’t like them. I don’t trust them. I don’t think they’re going to be good for our people. I don’t think they’re going to be good for our customers. And I don’t think it’s going to be good for me.” So, you know, what do you do at that point? I really wanted to sell the business. I had other things I wanted to do, but my brother didn’t. And so we pulled the plug on the deal, and we got sued in federal court. And it was a nightmare—it was a mess. But ultimately, I ended up selling my half of my business to my brother for a lot less than the other buyer was going to pay us. It was challenging for a while—Thanksgiving dinners were a little testy for a few years—but ultimately, my brother was right. He really focused on the values and what was important to him. And to him, it was not just the money. It was the autonomy, it was the freedom, it was the people that he worked with, and it was the way he did business. That was really important to him.
The business is less than a tenth of the size that it was back in the day, but my brother still runs it, and still loves it, and still does it, and has been successful. For me, realizing that it’s not about the money all the time, right. Money is an important part of it. I think what I learned was that you can’t, you can’t mistake the medium of exchange for the underlying value. Any business transaction is just an exchange of values for people—money is just the tool that we use to exchange those values. It’s easy to get distracted by the money, but, you know, the real trick is to keep your eye on the underlying values that are important. And that’s hard to do.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, and we’ll circle back on values because I wanted to dive deeper. Here you get almost to the finish line on the first transaction and then you pull the plug. What could you have done to not end up in federal, federal court on getting sued? What were the red flags and the learnings from that?
Bill Nootenboom: You know, you know, when I look at it as a point of from a lawyer, there really wasn’t anything we could do. I mean, we had the letter of intent. We had the documents in place. We had the deal structure in place. The financing structure was working fine. But when I look at it from an advisor’s point of view, like if I’m going to advise my brother and what’s the most important thing, the thing that I really did wrong was I didn’t focus on, you know, what the underlying core values were.
What’s really important here? So, when I do, you know, advisory work with my clients, I really spend the time to focus on what’s important to them and what’s motivating them. There are a lot of people in business who are just frankly motivated by the money. They just want the money, and I’m probably not the best adviser for those people. But most people don’t start a business because they think it’s the surest way to get rich.
Right, you know, you’ve run a business. You know. Making payroll—it’s not a success guaranteed; you have to work at it. Most people that I work with have started businesses for other reasons. And focusing on what those reasons are and also realizing that people change over time, you know. When when people get older they they ger into a new stage of life, other things become more important. So I really spend the time with my clients to figure out what is the most important thing they want out of that transition. A lot of my clients don’t know if they want to sell, or they want keep it. If they want to pass it on to their family, or you know, if they want to sell it to an employee, or to all the employees. They just don’t know. So, I really spend time working on what motivates them, why they are doing this, what they want to accomplish in their life. What would feel good at the end of the day? Then, we usually find a financial and legal structure that works for that. That’s really the easy part.
Suzanne Hanifin: So, you’re backing that in, starting with those values and what is important? And exactly. Well, and I failed and I and I’m going to kind of back up to say Pragma Group is is your business, and I didn’t state that in the introduction. But I want to make sure everybody knows, and at the end, we’ll definitely put all of your contact information.
But going back to those values—because we live, breathe, you know, and do all of our work based on those values—what values do you, do you feel is so important that you’ve brought into your businesses that you have been able to operationalize and and push it through?
Bill Nootenboom: That’s an interesting question. And you know, I think for me, I just like helping people. You know, I think that’s really the motivation that I get. I get a lot of satisfaction out of helping other people accomplish what they want.
You know what I’ve really tried to at Pragma surround myself with partners who really share the same values and really want to help people and really will put the client first and in what they want. That’s different in the M&A advisory world and the investment banking world. There are a lot of people who are just chasing the fee. You know, just the best fee or the biggest priceso they can get the best success fee. But for me, the success is the best outcome, right? And that’s what I learned with that experience with my brother. The best outcome was a family situation where we remained close as a family and we got to lead the kind of lives that we wanted to lead. That wasn’t the biggest exit fee. That wasn’t the biggest dollar price. So, in this industry, you know, I try to work with those people who have that ethic of service as well.
Suzanne Hanifin: Absolutely. And you’ve hired a lot of people, and again, this podcast is called Hiring for Good. So how do you go about it, and what’s your methodology when you’re hiring? I mean, I understand picking your clients that align with your values as well, but let’s talk a little bit about how you’ve hired.
Bill Nootenboom: Yeah. So, I mean, we talked a lot about the M&A advisory work and the exit work that I’ve done, but I’ve also been the CEO or president or founder, co-founder of—I’ve lost count—I think it was like 17 or 18 different businesses at this point. So, you know, I’ve been in that position to hire hire people and bring them on board and build the teams. And what I’ve learned is that the most important thing to understand—I mean there’s skills, right. You need certain skills and abilities. But for me, the most important thing is the motivation, right. What motivates this person? Why do they get out of bed in the morning? What do they want to accomplish? And there’s—people are complicated and so there’s never just one motivation; there’s always a, you know, a blend of different motivations and factors, you know. Mentors and influences in their lives, you know, that they really really admired their mother and they want to you know, really want to lead a life that she would be proud proud of or you know, they they worked with a mentor early on and learned some important skills. They want to put those skills to use. Whatever it is that motivates people, that is something you can’t teach—that’s something you can’t instill. If you can figure that out and put people with like motivations together, that’s where I’ve found you really get teams that gel and really get teams that can succeed together.
Suzanne Hanifin: No, that’s perfect. So let’s go back to the M&A side, because, you know, when we were talking before we hit record, a lot of people say if you own a business, you need to be prepared three to five years out—minimum. But nobody really talks about what does “prepared” mean. So let’s kind of dive into that—what does that mean a million things, right? The business has to be prepared. And what does that mean?
Bill Nootenboom: Yeah. I mean it means a million things, right. So the business has to be prepared. And what does that mean? That means that it can’t be dependent upon the owner or the founder. I work almost exclusively with family-owned and founder-owned businesses so. So those people, I mean—most of them are very talented and can do a lot of things—but they are very specific in what they do and what they like. And so they build the business around what they’re good at and what they like to do. So, you get these very oddly shaped reporting structures because the boss likes to do this and the boss likes to do that. Unless you can find another human being with that exact same match of likes, strengths, and weaknesses, you’re never going to get anything that works.
So, you really have to work with the leadership team so that everyone can that understands what needs to get done in the business and who can do it. A lot of times, there’s multiple people in the organization that can that can do it. So, we have to figure out how we distribute those responsibilities throughout the organization. And how do we know when we need to make a change and how we are going to adapt to a new circumstance and bring someone else in.
That’s one of the things that that you need to do. One of the most important things you need to do is think about what you are going to do after the transaction. What are you going to do when it’s no longer your primary focus in life? You know. What’s your life look like after you close a transaction? For people who have been running a business for 40 years, every day, day in and day out, that answer is not easily found.
A lot of people think they’ll just play golf for a week and a half, but then they get bored with it. So, what’s your life going to look like afterward? If you’ve been driven by the mission of this business for decades, what’s your mission next? That answer doesn’t come in one workshop—that’s something that only emerges over a long time.
Suzanne Hanifin: Absolutely. No, we’ve worked with a lot of successions and transitions with organizations, and I feel the only way they’re successful is when the CEO or the president works with a coach. I think it’s really important because they start—and I’m guilty of this too—identifying who I am with what I do. Yeah, and so that’s hard to separate out.
So what advice, then, would you give a business owner?
Bill Nootenboom: Well, I mean, that’s what I do—I give business owners advice. That’s that’s what I’ve been doing for 25 years. But the main thing I would do is, you know, to to have an open and honest appreciation of yourself—and you know, your strengths and weaknesses, and what you want.
And that really takes vulnerability, and it’s hard for a lot of entrepreneurs—people who’ve been the head of their organizations for a long period of time. If you’re the owner of the business, you’re the person people come to for all the answers. I mean, if you’re the owner of the business, you are the person that people come to for all the answers. You know this. You run your business. People come to you, and they expect you to have all the answers.
But a leader really has to have the humility and self-awareness to know that they don’t necessarily always have the answers and that’s some of the hardest things to work with. Because, you know a lot of times, my clients, they don’t really have anybody to talk to. You know. Their spouse may not understand what the role they play in the business. They certainly don’t want to talk to their employees and admit weakness and vulnerability to their employees because their employees all look up to them.
A lot of times, their friends have no idea but what it means to run a business. The people they went to college with or high school with they’re off on different career paths and don’t know what it is. One of the things I really enjoy is, you know, I’ve been in the trenches—I’ve started businesses before—and I like talking about it. So, I can build that rapport with people and have that that instant connection from having similar experiences.
And that’s a lot of fun. One of the one of the great joys is that you get to know people very well, very intimately, and a lot of my clients become friends, lifelong friends. And because we, you know, it’s it’s not just a transactional relationship—it’s really about, you know, this is your life’s work. So, it’s about the meaning of your life’s work. And, and, for me, it’s really an honor to get to know people at that level, and it’s a lot of fun because a lot of these people are really interesting.
Suzanne Hanifin: Absolutely. So, you’ve mentioned, you know, you’ve been doing this for a while. We both have the gray hair to prove it, and at least for me, the wrinkles to prove it. But what advice, looking back in your career, would you have given your 20-year-old self?
Bill Nootenboom: You know, it would be to be clear about your values. It’s kinda almost become cliché that oh what are your core values? Do you have a mission statement? And you have that and there’s a lot of people that do that. But, you know, ultimately, what I’ve learned is that’s what the business boils down to, you know.
My second business that I started was an advertising agency. We couldn’t find the kind of advertising for the auto repair business that we wanted, so we started an advertising agency. What I realized was that, you know, those key values are what drive the brand. You know, those symbols of value is what drive the brand. So, the successful businesses, the successful brands, are the ones that can communicate those values quickly and easily.
That means being able to articulate those values. A lot of people aren’t able to articulate what drives them every day—what’s important. So just being able to be really clear about that. And you know I’ve found that people who have personal mission statements, you know, those are people who are able to stay focused on what’s important.
And so a lot of the work that I do is around that—what are the values that you have? If people are younger in their careers, I would encourage them to think about what’s really important to them. What are their red lines that they won’t cross? “I will never do that.” Uh, I will always do things this way, you know. And if you can articulate what those are, you have a much higher likelihood of finding people who share similar motivations, who have the same passions that you do. And if you’re able to find those people and build an organization around people who are passionate around the same things, then you’re much more likely to succeed in the long run.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Thank you, Bill. We always end with the last question, which is: What does hiring for good mean to you?
If you don’t have a deep appreciation for who they are and a I don’t know, a deep commitment to them and their lives, I think you’re kind of doing a disservice to yourself and your doing a disservice to your company. So, taking the time to get to know the people beyond just the skills and the abilities and the credentials and the experience—but to get to know the why and the motivation. If you can help somebody along that journey, I think you’re going to have a good friend and a good professional relationship for a long time.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, that is wonderful. Well, Bill, again—Bill Nootenboom, Pragma—give him a call. And actually, let me ask you this: Why and who would give you a call? You know, again, transition is kind of loosey-goosey, but yeah.
Bill Nootenboom: I mean, we work with founder- and family-owned businesses who aren’t sure what the next chapter is. They are facing a transition in either leadership, ownership, or strategy, and we help people define what a long-term goal looks like—10, 15, 20 goal.
We help determine the right leadership organization to get there, what’s the right ownership structure to get there, and what’s the right strategy to get there. So, it’s really about defining the next chapter. We really like to work with founder-owned businesses and family-owned businesses that are thinking about legacy and thinking about the next 10 to 20 years in terms of ownership, leadership, strategy, and growth.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah.So, if you’re going through and wondering what your next chapter is, do reach out to Bill at Pragma Group. All of the contact information will be at the end of this, and I cannot thank you enough, Bill. This has been really insightful.
Bill Nootenboom: Oh, thanks, Suzanne. I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. I love talking with you, so every chance we get, let’s do it.
Suzanne Hanifin: Awesome. Thank you.
Bill Nootenboom: See ya.