Cerius Interim Executive Solutions CEO Pam Wasely recently had a discussion with CEO’s about the business challenges that keep them up at night. Here’s what they had to say.

Transcription Below:

I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, an on-demand, searchable database that matches business problems with thousands pre-vetted, part-time, temporary, interim, and contract executives. These executive level management consultants provide key insights, execution, and results to companies of all sizes and in all industries.

Today, we have four CEO’s joining us on the podcast, Antoine Ford, CEO of Enlighten, located in Washington, D.C.; Jenny Rosoff, CEO of Village Green Foods, located in Irvine, California; and Dave Kearney, CEO of Boomerang, located in Palo Alto. We have a diverse group of CEO’s here today, so I’d like to give each of you 30 seconds to describe your business. Antoine, let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit about your business.

Antoine Ford: Hello, how is everyone? My name is Antoine Ford, I’m President and CEO of Enlightened, Inc. We’re a technology consulting firm located in Washington, D.C., primarily focused on government contracting in the cyber security area, big data analytics, and a lot of software engineering. We do work in the top secret cleared space, as well as other government entities. We are aggressively looking at diversifying into the commercial sector. Glad to be here with the other CEO’s.

Pamela Wasley: Thanks, Antoine. Jenny, tell us a little bit about your company. Jenny, I think you’re on mute. Jenny, can you tell us a little bit about your company?

Jenny Rosoff: My company is a wholesale food manufacturing business. We make food primarily for restaurant chains and other manufacturers. We have 30 employees on the production floor where we’re cooking. We have about 150 different products we make for about 30 different clients.

Pamela Wasley: Excellent, thanks Jenny. Dave, tell us a little bit about what your company does.

Dave Kearney: Thanks Pam, thanks for having me. Boomerang, for the most part we’ve been running for the last 20 years on the CEO Boomerang, and we’ve been doing online marketing, mostly around email marketing, newsletters, and so on for large and small companies as well as event management and social marketing now we’ve added recently. The other side of Boomerang is we do – for a lot of our customers we do automated marketing software consulting, so a fair amount of software enabling systems integrations and so on to make that marketing application work very well.

Pamela Wasley: Great, thanks Dave. As CEO’s we run across some really tough problems that we have to deal with, such as the organization losing money, declining profit margins or sales, non-performing employees, finding and keeping the right talent, system outages, the need to reduce costs, and how to get your entire company culturally on the same page. Today, I’d like each of you talk about those business issues that keep you up at night. Antoine, so does dealing with the government keep you up at night?

Antoine Ford: Yes it does. If you look at my business, being a government contractor, as soon as we have a budget crisis between the two parties, we’re greatly impacted by that. When there was a government shut-down last year, we were greatly impacted by that. One of the things that keeps me up at night is making sure the government continues to function, and to let the two parties get out of the way of folks that want to serve.

That’s important, and that does keep me up at night because we have to look at not where we are now, but we’re looking at budgets in the next two to three years. You win a contract as an entity, you’re thinking about the next contract immediately because you only have a number of years before you have to perform in other places.

The second thing that keeps me up at night, quite honestly, as you mentioned it earlier, was people. Your investment in people, people representing you, the other CEO’s have this same issue probably ensuring that the people that we have that are going to carry the culture are carrying it in the way that we think they should. One of the things we do at Enlightened is try to make sure that our leaders have the same DNA as the executive management. When I don’t have somebody who doesn’t have my DNA, that keeps me up at night.

Pamela Wasley: Thanks, Antoine. Jenny, being in the food business, what issues are robbing you of sleep these days?

Jenny Rosoff: Actually, one of Antoine’s issues is also one of ours because we’re regulated by the government. We have USDA and FDA in and out of our plant regularly. When the government’s not functioning well, neither are our inspectors nor are their agencies. That is something that does, from time to time, keep me up at night. Another one is that the product that we make is going inside of people. That’s one of the most intimate things that you can do with somebody.

I wake up at night wondering if the metal detector’s working right, if the people running the metal detector understand what they’re doing, if everybody’s following the protocols that we’ve put in place to make sure that everything’s functioning well. I don’t – 24 years, I haven’t had it happen yet, knock on wood, I don’t ever want to get that call saying that something that we made, made somebody sick.

Pamela Wasley: Thanks, Jenny. Dave, as the CEO of a service company, what issues are bugging you these days?

Dave Kearney: Well, as a services company, specifically a high tech services company in Silicon Valley, there’s the constant battle of maintaining relevancy, being relevant to our customers, and competing against a large number of companies that are well-funded. As you might be aware, the online marketing space is very crowded, with companies providing the latest tools and technology to market to your customers, to help other companies market to their customers.

The things that keep us up at night are the idea that we have to constantly, constantly innovate and compete against not only the companies that have been in business for a long time, but also the very new ones that are up and coming. We have to stay relevant, and we have to make sure that the choices we make today, and the technology that we’re releasing in the next year or so are going to be the technologies that people need and want, and are going to be coming across as better than the competition.

Pamela Wasley: Absolutely, Dave, it’s even hard to keep up with technology these days. I get it. Thanks for sharing today; however, before we wrap up, I’d like to ask each of you what advice you would give to other CEO’s on how to effectively deal with tough issues. Antoine, let’s start with you again.

Antoine Ford: One of the things that a CEO has to have is a good ego, and they also have to have good judgment, when to let their ego go. One advice I would give to other CEO’s is to know when to ask for help from advisors, mentors, other CEO’s because we’re all facing the same game, and although we may be in different business segments, the advice, even that I heard today, is helpful for me. Know when to let your great ego go, and ask for help.

Pamela Wasley: Thanks Antoine, Jenny?

Jenny Rosoff: Something that I’ve been told for years is to surround myself with good people, preferably people smarter than I am, and at this point, people younger than I am. That’s something that I’m working on regularly is bringing on more people who can support and take the culture and the vision that we have here and move it into the next day, week, month, or hopefully the next generation, to keep it going the way I’ve always wanted it to go.

Pamela Wasley: Great, thanks Jenny. Dave, what advice would you give?

Jenny Rosoff: I’d like to second the opinions of Antoine and Jenny there, but also add on in that your – to stay on top of things, relationships with other companies and other people outside. A fair amount of networking and collaborating with other groups and folks to help you grow and stay relevant in this amazingly fast-growing business is important. It’s not just to look inward, it’s to look outward as well.

Pamela Wasley: Great, thanks Dave. Thank you all for being here today, and sharing what problems were keeping you up at night. I’m sure that many other CEO’s around the world are having similar problems and appreciate your insights. Next month, tune in for our next Cerius podcast on the topic of the six business challenges that give us [00:13:18]. CEO’s and CFO’s will not want to miss this. See you next month. Thanks guys, I really appreciate all of your patience with us getting this started. Harry, if you’re still on, my apologies. We’ll try another venue next time, and we’ll have you participate. Again, thank you everyone, and have a great day.