I recently went one on one with Rod McDermott. Rod is the co-founder and CEO of Activate 180, the co-founder and CEO of McDermott + Bull, the President and CEO of M+B Interim Leaders, and the founder of the M+B Executive Network.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Rod: I am a serial entrepreneur. I started my first business venture at 11 years old and my first real business at age 25. Within a year of starting that business, I already had 40 employees. The business was successful and profitable, so I was able to sell it. The next business I started initially showed rapid growth, but it was not successful. As a result of the significant losses I was facing, I had to shut it down. I learned a lot from both of the companies I established early in my career as an entrepreneur. I used these experiences to guide me when starting McDermott + Bull nearly 22 years ago, and when launching Activate 180 about 3 years ago.

After the loss of my second business, I realized it was vital not to expand an organization internally in advance of actual revenue growth – regardless of revenue projections – because the overhead will eat me alive. Also, prior to starting McDermott + Bull, I felt that I had to be the smartest person in any professional room. Yet, I am surrounded daily by intelligent people who really know how to navigate their jobs better than I would. It initially took a while to develop trust, but after I established professional autonomy for my associates, I found that my business grew quickly. This is because individuals have more pride in the results they personally achieve than the results that their managers push for, which are more aligned with their leaders’ goals than their own.

Adam: How did you come up with your business ideas? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?

When planning to start a business, the first thing I think about is a potential unmet need. Your prospective service or product might be part of an industry that has competitors in it, but maybe they're meeting consumers’ needs differently than you would.

For example, from a young age, I have had an entrepreneurial mindset, always thinking of professional moves and business development ideas. My first entrepreneurial pursuit consisted of owning a few dry cleaning businesses. One of the things I quickly recognized when entering this market was that dry cleaning businesses are generally open for around 10 hours, Monday through Friday, with limited operating hours on Saturdays, and no availability on Sundays. That doesn't work well for busy families or executives. So, I decided that my stores would offer alternative operating hours to better serve the needs of my customers.

Adam: How did you know your business ideas were worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?

Rod: The advice I would give to those who want to test a business idea would be to first figure out your passion. Then, determine if there's an unmet need in the industry you are passionate about. If it's economically viable for you to satisfy the unmet desires of your target audience, go for it.

Each of my companies has offered a unique way of fulfilling consumers’ needs. When I opened my dry cleaning businesses, we were open from 6:00 AM until 9:00 PM, seven days a week. We were open early in the morning and late at night to be available and accessible for our customers when they needed us, not just when we wanted to be there. Other dry cleaners weren't meeting consumers’ demand for flexibility the way I knew that I could, so I chose to offer a different path.

The process of determining that my prospective business ventures would be worth pursuing was the same with my executive search firm and interim leaders business. There have been interim executive companies for a long time that operate similarly to contingent search companies. But, what I recognized is that the market is filled with organizations that offer the same kinds of processes and services, which are not in line with the truly individualized needs of clients.

When developing my employee coaching business, Activate 180, I saw an unmet need for coaching at all levels of companies. Although some companies are offering solutions to the demand for coaching, we're addressing it in a significantly different manner than our competitors. We have major differentiators that make us successful and drive our expansion. For instance, we offer coaching to all employees, not just the executives. We also offer monthly experiential team workshops and culture audits which encourage connection and foster an engaging workplace culture. We focus on five of the core pillars which highly influence individuals’ fulfillment with life, rather than solely offering career coaching. This approach ensures all areas of employees’ lives are thriving while connecting their success back to their companies.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your businesses? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Rod: Scaling is a key strategy contributing to the growth of a business. When trying to grow a business, the first step is to test whether your theoretical product or service will have adequate consumer demand. To do this, analyze if you can actually sell your creation in the market by comparing competitor sales, looking for calls to action from consumers, and determining whether the market for the product or service you offer is expanding. Through this research, you can make an educated guess about whether people will seek your goods or services.

If you discover that there is adequate demand for what you are offering, it's time to start thinking about how to scale your business. Your first customers are usually people that are fairly close to you because they are often most supportive of your ideas. The next step when trying to grow a business is to reach out and pitch your product or service to people that don't know you. These will be people who do business with you solely because of the merit of what you offer, which is the true test of the quality and viability of your business.

Once you can prove that there is a market and that somebody is willing to pay for what you offer, then it's about scaling and expanding. When I look at how I've scaled companies in the past, I try to fill as many integral roles as I can and recruit others to do the work that I can’t.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?

Rod: My best tip is to be big on sales and small on marketing. For me, sales are a top priority. It’s important to identify reasonable targets and try not to boil the ocean. My advice would be to identify consumers or companies in a market segment that you can serve extremely well. This includes prospects that you have a good track of communication with and those who fill high-level roles at companies you want to serve. 

If you're selling to corporations, or have a business-to-business sales model, make sure you have a certain amount of expertise in the field, so that prospective clients will perceive you as a credible expert. If you don’t have expertise in any industry, ensure you have a fantastic track of communication and hone in on the skills you have developed.

For instance, when I got into executive search, I was brand new to this field of work. I'd never done an executive search in my life, but I came out of a computer security company as a Vice President of Sales and Marketing and knew technology really well. I knew technology channels and could talk about them skillfully. So, the initial practice that I built, at the very first firm I worked for, was a technological practice because I had the authority to speak on that subject. Even though I had never executed an executive search for a technological company or any company, I could speak about technology because I had been in that space. As a result of my experience, my tip to others would be to find a space where you can talk the talk, and attract someone who has decision-making power and authority.

In my opinion, many salespeople follow the flawed strategy of trying to make contact with lower-level employees that will take meetings with them but don't have decision-making authority on behalf of their companies. The salespeople then end up wasting their own time by chasing after companies that don't have the ability to buy their products or services. So, as a salesperson, you have to target companies that need what you offer and have the ability to afford it.

I think there are three integral components to marketing. One is branding or brand awareness, which consists of having a good website and executing demand creation via search engine optimization as well as search engine marketing, paid ads, and other routes of preliminary advertising. Another part would be using marketing as a tool to keep in touch with prospective clients.The last part of marketing is about prioritizing public relations, which also helps create brand awareness and boosts credibility for a brand. This credibility already exists within news sources, podcasters, and other hosts. If we can get credible sources to talk with or interview us, chances are pretty good that they're going to gush over what we have to offer. If they do that, then we've attracted instant credibility through our connections.

Again, my tips revolve around having a big S and little M. I'm a firm believer in the old adage that it takes seven to 10 touches to make a sale. Most salespeople quit after three attempts, and I do not want to be one of those people. I want to be the one that stays with it all the way to the end. If someone is a viable prospect that could use my services at some point in the future, I need to leverage marketing to stay in front of them by sharing with them something intriguing. Instead of calling to confirm their interest in our service, I'd rather send them an article that we have written or a success story from a similar type of company that worked with us. The goal here is to leverage marketing in the form of what we call a “drip campaign” so that my brand can stay in front of them. 

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of hiring?

Rod: Hire others to do the things you can’t do. I'm a sales guy so I can fill sales roles myself, but I'm not somebody who's going to work on my search business. I hire recruiters and they do all the candidate recruiting and candidate development work. Those are not things I would do or know how to do very well. I hire people to do them.

This is the same approach that I’ve taken with Activate 180. Although I have long been an executive, I am not equipped to coach other executives or employees – at any level – in many important areas of their lives. I am not a financial expert, a relationship expert, a life experience expert, a mindset expert, or a health expert. So, I have chosen to hire professionals who are well-versed and knowledgeable in those areas and more.

Adam: What are your best tips for job candidates?

Rod: My best tip for job candidates is to treat your job searches like a career journey or an entrepreneurial venture. Identify your target markets and the right people to reach out to within the companies for which you are interested in working. Like I said before, you want to go as high as possible in the chain of company command and connect with people who have the authority to bring you into their companies. 

For example, if I'm an executive searching for a job, I'm going to start by pinpointing the industries where I want to work. Then, I will identify what I can bring to the table. I might have a desire to leave my old profession and enter a new field, in which I don’t have as much credibility. But if I’ve got the time and the runway, then I can successfully make the industry-changing transition by working a little bit harder.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Rod: One big defining quality for me is active listening and ensuring that people feel heard. This can be really tough for me because I'm always thinking a couple of steps down the road. I'm moving fast. I remember I had a coach say to me once:

“You have to imagine you're like the bus driver, right? You're pulling up to the bus stop and all your employees are at the bus stop. But sometimes you're moving so fast, you open the door and you close it and start driving down the road before anybody has had a chance to get on. If you want to bring people with you on this journey, you have to slow down. You have to slow the bus down to their pace because your pace is the pace of an immature entrepreneur. These people took a job; they're not entrepreneurs. If they were, they'd start their own companies. The things you believe and the way you think is different from the way they think. If you're going to be an effective leader, you need to think the way they think.”

Three leaders in my company have moved up substantially. Even though they're not entrepreneurs, I have to remind them to slow it down a little bit. Listen to your employees and make sure they feel heard. Sometimes you might have a conversation where it's just about hearing them, not responding. Hearing them and saying, “I appreciate you sharing that with me. I want to let that sink in for a little bit.” Give them the respect of actually pausing to consider what they told you and recognizing how it might impact things because your initial response might be different than your response 24 hours later. That reminds me of the 24-hour rule. At times you get frustrated; don't do anything for 24 hours. The situation is usually not as bad as it seems at that moment and your response, 24 hours later, could be much more measured. 

As a leader, I always view myself as the head football coach. I'm leading people on the field who could be a running back that fumbled the ball or a quarterback who threw an interception. My job is to help motivate my people and inspire them to get back out on the field and work hard to win the game. What happened is in the past: the interception, the fumble, those are in the past. I need to build them up. The game is still going, so it’s important that I don't start trying to dissect everything in the middle of it. 

I think as a leader, you have to show a ton of empathy for your people. You have to consider where your employees are emotionally when you are speaking with them. If they are struggling with a problem, build them back up and say “Hey, we're going to talk about it, but not right now. Let's go fix the problem first and then we'll talk about it.” First fix the problem, whether it’s with this employee or related to something else. Then, talk about what went down.

I'm a big believer in reading leadership books to improve my own personal performance. I'm also a big believer in coaching. I now own a coaching company that provides holistic coaching opportunities to employees at all levels of companies, a new service to the professional coaching industry. Historically, employee coaching is not something people have experienced unless they reached the senior executive level; we’re changing that. I believe that's been a missing ingredient, where if we want to level up employees to become future managers and future leaders, we need to give them the tools to do it. I've had the benefit of having an executive coach for 20 years, and it has aided my personal and professional development immensely. I believe a great way to grow is to have access to great mentors and great coaches. As a result, my advice on how to evolve as a leader is to seek outside counsel.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Rod: One piece of advice I wish I'd been given when starting new businesses is to, as quickly as I can, work my way out of a job. I’d make sure to replace myself with other people because I want to lead leaders. Get leaders in all the critical roles and have proactive employees in the roles that don't require leaders. Initially, I don't need a sales leader over a salesperson, because my goal is that I'm the sales leader. That salesperson is reporting to me. Once I get three or four salespeople, then I'm going to hire a sales leader.

If I can work my way out of each job, that means I'm scaling my business. That's the advice I would give anybody these days: as quickly as possible, take yourself out of all nonessential jobs and put yourself in a position as CEO, visionary, and culture-setter. Prioritize becoming a true leader of leaders because then you can scale your business.

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Rod: Now, when I counsel newer entrepreneurs, I share with them three key takeaways that contributed to my growth as an entrepreneur. First, don’t do any job you can get somebody else to do. Even if you are trying to save money. Hire affordable, part-time employees to fill human resources, accounting, or legal positions, so you can focus on what only you can do. Second, trust your people and let them make mistakes; failure is the best teacher. Most failures aren’t fatal to a business, so let them find their way rather than always making decisions for them. If you rob the opportunity for your employees to act autonomously, you take away the education they gain from trying something on their own and succeeding or failing. Finally, keep your long-term vision front and center at all times. As a founder or CEO, it is your responsibility to take your company and all of your people to the “promised land” you envisioned for your business. Always remember where you want to go, and build your people and your workplace culture in that direction.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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