Growth & Grit, from Co-Founding to (Partial) Exit

The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests

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Todd and Jannetta Litzman built, evolved, merged or sold and have been running a software business for the last 25+ years. In this episode, Todd shares their growth journey from cashier to CEO, from technology before laptops and handheld devices to giant handheld calculator-looking things and Palm Pilots to iPads, and most interestingly (to me at least) how grit and asking questions paved their way to success.

15:40 - on why Todd joined Vistage: “A big advocate of Vistage…getting your leadership peers around a table that didn’t have a vested interest in your company and they would give you really good solid feedback and objective advice…you want to be a leader who works on the business and not in the business…and I could never do that.”

20:15 - on the early Covid lockdown days: “We were fortunate…from the pandemic and lockdowns and the slowdown… the momentum that (a competitor) would have had…came to an abrupt halt, which was good for us. In that period, we communicated better with our customers than we’ve ever done in the entire 20-plus years.”

25:15 - “The red thread…is that you have constantly been asking customers, asking peers, learning from customers and learning from peers by doing webinars,... providing information and asking for information…your growth trajectory would have been impossible without the dedication to asking, asking, asking.”

26:59 - “Our team was very balanced in their approach on customer outreach, and listening through customer service to what people were talking about, and visiting in person.”

28:08 - “What it boils down to is, it’s not always money that makes a business successful. It’s the people within that business that make that business successful.”

28:27 - “That is a form of grit: the dedication to asking, asking, asking, but also balancing between the confidence of ‘hey, I’ve got the best thing’ and balancing that with the ‘I wonder if we should ask somebody.’”

30:39 - “Our executive meetings were feisty. If you don’t listen to what our internal team says, as much as our customers, we’ll do it the wrong way. It was good and healthy conflict.”

31:55 - “You’ve got to have an open mind. Whenever there is more than one person in the room, there’s gonna be tension. And that’s good as long as it’s healthy and mutually respectful.”