The 1000-Day CEO
The 1000-Day CEO is a show for private equity sponsors and the CEO operators who run their portfolio companies. Host Bill Canady of the 80/20 Institute breaks down how value actually gets created inside a portco — finding the number, building the team, and turning the first 1,000 days of a hold into durable EBITDA and a clean exit. Direct, practical, and built for the people accountable for the outcome.
Episodes
Hire for the mission, then test the evidence. JG Christman, Managing Partner at DHR Global, joins Bill Canady in EP32 on defining the job, assessing an executive's contribution and developing the team before replacing it.
Takeaways: use 360-degree references; clarify goals; keep people accountable as AI becomes infrastructure; assess progress at days 30, 100 and 1,000.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Show opening
01:03 When the mandate changes<...
Can your company thrive after you step aside?
Tom Gallagher, CEO and President of Diversified Automation, joins Bill Canady on strategy and succession. Tom explains a $30M-plus pivot to core work, stronger project execution and a deliberate CEO handoff.
IN THIS EPISODE
• Choose a clear market position
• Turn strategy into delivery
• Transfer authority and relationships
CHAPTERS
00:00 Show opening
EP30: Declining sales. Lost trust. David March, CEO of Concierge Power & Capital, shares the customer-and-employee focus behind a software turnaround he helped lead as EVP of sales and marketing.
IN THIS EPISODE
Rebuild customer trust and employee belief; celebrate shared wins; design clear incentives; make difficult personnel decisions.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Show opening
00:21 Welcome and David March
00:53 Concierge means c...
Great tech needs easy adoption.
James Bates and Bill Canady discuss AdviNOW, automation, onboarding, and founder dependence.
James believes AdviNOW can increase practice profit by 1,000%.
TAKEAWAYS
• Measure before automating.
• Protect essential capabilities.
• Make adoption easy; preserve human judgment.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:55 An engineer looks inside healthcare
05:48 Patient intake and the digital front door
08:36 What should st...
Cash can run short even when a business reports profit. Rob Santana and Ken Kelly join Bill Canady with two perspectives on the Kelly Roofing rescue: the financial diagnosis and the owner’s return.
Rob explains how he tested the cash forecast and confronted the decisions it revealed. Ken describes the buyback, rebuilding customer and vendor trust, and giving the team clear priorities for the restart.
For CEOs an...
Would a buyer want the business you are building?
Matt Tortora, founder of Drive Equity, joins Bill Canady to explore what makes a founder-owned company more valuable—and why exit preparation starts years before a sale.
A strong profit number is only part of the story. Matt and Bill discuss founder dependence, customer concentration, recurring revenue, gross margins and clean financials through a buyer's eyes. They explain why ...
You've built a successful business. What should that success make possible?
Bill Canady and Bob Smith discuss purpose, family wealth and civic leadership.
Bob draws on advising families and board service at Ohio Northern University and JobsOhio. He explores life beyond a job title, how to contribute on a board, and where charitable giving can matter. He also recalls Ohio's pandemic response and the need to understand conc...
Growing internationally can stretch your cash, your team, and your ability to stay in control.
Glenn Grow, founder and CEO of Innovasia, joins Bill Canady to explain how he built a business across Asia through customer problem-solving, local trust, and disciplined delegation.
An anchor customer gave Glenn the opportunity to expand—and the obligation to deliver. He shares the cash pressure of importing materials and waiting for ...
Can your business run without you?
Nitin Khanna of N3 Business Advisors and Bill Canady explore how to build a business buyers can trust.
From the vacation test to cash flow and succession, learn to document work and delegate decisions in the first 100 days.
IN THIS EPISODE
• Test owner dependence.
• Track cash, receivables and job profit.
• Delegate more decisions by day 100.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:59 Profitable vs. transferable
03:...
When a key employee leaves, how much of your company's know-how walks out the door?
Brian McWhorter, founder and CEO of Bravura-AI, joins Bill Canady to explore how CEOs can make industrial knowledge easier to find, use, and retain—and where AI fits into a private equity value-creation plan.
Brian shares an early plant troubleshooting story that predates his AI work, then explains how organizing engineering information can help...
Most companies say they hire for character. Then they let a résumé decide who gets through the door. What talent are they missing?
In EP19 of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill Canady sits down with JR Butler, founder and CEO of Shift Group, to explore how leaders can identify resilience, coachability, curiosity, and team-first drive before a candidate has the credentials to prove it.
A former Holy Cross hockey player and technology sales leader...
Great technology does not become a great business on its own. The breakdown often occurs when founders must convert technical progress into investor confidence, customers, and enterprise value.
In this episode of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill Canady speaks with Heath Naquin, Senior Vice President of Innovation & New Ventures at the University City Science Center and founder of Forged Catalyst Group.
Heath explains why capital is often n...
Most companies try to buy attention. Ted Wright explains how CEOs can earn something more valuable: a story customers genuinely want to share.
In this episode of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill Canady sits down with Ted Wright, CEO of Fizz and a pioneer in modern word-of-mouth marketing. Ted breaks down how leaders can turn customer advocacy into a disciplined growth system using Story–Target–Goal and AIR: Authentic, Interesting,...
When a company's plan drifts, the usual response is another off-site and a new three-year strategy. Bill Canady argues that a tenured PE-backed CEO needs something more concrete: updated arithmetic, one page, and 100 days.
In this episode of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill explains how to reset a plan three years into the hold—after the market multiple has moved, debt paydown has become a fact rather than an assumption, and the board h...
Every book on taking a new job says to spend the first 90 days listening. But if you’re a private-equity-backed CEO, that advice can cost you the seat—because while you’re listening, the board is deciding whether it still believes the plan.
In this episode of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill Canady lays out exactly how to take command of a company in the first 100 days:
• Days 1–14: Reconstruct the numbe...
There’s a number that may decide whether you keep the CEO job—and it isn’t in your budget or operating plan. It lives in the underwriting created before you took the seat, and your board is already measuring your performance against it.
Your operating budget is bottom-up: what the team believes it can sell and what it expects to spend. The investor’s underwriting is top-down: what must happen for the people w...
AI can make a strong business faster. It can also make a weak business fail faster.
In this episode of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill Canady sits down with Chris Maresca, Founder and Managing Partner of C32, to explain why technology—especially AI—cannot repair a broken operating model.
They discuss:
• Why operating discipline must come before automation
• What private equity investors often miss during technical and operationa...
What happens when five people inside the same company give five different answers to one simple question: “What are we trying to accomplish this year?”
In Episode 2, Bill Canady explains why one clear, measurable goal can outperform a plan containing 25 competing initiatives. You’ll hear how one manufacturer generated $6 million in additional EBITDA in nine months by aligning the organization around one number and ...
Your P&L shows averages—but profit doesn’t live in averages. It lives at the intersection of a specific customer buying a specific product.
In Episode 3, Bill Canady explains how the 80/20 Engine reveals which customers and products generate your profit—and which ones quietly consume it. In a typical middle-market business, the best 20–25% of customers can produce more than 100% of total profit because th...
What does it take to turn a garage startup into a global company—and keep it alive when revenue falls more than 80%?
In this episode of The 1000-Day CEO, Bill Canady sits down with David Socha, founder and CEO of Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company. David shares how he moved from chasing a professional hockey career to building a plush-toy business whose products are sold in more than 90 countries.
David explains how saying yes to...
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