You Can’t Buy Culture: Lessons from 40+ Acquisitions

Episode Summary

In this episode, Rob sits down with Eddie Solomon, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Net at Work, a leading technology advisor to SMBs. Eddie shares the lessons he’s learned from leading over 40 acquisitions, building a 450-person remote workforce, and fostering a strong company culture over nearly three decades. They dive into the strategic importance of talent in acquisitions, the balance between intrapreneurship and structure, and the deliberate efforts required to keep remote teams engaged and growing. Whether you're scaling your company or navigating post-acquisition integration, this conversation is packed with actionable insights.

Key Takeaway

A successful business isn’t just built on clients—it’s built on people. Companies that prioritize talent integration during acquisitions, invest in leadership development, and take a deliberate approach to culture in remote environments will be best positioned for long-term growth.

 

Questions I Ask Eddie

[03:21] How do you assess talent during the acquisition process?

[7:32] How important is cultural alignment in a deal?

[10:28] How has your company culture evolved over 30 years?

[12:32] What are the biggest trade-offs that come with scaling a business and going remote?

[17:13] What do you do to keep remote teams aligned and engaged?

[18:37] How do you train leaders to manage effectively in a remote-first company?

[20:28] What does career development and internal mobility look like at Net at Work?

 

More About Eddie Solomon:

Check out Net at Work

Connect with Eddie on LinkedIn

 

More About Rob Levin  & WorkBetterNow:

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Follow Rob Levin on Linkedin.

Follow WorkBetterNow on LinkedIn.

 

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Episode Transcript

Eddie Solomon (00:00):
The first transaction we ever did, we didn't have any of this experience, was learning by making mistakes, failing forward, as they say.

(00:01):
Subscribe now to never miss an episode. For more resources, visit great talent podcast.com where you can download this episode's free worksheet designed to help you apply today's insight to your business. And now here's your host, Rob Levin.
A seasoned entrepreneur, and strategic leader, Eddie is deeply focused on creating a strong workplace culture, supporting digital transformation, and driving long-term client success. Eddie, it's awesome to have you on the podcast. Let's dive in, but before we do, I just want to say to the audience, I've known Eddie and his brother, who's the Co-CEO, Alex Solomon for over 20 years now, and it's been amazing to watch what you guys have done, you and your teams have done with Net at Work over the years. It's just been awesome to watch that and I'm just thrilled to have you here today.
But yeah, we've done quite a few, we still continue to do that, and it's been an amazing learning experience from the first one to what it is we do today.
Great question. So, I just by way of background, what we do as you know, but just for the greater audience we are a professional services organization, we implement technology solutions for small to mid-size companies nationally, so everything we do is based on our knowledge, our expertise, the tools we use and the relationships that we develop with our clients; which means, that talent is all we have. Like, we don't build houses, we don't make food, we're all about the conversations we have internally with each other, with our teams, and with our clients.
So the talent that comes in, having those people join our organization is how we maintain the relationships with the clients, so, it is super key. As far as culture goes, that's tricky, that's been certainly something that we've constantly improved, and continue to evolve, and how we think about that.
Oh, yeah, once the owner is comfortable to discuss the transaction with their employees, which takes a bit of time because the first thing that happens is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, right? And once they announce, we have a session with our leadership team, their entire team, we introduce ourselves and one of the first things we say is, we want you to interview us and we wanna earn the right for you to work.
So that was a massive learn and curve, we never did that again. Now, the employee engagement in advance of the deal, is what takes the longest amount of time, and is the most sensitive, and we spend so much time with one-to-one discussions with each and every single one of them.
It's much more important for us to bring on the talent than the clients. Now, of course, the clients pay the bills and that's where we wanna grow and continue to add value because we do so many different things that we wanna be able to continue to add value to the client's business, the client experience and the client journey is what Net at Work is all about, but, without the employees joining, it makes it very difficult to engage with those clients because it's new, everybody's nervous, it's a very important part of their business.
Not saying that new customers are easy, but, you know, everything's just a lot easier if you have the right talent on board.
Yeah, even before the pandemic, we were about 50/50 remote. We had a a larger footprint in New York City, which is still our headquarters, and we still have an office there; we had about 20,000 square feet, we're down to less than 10. And it's set up as a kind of like a facility for meetings and events, some people work there on a more regular basis, but primarily it's where people get together.
And then, as you get more experience, you get older, you learn, you calm down a little bit, you realize that it's all about the culture of the organization; we hope that we're hiring very motivated people who wanna do a fantastic job and love what they do, and then we try to inspire them to really be part of our purpose and make an impact with our clients, and the culture makes a big difference.

Rob Levin (00:12):
Yeah. In one of the talks that I do, I talk about how, of course it's easiest to set the tone and create the values on day one, and then a lot of companies are in the same shoes that you were, which is, hey, we didn't really get to that, we did not really appreciate its significance in its importance and, some companies never get there, and I think their success gets limited by that. But, I think when you do do that, it's funny, I talk about the same thing, it's about even if you're 20 years in, define those values, make 'em a tiny bit aspirational because again, you're always stretching, and it really becomes powerful.

Eddie Solomon (00:13):
I think, yeah, I'm sure we've made many trade offs over the years in the way that we, I was, when we started the business, Alex and I were very much more in control of everything that happened in the company to an nth degree, which probably, you know, is the way young entrepreneurs all behave.
But at the same time as you get larger, you need to institutionalize, I read this Harvard Business Review article years ago, and it talked about how somebody had a company and he needed to do work in Asia, he needed to do manufacturing in Asia, and he hired somebody, and gave this person complete control, and he was very intrapreneurial.

Rob Levin (00:15):
You just reminded me of a conversation I had with Alex, maybe five, six years ago, maybe a little bit more, and he said, you know, you think when you're a $3 million company, you kind of made it through all the hard stuff, right? And then you get to 10, and I'm making up the numbers, and then there's like a whole bunch of challenges, and then you think you made it there and you're like, you're good, and then you're at 20, it's like, wait, where did these challenges come from? Yeah.
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Then you just have to be deliberate, it's not something you can take for granted, that's really the difference. Now, thinking about getting people together and making sure that everybody understands what our values are, how important they are.
But every single day; since the pandemic's obviously over, and that's kind of morphed into "Connect at Work", so it's still happening. It's not with the same impact of people just being nervous and alone because of the world, what was going on in the world, but it's still something we continue to do.

Eddie Solomon (00:19):
That's a great question. And just from a, coincidentally, from a timing perspective we just had our first session this past week for our leaders.
They're more about mentorship, career development, who do you enjoy working with? We have a woman at Work Mentorship program. So again, it's all about being deliberate, and the mentorship program is somebody who's more senior within the organization with more experience and a more junior person, and there's a formal mentorship process that our COO Gail started some years ago, and it's just working really well, and they, they have events, and this program is, we've do it every single year. So again, it's really more about focusing. I think of it this way, all the money we're saving on rent, you can spend it on these types of things.
And I didn't get the response I thought I was going to get. Right. And I'm like, what's going on? They said, well, you know, there has to be an opportunity for them to grow, we wanna introduce 'em to, to an opportunity where they feel like there's a career path for them.
And we have somebody, who's been with us for over 25 years; she started out as head of professional services, then she moved to head of HR and now she's head of learning and development. And that's your full-time job starting from what we call first year associates, hiring young people outta school after they graduate, we put them through our one year rotation, then they get placed at different business units, starting with those programs and then having learning and development and career development for our teams, we brought in consultants for leadership development.

Rob Levin (00:23):
Thanks, Eddie. See you soon.