February 24, 2025 • 53 mins
Join us for an insightful conversation with Heather Zorge, CFO of evolvedMD, as she shares her journey from PricewaterhouseCoopers to leading in the fast-paced world of integrated healthcare. Heather’s career isn’t just about climbing the corporate ladder—it’s about aligning personal values with professional impact. She breaks down her experience in integrating behavioral health into primary care and the unique challenges of working in a venture-backed company.
Alongside our hosts, Ashley and Rick, Heather dives into the lessons learned from career pivots, leadership challenges, and the importance of choosing a company that aligns with your values. Ashley also reflects on her time as CFO at Western Window Systems, sharing a pivotal moment that reinforced the balance between innovation and operational integrity.
This episode gets real about leadership, trust, and work-life balance—how to build strong teams, communicate effectively during rapid growth, and set boundaries that protect both professional success and personal well-being. With candid stories and actionable insights, this conversation is packed with wisdom for anyone looking to grow in their career while staying true to themselves.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Confidence Curve with Ashley and
Rick Bowers, where personal andprofessional journeys define
the art of scaling withconfidence.
Whether you're a businessleader navigating change or
someone seeking personal growth,this podcast offers insights
and actionable advice to helpyou thrive.
Now let's dive into today'sconversation with our incredible
(00:26):
guest.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome.
Here we are with the ConfidenceCurve podcast from Apex GTS
Advisors.
My name is Ashley Bowers and myco-host, business partner and
husband, Rick Bowers, is herewith me Today.
We are welcoming a very specialguest.
I first met her on a panelseveral months back and we
really aligned.
I think she's done amazingthings, scaling organizations
(00:51):
and really developing her teamand keeping it all together in
the process.
We have Heather Zorg with ustoday.
Cfo of EvolveMD.
Heather welcome, Thank you.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and what of what
brought you to your current role, and then we'll get started
with some conversation.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
First, thank you both , ashley Rick, for inviting me.
I'm so excited.
This is my first podcast, sosuper fun.
So I'm Heather Zorge.
I'm the CFO of EvolvedMD.
I've been in the business forabout almost nine months going
on.
Evolved is a small businessworking on being big.
(01:28):
It's actually the smallestbusiness I've been in before,
which is really exciting.
What we do is we integratebehavioral health, mental health
, into the primary care setting.
So our co-founders, eric Oslundand Steve Bilgin, created the
organization mid-2015 and havebeen off to the races since then
(01:50):
.
We contract with some of thelargest delivery arm health care
providers, primary careproviders in the Valley, and we
really work to put ourbehavioral health managers into
the primary care setting and toprovide them the mental health
support that they need, whilealso keeping the primary care
doctor in the loop.
So it's really cool.
It's very innovative.
I'm so grateful to be there.
(02:12):
I started my career here inArizona at
PricewaterhouseCoopers,graduated from ASU, really grew
up here.
Arizona is near and dear to myheart.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
I choose to be here.
I graduated from ASU with mydegree in accounting, went into
Big Four PricewaterhouseCoopers,spent five years here, did all
large public audits just reallyended up met one of my best
(02:35):
mentors.
I think my first year is when Imet her.
I moved to DC, was in the DCoffice for about three years,
left Big Four and went to Europe.
It was really exciting withthat mentor.
I was the head of finance for alarge oil company over there in
Switzerland, did that for threeand a half years and then in
(02:57):
that time I have a great husband25 years, his name is Neil, my
best friend.
Years.
His name is Neil, my bestfriend, and we have two boys
that are now 21 and 19.
So during all that moving wemoved to Europe.
My husband decided to reallycouldn't work under my visa, so
he was a stay at home dad for awhile, which was amazing, very
(03:20):
well educated stay at home dadhe's so good at it.
And then we did that for threeand a half years and just
decided we needed to either staythere or come home, and home
for us was here, and then Ireally got this.
I'm in this niche where I havespent since 2010,.
(03:41):
When we moved back, I've beenthe CFO, coo of various
companies in the valley, themajority of them being private
equity backed or founder-led.
Looking to how do I make thisthing grow and scale, how do I
have the exit I want?
Do I want to get my first money?
All those things.
(04:02):
So I've been in.
Honestly, I don't think I'vebeen in the same industry twice
and, yeah, I love supportingamazing CEOs and founders that
take really big chances and thenI can come alongside them and
help them scale.
Help them scale.
(04:27):
So and and and EvolvedMD.
What led me there is I waslooking for a place that really
fit my culture, fit meculturally.
I'm at a stage in my career nowwhere I don't have to let the
company choose me.
I can choose them and I can bereally intentional about that
and Evolved.
I know Centauri Minor is ourchief of staff and I've known
him for years and I can bereally intentional about that
and evolved.
I know Centauri Minor is ourchief of staff and I've known
(04:48):
him for years and I just knew ifhe was part of it was.
He was there, the culture wasgoing to be great, and then I
met Eric and I met Steve and allthe team and it's just they're
so great and what I mean.
How often do you get to useyour professional skill set in a
business that is doing so muchgood in the world and that's
(05:09):
really having fun using my brain, learning and doing good, so it
was really unique.
That's me.
That's how I got here.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
So what's the biggest surprise?
Or aha, being in a smallcompany now, because you've been
with some big companies for awhile.
So what is that thing?
Are you just like?
This is amazing.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, I found myself.
So I, when, when I uh look atissues or problems, I I tend to
say there's someone here,there's someone smarter than us,
whatever that has done thisbefore.
So let's not spin our wheels,let's go find that, that nugget,
that smarter person, and andmake it simpler for ourselves,
(05:49):
and not only because of the sizeof Evolve but because of what
we're trying to do.
There are instances where I'mlike huh, I actually like I
don't know that there's going tobe an easy.
I think we're going to have tojust make a decision, fail fast
and hope and then know we haveto be on the lookout.
(06:10):
So that's been one thing, thatI've said that more often.
The other thing is we'reventure-backed, and that's new
to me.
I primarily lived in either thepublic or the private equity
world and I had heard therewould be differences, but I
didn't totally understand right,what would that mean?
And it is different and I think, even operating in a position
(06:34):
where you're, you know you'rehaving to really intention.
You always think about cashflow.
As a CFO, you always thinkabout your runway, but this is a
place where you're thinkingabout it even more and you have
to be really strategic aboutthat, which you always are, but
this is a different level ofpressure when you're in a VC bag
, so it's things like that.
I think one thing that's beenreally interestingly surprising
(06:58):
is this business is actuallyweirdly pleasantly surprising in
the humans that they'veinvested in how they do things
Like for the first time.
I, you know, the team Iinherited is so great and
they're, you know, I mean,nobody's perfect, they have
(07:19):
stuff to learn, but boy are theywilling to and they're open and
that's you know, just becauseof who that business is, and so
that's been a little surprising.
I don't know, I haven't seen abusiness like normally.
The businesses I go in are muchlarger and they don't look like
that Right, and so that's beena little pleasantly surprising.
(07:40):
Good, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, and I love the perspective of just like you can
learn from everywhere.
Right, if you want to, you canlearn from anything, anyone, any
situation, any size, any.
Some people close themselvesoff to that.
I'm like you're missing just ahuge opportunity to grow as an
individual and to make even abigger impact If you're a little
bit more curious about thesituation and take that learning
(08:03):
standpoint.
So you mentioned about failingfast, and one of the things I
loved about the panel that weshared together was your
vulnerability and, just beinghonest, of you know letting
other people learn from thosefailures, because that's where
we learn the most right.
You know, we all have ourstories of getting it right, but
the getting wrong ones usuallyhelp people out a lot more.
So can you share a time when,time when you faced a
(08:24):
significant failure, either inyour career or within an
organization, and just how didyou handle it?
How did you rally your team tobe resilient in that time?
Speaker 3 (08:32):
as well, yeah, um, I'm going to give you a two one
that I had to rally myself andone where I had to probably
rally myself and my team, I'llbe honest.
I mean there's a lot of those,so a really significant one.
I had the pleasure of being theCFO of Western Window Systems,
(08:53):
which was a really fast-paced,innovative window and door
manufacturer here in the ValleyAmazing team, such a fantastic
culture, and we had leadershipprinciples there that our CEO
was very intentional about, andthe first one was love people
first.
The sixth one was do hardthings.
(09:14):
Another one was think gray andlike.
There were so many and they allcontradicted each other and
when I was there, I had honestly, it was my first time in
manufacturing I at first, uh,when I got there, they had no
cost accountant.
I'm like that feels not great.
Let's maybe fix that.
(09:35):
And the systems weren'tfantastic.
So there's any number of thingsright Getting in the way of
getting um, inventory right, anynumber of things right getting
in the way of getting inventoryright.
And we had it was after we hadbeen acquired.
So we were now on more of apublic, we were acquired by a
(09:56):
public company, obviously veryimportant to get things right.
I understand that, and we had areally big miss, one of the
biggest misses I've had in myaccounting, and it was multiple
hundreds of thousands of dollarsthat we had missed in AP.
So it was the wrong way as well.
It was one of those things thatshouldn't happen, because you
(10:18):
know your last control with youraccounts payable is your
vendors yelling at you.
You know what I learned in thatmoment If your vendor doesn't
have a clue, you cannot at allrely on that.
And what I, what I found inthat moment was one I had to own
(10:43):
it.
We had missed some basics, butI also had to figure out why.
Because I had built the teamwas fantastic and what I
realized through the learningand what I had to rally my team
around was one we have to learnfrom this and we can't keep it
to ourselves.
So this think gray ideaacknowledging failure, being
(11:04):
curious, acknowledging failurebeing curious.
So I had to swallow my ego andgo talk and pull my CIO, pull my
VP of product, my CEO, sit in aroom and be like guys, I don't
know how I missed this.
We have a fundamental problemin what's happening and I don't
(11:26):
think it's just the AP was wrong, I think, and I don't want to
miss that moment, but it takesme saying I failed and I really
don't want to do it again.
And I'm going to acknowledgethat while I'm the CFO of this
company and accounting is mything, I need your help.
And what I learned through thatmoment was it's okay and people
want to help you, they want tobe involved, and so you're
(11:49):
almost denying them that by notletting them in, and I would
have missed it and I would havenot learned from that.
And the other thing which Ireally had to help my team
because they all obviously feltterrible.
It was a terrible timing You'vejust been acquired, right,
(12:10):
it's's just nothing.
It was just nothing good aboutit.
And I told my team I'm like,look, I'm gonna, I own this.
We try to do really hard thingshere, really quickly, and I love
that.
And what I forgot to tell youis I need you to do that and you
can't let go of thefundamentals.
You can't like we had stoppedreconciling something to go off
(12:30):
and do something cool.
And so it's my moment of alwaysremember, trust but verify.
Never lose sight of thosethings that you know.
You get excited to go try itand help and whatnot, and you
can sometimes get into thatmindset of it won't happen to me
and it can, and we can't dothat to our companies.
So that's a really big one.
(12:52):
That I would say was a rallyingmoment for myself and my team
and it still sits and resonateswith me and I still have to work
on it.
Honestly, I trust too quickly,so I always have to work on that
.
So I mean, throughout thatstory you could hear the
discomfort and I still have towork on it.
Honestly, I trust too quickly,so I always have to work on that
.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Yeah, yeah, so I mean throughout that story.
You could hear the discomfort.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Oh, I did, yeah, and it was years ago, yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
And so you feel those things.
But there's a lot of peoplethat have written books and
research and things out therethat discomfort is where growth
comes from.
Yeah, and if you're in asituation where it's always
comfortable, are you reallygrowing and doing some of those
kinds of things?
And so how do you maybe with asmall company it's more about
(13:34):
yourself than it is from theteam, since it's a smaller
company but how do you help theteam grow from some of those
uncomfortable moments or, say,get out of your comfort zone a
little bit so that we can allget better?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
um, I think the key I've found is letting them see
that I don't know everything.
And one could argue I've been acfo for a long time, I'm not
going to talk about that and.
And so one could argue I shouldjust know all the things and
what I find to your point,ashley, like I don't know all
(14:09):
the things, even though I'vebeen a CFO for God knows how
many years, and so I reallyfocus with my team on showing
them it's okay to not know, butyou got to go figure it out and
it's okay to fail and we have tolearn from it.
So it's like all those andspulling the ands together that I
(14:32):
found works.
Like I had one of mycontrollers tell me I was the
first boss.
That it's really interesting.
I had one controller tell me Iwas the first boss that made her
feel safe to fail and thegrowth she felt from that was
tremendous because she wasn'tscared.
She wasn't scared to come.
Oh, heather, I missed this, Iwhat you know, whatever.
(14:53):
And I'm like, yeah, you missedit.
And what?
What did we learn from it andhow do we fix it right?
The other thing was and I alsohad one of my VPs tell me I
didn't let her fail enough, andthat was very early in my career
.
Those are two very differentmessages, and so I try to learn
from what my team is telling meas well.
(15:14):
There isn't one size fits allfor any of them, and so how do
you adjust yourself to?
You, know what they need, butalso hold, like I always tell
people, my expectations are veryhigh and I'm I had to get okay
with that, but I'm also going tocome alongside you as we, as we
(15:34):
work toward, towards it, andwe're going to be I'm going to
be compassionately accountable,but we, we are going to do the
thing and it's going to be hardand you know you're gonna,
you're gonna learn and we'regonna be clear and kind not nice
which there's a very bigdifference.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I don't know, it's always just a phase.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Uh clear, as kind that's exactly what we would say
all the time, for sure yeah,exactly so you mentioned a
mentor, um, in the beginning ofthe conversation.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
when you're introducing yourself, how would
you say that mentors haveimpacted you throughout your
career and is there a piece ofadvice that you received early
on potentially that has kind ofstuck with you, that you revisit
when you're going through someof the harder times?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
in your career, oh, my God, all the time.
I think that one thing I'velearned in my career is, if
you're willing to listen, almostall people have something to
teach you and you have to kindof get out of your own way and
your own head and your own egoand all those things, or even
the personal side of it, like,because sometimes you can hear
(16:39):
things that could make you kindof curl in on yourself and and
um so, uh, there's been,honestly, I've had so many.
I mean there's a couple littletidbits.
Um, my first mentor that um Imentioned, uh, she's phenomenal
and such a strong female leaderin oil and gas um, which is
(17:02):
crazy.
Leader in oil and gas, which iscrazy.
And she taught me that andthat's really where I taught.
I learned just to try hardthings.
And I remember one time shetold me I was a senior associate
at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
I was acting as a manager ontwo of her large public jobs.
(17:22):
So I was up and she's handed mein accounting you have to do
something called.
It used to be called thephysical, who knows what it's
called now but it's this hugelist of things you have to do to
make sure that your publicfiling is accurate.
She's like here, do this.
I'm like I don't know.
Like what me?
I don't, I don't do that.
(17:42):
That's not what.
Like, senior managers do thatbecause it's so important.
She's like go do it, if youdon't come back to me with a
zillion questions.
You did it wrong.
And I'm like that's actuallysuper fair and interesting.
And she taught me, like mysecond year, that you need to
like working for leaders andyourself.
(18:05):
If you just go away and try todo something with and acting
like I know what I'm doing, it'snot going to get you anywhere
and most humans actually don'texpect you to do that.
So it allows you to try reallyhard things and I think that
what that taught me is I don'tshy away and I actually go
towards opportunities that Idon't know what the heck I'm
(18:26):
doing.
Like when I went to Europe, Ihad no idea I went over there to
be the head of internal audit.
I'm like, okay, super cool,I've been head of, you know,
senior manager at PwC.
I can be head of internal auditall day long.
I get there and our head offinance was really struggling.
And so, karen, within I don'tknow, it was like two weeks.
(18:48):
She's like hey, why don't youjust do the head of finance?
I'm like, do what you want meto do, what?
Yeah, we're going to go publicin three months and I need you
to unwind this, do that, sellthat and okay, whatever You've
told me.
You've shown me that if I try,I can do it, and it just why not
?
And you surround yourself withreally smart people.
(19:10):
You ask curious questions, youmake mistakes and then you're
like, yeah, that kind of sucked,but we can fix it, it'll be
fine.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It reminds me of the conversation that we had.
I was consulting for HomeSmartat the time and the CEO took us
to dinner and was like hey, comeback in.
You know a full-time capacityback at the resident level and I
want to go public.
And I just looked at him atdinner I said like I don't know
how to do that.
I don't think I've never workedfor a public company.
I've never taken a companypublic Like let me hire you a
team that knows what they'redoing.
And he just looked at me andgoes no, hire yourself a team
(19:49):
that can go do it.
But you do it, and I meancandidly.
I remember Googling terms,being on calls with bankers and
lawyers and investment advisorsand sometimes I would get really
frustrated because they wereusing acronyms for things that
they didn't need to use acronymsfor.
But that is part of the processand everyone who worked on that
team just looks back at theentire thing as the biggest
(20:11):
learning moment of their entirecareer, no matter what role they
played.
It was just such a learningmoment because it was really
hard.
We had no idea what we weredoing, but we were determined to
do it right.
What made you do it?
Like, why did you say yes?
I don't know that I've everbeen asked that question.
I think in the moment it wassomething that you know
(20:36):
obviously I hadn't done before.
This is going to sound cheesy.
I think actually, in thatmoment I knew that I would
protect him over the glory ofgoing public.
Yeah, and I knew that by himhaving me do it and surrounding
a team like that's what he waslooking for is for someone to
still, like, have his bestinterests at heart versus
(20:57):
someone who had done it and itwas transactional and yeah, that
can get me a little emotionalat this moment, but like, yeah,
I think keeping the cultureconnecting with the people and
all of that was.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
So he wanted your how he wanted, like how he knew you
would do it and he knew youcould figure out the technical
yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Right, which at times went better than other times,
for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I always find it fascinating how, so many times,
we focus on the what, and it'slike most humans can learn the
what.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, like you can learn how toreconcile the thing or to fix
that thing or to learn thatprocess, but their how?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
yeah, that approach the intention, yeah, the
integrity, the you know the whywell, and that was at the end
when I was exiting and joiningRick and Apex.
One of the things that we wantto do or help business owners
exit right- and go through thatprocess and I called one of our
investment advisors and I saidyou know, I have one question.
Like we hired everyone youreferred to us lawyers, bankers,
(21:57):
like you name it.
We always went back to theirpeople.
We would do our due diligence,interview other people, but we
always went back to their kindof stable of referrals.
And I said you never referred acoach to us.
And he's like what do do youmean?
And I was like for like atmidnight, when I can't get a
model to work and the bankersare going to put us on hold, who
(22:17):
do I call?
You know, when you don't wantto look like you don't know what
you're doing in front ofcertain people, who's that
person?
Just to guide you step-by-stepthrough the process?
That only has our interest atheart, right?
And he actually laughed on thecall and he was like that
doesn't exist, ashley.
So my next question I was likewell, based on what I've done,
do you think I'm qualified to dothat?
(22:38):
Because I feel like that's agap, because it is so stressful.
It's such a crazy stressfulprocess and you just need your
person in your corner as you'regoing through it.
And thankfully he said yes, orI don't.
I don't know that Rick wouldwould have accepted me in apex,
but I don't know, I mean but Ithink some of some of that back
(22:58):
to your question of why you didit.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
it's everything happens for a reason, and the
fact that you had thatopportunity and that that he
trusted you with that, so thatput some more um more behind
what you wanted to accomplishand prove everybody else wrong
because they put timelines on itand you beat the timelines and
all of those things.
But now, having said everythingyou said, what you're doing for
(23:24):
our current clients is amazingthings and it's, I think, going
to lead us into kind of thatnext phase as Apex continues to
grow as well.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
It is fun because, like you know, you're taking
some of the pain away.
You know just that little bit.
You really are.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Probably more than a little bit, I'll be honest,
Having a great advisor thatknows what they are doing and
that you can connect with and bevulnerable with.
Because it's really hard, whenyou're in a C position or higher
VP right to show that I don'tknow and in a really critical
(24:01):
moment, you don't want to showyou don't know and so to be able
to just be like, yeah, I don'tknow how to do this.
Can you help?
Have that bat phone that youcan call?
Have that bat phone that you cancall yeah that bat phone that
you can call is really important.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
So how have you gone about choosing a coach more so
than a mentor?
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, so I do have a coach.
She has changed my life.
I've had a few.
The first couple I had werekind of really early in my
career.
I would say they were chosenfor me.
I'm honestly looking back soglad that that happened because
(24:44):
I don't think I would have knownwhat good looked like.
Because I think you can havecoaches that three varieties,
and I've had three and maybethere's more, but I've had three
.
You have a really great coachthat's focused on making Heather
better in this environment.
How do we make Heather betterfor this role, this environment?
(25:05):
Or you can have a coach that'show do we make this employee
good for this company?
It's a very different tone andtenor and discussion point.
Right, if it's the lens of whatthe coach is is using.
(25:27):
I found Christina I was, uh,giving Christine Christina's
name name when I was goingthrough my biggest failure,
personal, in my first CFO role,and I was one of those people
that always went up and to theright.
I was always promoted early,ranked one at big four, you know
(25:49):
, do all the hard things.
And then my first CFO role, Iran into a pretty big stumbling
block and it could have I don'tthink if I, if I hadn't found
her and gone through that, itcould have really changed the
the direction of my career.
And so Christina is more mycoach and what I would encourage
(26:13):
.
I think all humans I mean I'min behavioral health and I love
it I think all humans needsupport and I think all humans
need someone who has nothing init but a lot of and a lot of
skill to really help not tellyou what to do, but to listen
and guide you to the answer thatyou need to get to, and so what
(26:37):
Christina has done for me isreally help and and she would
when she hears this she's gonnahate that I said because she
always says I do the work, andshe's right, I do the work and
she guides me through the work.
It's a lot of work, it's hard,um.
She focuses on who who's heatherand how do we make heather her
(26:58):
best self, her most confidentself, her most accepted self,
and um this idea of you're in abox and you can be this cfo at
work and this mom and a wife anda sister and a and a daughter
and that right, all the thingsall of us humans are going
through every day and trying toshow up and and manage
everything.
Um, you're just one human andso that that's how I would like
(27:23):
you one.
Don't get a coach.
To get a coach, it's not worthit, it's going to be a waste of
your time and your resources oryour company's resources.
Get a coach because you want toknow who do you want to be
right and and be prepared for itbeing hard and be prepared for
(27:45):
maybe you're not in the rightplace for you and for where you
can show up as your best selfand be prepared like you.
It is a like, and so I've beenwith Christina for, um, it'll be
10 years in May, um, and soit's a lot of work.
I love it and I hate it all atthe same time.
(28:07):
Um, I don't, I actually don'thate it, but sometimes I don't
enjoy her.
Uh, she's making me look atreally hard things, um, and I, I
think also I'll just be real Ithink a lot of how we show up in
high stress situations comesfrom your childhood and past,
things that you haven't, youdidn't even know, you didn't
(28:28):
deal with, but it's driving yourbehavior and to truly accept
yourself, you kind of need toknow that and it's never done,
like I've realized, like whatit's done for me is, I feel I, I
can tell, I can tell when I'mlike little Heather's back, I
need her to go back on theplayground and let adult Heather
continue to to do this because,you know, she's really showing
(28:52):
up right now and so now I'm notshowing up as my best self.
So it just it's really allowedme to accept myself and even
accept all of my multitudes offlaws that I have in every hat
that I wear.
But I'm grateful for it and I'mso glad I did it and I'm, you
know I'm more more content withmyself than I know I would have
(29:14):
been if I hadn't done it.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
This is going to sound like the weirdest analogy,
but I equate coaching, likebeing a coach, to being an
auditor.
Oh, interesting, because whenyou think about it and learning
this.
Trying to go public, we had onebig four company helping us get
ready, but then we had adifferent big four company
actually auditing us and they'relike you pay them, right,
(29:38):
you're technically theircustomer, but they're there
basically to look at everythingand to judge and critique and go
through and form an opinion,right.
And I feel like that's howbusinesses have to look at
coaching, because if I'm payinga coach to coach one of my
executives, I am paying them, Iam the customer as the business,
but they aren't there for me,they're there for that
(29:59):
individual and that coachingmight lead to that individual no
longer being in theorganization and everyone needs
to be okay with it Because ifthey've gone through that
process, it's what was right inthat moment.
So it's almost that same typeof relationship from the
transaction standpoint of I'veheard you know different owners
and things.
So well, if I pay for a coach orI send to a peer advisory group
(30:20):
and they're just complainingabout me, it's like, well, one,
look at you Like that soundslike a you thing.
Yeah, that sounds like a youthing, you know.
But two, if they're needingthat outlet in order for
themselves to grow so they canhandle things better and they
can show up as their best selfevery day.
Why not do that, even if maybeit leads to a relationship
change, right?
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Because either way it's good for them too, right, I
mean, as much as uncomfortableas it is, everybody's better for
it, and we lose that a lot, Ithink.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
It goes to the joke of what if we pay for training
and coaching for our employees,and then they go somewhere else?
And then the other guy sayswell, what if we don't?
And they stay.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I agree with that, so so good.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I love that quote.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
I love that Switching gears just a little bit.
So one of leadership's mostchallenging tasks is balancing
high expectations withsupporting our teams and
developing our people.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So, as a CFO, how do you go about balancing the
development of your people andexecuting the business strategy
at the same time?
How do I do that?
I, I guess I'm very intentionalabout it.
I try to use techniques tofully delegate, which is
different, in my mind, than justdelegation, so not just
(31:45):
delegating the work but alsodelegating kind of the outcome
and knowing that sometimes whenI do that, I and they are going
to fail.
And that's okay as long as weboth learn from it.
(32:08):
And so if because if I don'tfully delegate, I can't pick my
head up, focus on the strategy,it won't allow me to spend the
right amount of time with thehumans that report to me who in
my role I've often found arevery diverse.
(32:28):
So I have, in my current role,I have business intelligence,
implementation, it, accounting,finance, people.
So in that context, if I don'tdelegate, if I don't, I can't
strategically do what I need todo for the business and Eric, my
(32:49):
CEO, I can't be who I need tobe for my peers and I can't be
who I need to be for my team.
So I think full delegation isreally important to being able
to manage both.
I also, I'm very transparentwith my team so they always know
(33:11):
where they're at with me and Idon't hide my expectations.
So I am very clear about whatgood looks like for me.
I do a lot of work to not dothings for them.
I learned that we, we often oneof my my learnings in my career
is I, I love people.
(33:33):
I love seeing my team grow andachieve and become better than
me, which so many have like.
I have one of my past favoritehumans that worked for me.
She's the CFO of a publiccompany in Oklahoma and one
that's a partner in a firm and,like I still talk to them all.
I just it's so great.
(33:54):
So when you love people thatmuch, you're like, ooh, they're
struggling, let me do for you.
And I had to learn that youcan't do that Because then who
fails?
That would be me.
So I try to really keep that inthe forefront of if I see them
struggling, being honest aboutthat, helping them work through
(34:16):
techniques and tools to todelegate right, the urgent, the
important.
I also have I don't rememberwhat it's called but also, what
do we actually not need to bedoing?
Yes, yes, right, the whole cap.
So just being like reallyintentional, knowing, frankly,
that I need to spend most of mytime at this level not doing
(34:37):
things, talking to humans,reviewing thinking.
So that's kind of that mixtureof those things and really it's
clear expectations, outcomes andI again my term is
compassionate accountabilitylike I am going to be super
alongside you and I'm going tohold you accountable and I've
(34:59):
learned you have to have somereally really hard discussions
at times with some of yourfavorite people and, um, and and
it's okay, yeah, it's okay Itry to.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I try to equate delegation with teaching yes
you're not pawning your work offon another person to do it.
You're helping them grow to thenext level and so.
But delegation is probably themost common thing I talk about
when I'm working with differentleaders and things.
They struggle with that becausesometimes they don't trust the
(35:31):
person that they need to do orthey've been burnt on it and
those kinds of things.
So have you had to deal withlike, do I trust this person or
not, and does the delegationsometimes build the trust back?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, I definitely have to do that and I've learned
the hard way that I trust tooquickly and it's really gotten
me in bad in in hard placesbefore.
Um, you know, I I try to besuper intentional on now about
(36:03):
being a trust but verify andalso monitoring the environment,
for because you can get towhere you totally trust someone
and then either something goeson in their life and maybe
they're not super upfront aboutthat and maybe you see a change
in behavior, maybe something inthe environment and work comes
(36:25):
up right, and so I think thatyou need to be able to trust
your team.
But trust is earned and so youreally have to.
Just, it's a constant like I've.
I'll be honest, I I don't thinkI've learned.
I've learned so many thingslike leadership is the hardest
thing and you're never done andyou I don't know that you can
(36:49):
ever like spike that ball right.
It's like culture.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Right, we're like we'll fix the culture.
I'm like, okay, but what doesthat mean?
Right, like we can come in, wecan evaluate, we can evolve, but
you realize, like it's neverdone, you can't put a check mark
on it and say okay, we're done,we're.
You know, and just, I think,when you think you get those
things right is when they becomethe most fragile that's
actually interesting andprobably really true.
Yeah, because you start takingfor granted like okay, we're
(37:13):
good, we're good and then all ofa sudden you have a different
personality come in, or there'ssomething's going on in the
personal life or something whereit's like whoa, what happened?
How did that break?
Speaker 3 (37:21):
yeah, have you guys seen, as you've worked with
companies like what gets in theway, like what are the common
things of either establishingtrust or willingness to let go,
which is almost the same thing,right?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Fear.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's just fear.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Fear is the big one, because fear, like kills
transparency.
It does kill transparency.
When you're not transparentabout what's on your mind, I
mean, then it just it tends tofail.
If you think about the fivedysfunctions of a team trust is
the bottom level.
Results is on the top.
People want results, but theydon't think about what they have
(37:56):
to do to get to the results.
Once you build the trust at thebottom and you can have those
conflicting conversations whereyou're not taking offense to the
conversations and things, andthen you work your way up, then
the results just happennaturally.
It's the same thing with culture.
I think too is like people sayI need to fix the culture.
I don't know that you can fix aculture.
I mean a culture.
A culture is just like in thenatural world.
(38:19):
It's it grows on its own andyou need to make sure that the
environment's right, the leadersare doing the right thing so
that the people feel trusted,and then the culture will just
kind of flourish.
But you don't fix it.
It's not like something that'slike okay, I'm going to send it
to the mechanic.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
That is very fair.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I agree with you, you have to nurture it, yeah and be
intentional about it.
I think right.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, I think the other thing is to speed of
growth.
I think leads to lack ofdelegation and some challenges
in that area because a lot ofcompanies will grow so fast and
they skip steps to implementproper like meeting cadences and
meeting rhythms.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
If you're a.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Vern, harnish fan and communication tools and
resources and process aroundthat.
And so all of a sudden, whenit's being implemented, it feels
like, oh, we're gettingcorporate right, like that's the
top track, that is the toptrack.
Yeah, versus it being somethingthat the team can rely on and
depend on and kind of lean into.
And then I think when you havethat type of really strong
(39:19):
communication cadence, then it'seasier to delegate because you
feel informed too, Because it'snot just about everyone else
feeling informed At the top.
You feel like you're going tolose information and not be in
the know because of that.
I think that speed of growthcan really add to that challenge
.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
It's funny.
I had a conversation just twohours ago and they were talking
about well, this person on theteam doesn't feel like they have
enough information.
So when they're at networkingevents they don't feel like they
have enough information.
So when they're at networkingevents they don't feel like they
can answer questions.
But if I were to tell you allof the things you think you need
to know, then I'm going to sayand you can't say any of that at
a networking event because it'sconfidential, but they feel
(39:57):
better because they're in theknow.
So the problem wasn't that theydidn't have enough information
for the networking event.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It was that they felt like they weren't hearing
something, and so it's like whatis the true issue?
Well, let's be real.
We, when we're making up anarrative.
It's never as good as the truth,we always go to the, to the
negative, when we're recruitingsomething.
Um.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe personal.
So I mean, obviously, hugecareer, um, amazing
accomplishments, um.
But as you mentioned being amom mom, a wife and a dog mom,
now, I thought we had a lot offur babies.
We have three, I have five andthere's cats as well.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Oh goodness, Two dogs , three cats.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, love them all, what has been your secret and I
know it's not beautiful all thetime, because nothing ever is
but what's been your secret ofbalancing, you know, an amazing
career, amazing professionallife and everything at home and
showing up the way that youwould like to on the home front.
It's been a journey.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I think one thing is my husband, his willingness to,
you know, really put aside hiscareer, right, poor guy got his
MBA.
He's always like I'm the mostwell-educated you know CEO of a
(41:13):
home ever.
His willingness to do that.
We made a decision for us.
Personally, I think it's sopersonal how you choose to raise
your family.
We didn't want just for usagain, no judgment of any we
didn't want nannies to raise ourkids, um, and so we just
decided we'd we'll just make do,be a one-income family and and
whatever that looks like.
(41:34):
Um, he, he worked part-time fora long time but it gave him
great opportunities to be asoccer dad and all the things.
And I think for both of us it'sweird, it like worked out.
You know it's not traditional,right, and we both felt awkward
in very specific situations.
You know I'm the, the mom atthe meeting, the, whatever
meeting, parents meeting orwhatnot that nobody knows how to
(41:54):
talk to because I don't knowwhat they're talking about nor
does it it's just not becauseI'm not doing that every day and
my poor husband shows up.
There's never a dad anywhere atany of the meetings, so, which
is fine, it's just what worksfor us.
So I think that support andjust being both of us being
intentional, what partnershiplooks like, and and it's not
(42:14):
been easy we've had rounds andand and really understanding
right, because we both gavesomething up.
I gave up the time with my kids, he gave up his career, and I
think working really hardtogether to to understand that
we both gave something up rightwas important.
And then, honestly for me, um,I had to learn to be very honest
(42:39):
about my boundaries, and thatwas later in my career.
I really and that was a lot ofcoaching, I never, you know I
remember Christina and I talkingand one thing that always
resonated and what really, Ithink, changed it for me is she
(42:59):
said to me Heather, your jobcan't always win, and I don't
know that I had ever thoughtabout it that way that when I'm
choosing to always do that, mykids are losing my husband's,
I'm losing my sister, whoeverright, my mom, all, and it's
like how do you find thatbalance and be comfortable with
(43:22):
what that boundary looks like.
So I just started in my later,when I moved back here, and the
weird thing is, I would say forany working mom, what I found is
just my experience with mychildren is that when they're
younger, they're really focusedon just their world.
(43:44):
So when you're in it, they'resuper thrilled, and when you're
not, they're like whatever I'vegot my, whatever I'm watching or
whatever I'm doing.
And so I did a lot during thattime.
And what shocked me, I'll beperfectly honest, was when we
moved back to Arizona.
I worked in Big Four for almostnine years and I worked a lot.
And then I went to Europe and Ihad never worked more in my
life and so I thought, for sure,right, everyone's going to be
(44:07):
so happy when we come here andI'm like working like normal
human at least my perspective,right.
And my kids were like you'realways gone, you're not showing
up, and it shocked me.
And it rocked me a lot, becausehere I was thinking mom's
winning and now mom's losing,and I didn't want them to feel
that way, um, and so I juststarted being intentional.
(44:29):
Um, when I took my second CFOjob I I still remember the
conversation because it wasreally hard, because I really
wanted the job I said, hey, myson, my sons, are in soccer.
I'm never going to miss a game.
That's just a hard limit for me.
I'm, I, I'm not like I just Idecided how, um, how am I going
to do that?
So that both went, it did, and,and I had to be realistic,
(44:52):
meaning I chose to be a CFO.
I chose to be a CFO that does alot of deals, um, I have
certain standards and so therebythere are going to be times
where I have to work from Hawaiior from that vacation or're
doing deal, and my family had tocome around me on that.
So it's always just thisconstant like, what's going to
work?
What phase in your career areyou in?
(45:13):
And you can like, you can't,you can, and you have to be kind
for your kind, I guess that's.
The other thing is like I neverused to be kind to myself, I
never gave myself any grace andand I'm really try to be
intentionally kind to myself andand you know it's okay if I
screw up for a week and I'll getit right again.
(45:33):
I'm religious pride to bereally religious about working
out, so like doing those thingsthat you know are going to get
you started and are going to getyou to keep cadence.
So that's how I I mean it'smessy and you mess up and you
say sorry and and you know youmake sure that because it's all
important, like I love my jobright and so I.
(45:54):
I don't you know like I, but Iobviously I love my kids and my
husband all the things more likeobviously yeah, but a part a
lot of who I am is who I am as aprofessional Right, and I don't
think that's bad per se.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
My brother last week looks at me and he goes you know
your hobby is working.
And I said what?
And he's like you need adifferent hobby, like your hobby
is just to work Interesting.
And I had never thought of itthat way.
I haven't either.
Yes, I enjoy working Like, Ilove sitting down and you know,
getting into things and comingup with ideas and working Like
(46:28):
and I don't see a challenge withthat.
You're like it works for me.
Yeah, but I think to your pointa book that I read in 23 when I
was kind of making the decisionof when do I need to start
putting some boundaries andthings on.
It was called Breaking theGlass Slipper and it was really
great.
It's kind of like RachelHollis-ish, but what I would say
(46:52):
like more adult.
I think it's Elaine Turnerwrote it and it just really
makes you think through all thedifferent things and being okay
with whatever it is that youwant.
So it's really good about notsaying what's right to want and
what's not, which some of thebooks are right, but really kind
of what is?
I'm actually starting to rereadit again right now because I was
(47:12):
in a different phase.
Then I'm like what differenttips will I pick up from it this
time around?
Right, but I think to what yousaid.
I think you had to have thehard conversation.
I think it's easy, you know,men or women, I think, as we're
working through our careers, tofeel like certain things are
being done to us right, and thatit's required and it's expected
.
But if we never actually are,if we never set the boundary, if
(47:35):
we never articulate theboundary, oftentimes the asks
are coming in because you neversay no, you never say no Right,
or you never ask for help orthose kinds of things.
So how much of it really is onus as individuals?
Speaker 3 (47:46):
I think a lot.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
You know, to raise our hand and use our voice and
put those boundaries up, Becausemost companies are going to
work with that right.
They are If you're giving yourbest whenever you're there and
you're present.
Most companies are going towork with that and we actually
have a client.
They have a rule, as youmentioned, and their rule for
their entire company is nevermiss a game, and it doesn't
matter if it's a game, a dancerecital a gymnastics meet.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
It's the idea.
I love that.
That's so great.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
So for all their kids , it's always you go.
Yeah, I wanted to highlightjust one thing, just because it
brought up.
I had and I think this issomething a lot of people really
struggle with, youngerespecially.
I remember I was in DC, I wasworking fora partner, I was
trying to work part-time in BigFour.
(48:33):
I was the manager of thelargest public client for in the
DC office and I was trying towork part-time for multiple
reasons andI remember I startedfeeling like I was working more
and I was really mad at Larry.
He was my partner and I remembergoing in with all sorts of self
like you know, like just I'mright, feeling right, being so
(48:57):
mad at him.
And he's like you know, heather, it's really interesting, he
goes.
Well, we agreed you were goingto work part-time, right?
Yeah, that's my point.
And he's like I don't workpart-time, true, I'm like where
are we going, like this is goingto be fascinating, where is
(49:17):
this going to go?
And he goes do you think I havein my brain exactly what your
part-time schedule looks like?
I'm like no, he's like do youthink when I need something, I'm
going to like check and makesure am I going to call or send
an email and I'm like you'reprobably going to call or send
(49:39):
an email.
He's like so whose fault is itif you pick it up?
And I was like I just got that.
That's because I'm a veryaccountable person, like if, if
I can figure out where I did itwrong, I am going to own it,
even if I only should own twopercent.
And somebody else shown 98.
I'm like, oh my god it's all myfault yeah, but if we own it we
can fix it, yeah right exactlyand I.
(50:01):
Just that was one of the most um, and I use it with my team all
the time because I often tellthem, like look guys, look guys,
I'm not going to control here'sthe boundaries.
Now if you come to me and sayyou need this and I tell you to
go pound sand, then that's awhole other discussion.
But I am not going to manageyour life for you.
And I think learning that atthat stage in my career was so
(50:23):
powerful for me to like reallyand I mean, obviously I still
had to learn it because I didn'tset boundaries and all the
things, but then I just blamedmyself for it.
At least I knew where thatbelonged.
But I think as we work throughour careers, making that
separation is so important ofwhat should you hold your leader
accountable for versus what doyou need to hold yourself
accountable for?
(50:43):
So it was a good one in mylearnings.
Speaker 4 (50:46):
Really quick before we wrap up.
What was your favorite place tovisit when you lived in Europe?
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Oh boy, favorite.
There was a place, one I loveRome I don't know.
Rome is such an interesting,fascinating, beautiful historic
city, and so I really loved Rome.
My husband and I spent ananniversary in Monaco.
That place is super cool.
(51:14):
And then there was a reallysmall town in Switzerland and
right now my brain is goingabsolutely blank, but hopefully
it might come to me, but it was.
It was basically um, uh, prettyclose to us and it was a little
(51:40):
town that you had to take agondola to and and there was no
cars up there, and then youcould take another gondola, I
think it was to the top of theSchilthorn and it was just such
a neat little town that made youlike it was so Swiss and I
loved that town.
But there's so many greatplaces, I'm so glad I did it.
Yeah, so much.
(52:02):
There was so much eye-openinghappening when you live in
Europe versus being in the US,so it was super great.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yeah, it's amazing.
We love traveling and so it'salways fun to hear people's
favorite places.
So, with that, thank you somuch for being here.
I know that you are hiring andgrowing as an organization, so
if our listeners want to reachout to you or to get in touch
with the company, where shouldthey go?
Speaker 3 (52:26):
EvolvedMDcom we are a really people-first,
culture-first, mission-drivenorganization Lots of opportunity
, tons of great people trying todo good in the world and solve
a really important problemthat's facing every age group
that we have.
And you know, it's just areally incredible place.
I'm on LinkedIn and you knowwe're it's.
(52:46):
It's a just a really incredibleplace.
I'm on LinkedIn and yeah,either way, well, thank you
again.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
Thank you both.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Thanks for tuning in to the Confidence Curve.
We hope today's episode leftyou inspired and ready to
embrace your journey confidently.
Remember whether you're leadinga team, growing your business
or pursuing personal growth,each step forward builds your
curve.
If you enjoyed today'sconversation, don't forget to
(53:19):
subscribe, share and leave us areview For more insights and
resources.
Visit us at apexgtscom.
Until next time, keep climbingthe curve.
Welcome to the Confidence Curve with Ashley and
Rick Bowers, where personal andprofessional journeys define
the art of scaling withconfidence.
Whether you're a businessleader navigating change or
someone seeking personal growth,this podcast offers insights
and actionable advice to helpyou thrive.
Now let's dive into today'sconversation with our incredible
(00:26):
guest.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome.
Here we are with the ConfidenceCurve podcast from Apex GTS
Advisors.
My name is Ashley Bowers and myco-host, business partner and
husband, Rick Bowers, is herewith me Today.
We are welcoming a very specialguest.
I first met her on a panelseveral months back and we
really aligned.
I think she's done amazingthings, scaling organizations
(00:51):
and really developing her teamand keeping it all together in
the process.
We have Heather Zorg with ustoday.
Cfo of EvolveMD.
Heather welcome, Thank you.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and what of what
brought you to your current role, and then we'll get started
with some conversation.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
First, thank you both , ashley Rick, for inviting me.
I'm so excited.
This is my first podcast, sosuper fun.
So I'm Heather Zorge.
I'm the CFO of EvolvedMD.
I've been in the business forabout almost nine months going
on.
Evolved is a small businessworking on being big.
(01:28):
It's actually the smallestbusiness I've been in before,
which is really exciting.
What we do is we integratebehavioral health, mental health
, into the primary care setting.
So our co-founders, eric Oslundand Steve Bilgin, created the
organization mid-2015 and havebeen off to the races since then
(01:50):
.
We contract with some of thelargest delivery arm health care
providers, primary careproviders in the Valley, and we
really work to put ourbehavioral health managers into
the primary care setting and toprovide them the mental health
support that they need, whilealso keeping the primary care
doctor in the loop.
So it's really cool.
It's very innovative.
I'm so grateful to be there.
(02:12):
I started my career here inArizona at
PricewaterhouseCoopers,graduated from ASU, really grew
up here.
Arizona is near and dear to myheart.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
I choose to be here.
I graduated from ASU with mydegree in accounting, went into
Big Four PricewaterhouseCoopers,spent five years here, did all
large public audits just reallyended up met one of my best
(02:35):
mentors.
I think my first year is when Imet her.
I moved to DC, was in the DCoffice for about three years,
left Big Four and went to Europe.
It was really exciting withthat mentor.
I was the head of finance for alarge oil company over there in
Switzerland, did that for threeand a half years and then in
(02:57):
that time I have a great husband25 years, his name is Neil, my
best friend.
Years.
His name is Neil, my bestfriend, and we have two boys
that are now 21 and 19.
So during all that moving wemoved to Europe.
My husband decided to reallycouldn't work under my visa, so
he was a stay at home dad for awhile, which was amazing, very
(03:20):
well educated stay at home dadhe's so good at it.
And then we did that for threeand a half years and just
decided we needed to either staythere or come home, and home
for us was here, and then Ireally got this.
I'm in this niche where I havespent since 2010,.
(03:41):
When we moved back, I've beenthe CFO, coo of various
companies in the valley, themajority of them being private
equity backed or founder-led.
Looking to how do I make thisthing grow and scale, how do I
have the exit I want?
Do I want to get my first money?
All those things.
(04:02):
So I've been in.
Honestly, I don't think I'vebeen in the same industry twice
and, yeah, I love supportingamazing CEOs and founders that
take really big chances and thenI can come alongside them and
help them scale.
Help them scale.
(04:27):
So and and and EvolvedMD.
What led me there is I waslooking for a place that really
fit my culture, fit meculturally.
I'm at a stage in my career nowwhere I don't have to let the
company choose me.
I can choose them and I can bereally intentional about that
and Evolved.
I know Centauri Minor is ourchief of staff and I've known
him for years and I can bereally intentional about that
and evolved.
I know Centauri Minor is ourchief of staff and I've known
(04:48):
him for years and I just knew ifhe was part of it was.
He was there, the culture wasgoing to be great, and then I
met Eric and I met Steve and allthe team and it's just they're
so great and what I mean.
How often do you get to useyour professional skill set in a
business that is doing so muchgood in the world and that's
(05:09):
really having fun using my brain, learning and doing good, so it
was really unique.
That's me.
That's how I got here.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
So what's the biggest surprise?
Or aha, being in a smallcompany now, because you've been
with some big companies for awhile.
So what is that thing?
Are you just like?
This is amazing.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, I found myself.
So I, when, when I uh look atissues or problems, I I tend to
say there's someone here,there's someone smarter than us,
whatever that has done thisbefore.
So let's not spin our wheels,let's go find that, that nugget,
that smarter person, and andmake it simpler for ourselves,
(05:49):
and not only because of the sizeof Evolve but because of what
we're trying to do.
There are instances where I'mlike huh, I actually like I
don't know that there's going tobe an easy.
I think we're going to have tojust make a decision, fail fast
and hope and then know we haveto be on the lookout.
(06:10):
So that's been one thing, thatI've said that more often.
The other thing is we'reventure-backed, and that's new
to me.
I primarily lived in either thepublic or the private equity
world and I had heard therewould be differences, but I
didn't totally understand right,what would that mean?
And it is different and I think, even operating in a position
(06:34):
where you're, you know you'rehaving to really intention.
You always think about cashflow.
As a CFO, you always thinkabout your runway, but this is a
place where you're thinkingabout it even more and you have
to be really strategic aboutthat, which you always are, but
this is a different level ofpressure when you're in a VC bag
, so it's things like that.
I think one thing that's beenreally interestingly surprising
(06:58):
is this business is actuallyweirdly pleasantly surprising in
the humans that they'veinvested in how they do things
Like for the first time.
I, you know, the team Iinherited is so great and
they're, you know, I mean,nobody's perfect, they have
(07:19):
stuff to learn, but boy are theywilling to and they're open and
that's you know, just becauseof who that business is, and so
that's been a little surprising.
I don't know, I haven't seen abusiness like normally.
The businesses I go in are muchlarger and they don't look like
that Right, and so that's beena little pleasantly surprising.
(07:40):
Good, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, and I love the perspective of just like you can
learn from everywhere.
Right, if you want to, you canlearn from anything, anyone, any
situation, any size, any.
Some people close themselvesoff to that.
I'm like you're missing just ahuge opportunity to grow as an
individual and to make even abigger impact If you're a little
bit more curious about thesituation and take that learning
(08:03):
standpoint.
So you mentioned about failingfast, and one of the things I
loved about the panel that weshared together was your
vulnerability and, just beinghonest, of you know letting
other people learn from thosefailures, because that's where
we learn the most right.
You know, we all have ourstories of getting it right, but
the getting wrong ones usuallyhelp people out a lot more.
So can you share a time when,time when you faced a
(08:24):
significant failure, either inyour career or within an
organization, and just how didyou handle it?
How did you rally your team tobe resilient in that time?
Speaker 3 (08:32):
as well, yeah, um, I'm going to give you a two one
that I had to rally myself andone where I had to probably
rally myself and my team, I'llbe honest.
I mean there's a lot of those,so a really significant one.
I had the pleasure of being theCFO of Western Window Systems,
(08:53):
which was a really fast-paced,innovative window and door
manufacturer here in the ValleyAmazing team, such a fantastic
culture, and we had leadershipprinciples there that our CEO
was very intentional about, andthe first one was love people
first.
The sixth one was do hardthings.
(09:14):
Another one was think gray andlike.
There were so many and they allcontradicted each other and
when I was there, I had honestly, it was my first time in
manufacturing I at first, uh,when I got there, they had no
cost accountant.
I'm like that feels not great.
Let's maybe fix that.
(09:35):
And the systems weren'tfantastic.
So there's any number of thingsright Getting in the way of
getting um, inventory right, anynumber of things right getting
in the way of getting inventoryright.
And we had it was after we hadbeen acquired.
So we were now on more of apublic, we were acquired by a
(09:56):
public company, obviously veryimportant to get things right.
I understand that, and we had areally big miss, one of the
biggest misses I've had in myaccounting, and it was multiple
hundreds of thousands of dollarsthat we had missed in AP.
So it was the wrong way as well.
It was one of those things thatshouldn't happen, because you
(10:18):
know your last control with youraccounts payable is your
vendors yelling at you.
You know what I learned in thatmoment If your vendor doesn't
have a clue, you cannot at allrely on that.
And what I, what I found inthat moment was one I had to own
(10:43):
it.
We had missed some basics, butI also had to figure out why.
Because I had built the teamwas fantastic and what I
realized through the learningand what I had to rally my team
around was one we have to learnfrom this and we can't keep it
to ourselves.
So this think gray ideaacknowledging failure, being
(11:04):
curious, acknowledging failurebeing curious.
So I had to swallow my ego andgo talk and pull my CIO, pull my
VP of product, my CEO, sit in aroom and be like guys, I don't
know how I missed this.
We have a fundamental problemin what's happening and I don't
(11:26):
think it's just the AP was wrong, I think, and I don't want to
miss that moment, but it takesme saying I failed and I really
don't want to do it again.
And I'm going to acknowledgethat while I'm the CFO of this
company and accounting is mything, I need your help.
And what I learned through thatmoment was it's okay and people
want to help you, they want tobe involved, and so you're
(11:49):
almost denying them that by notletting them in, and I would
have missed it and I would havenot learned from that.
And the other thing which Ireally had to help my team
because they all obviously feltterrible.
It was a terrible timing You'vejust been acquired, right,
(12:10):
it's's just nothing.
It was just nothing good aboutit.
And I told my team I'm like,look, I'm gonna, I own this.
We try to do really hard thingshere, really quickly, and I love
that.
And what I forgot to tell youis I need you to do that and you
can't let go of thefundamentals.
You can't like we had stoppedreconciling something to go off
(12:30):
and do something cool.
And so it's my moment of alwaysremember, trust but verify.
Never lose sight of thosethings that you know.
You get excited to go try itand help and whatnot, and you
can sometimes get into thatmindset of it won't happen to me
and it can, and we can't dothat to our companies.
So that's a really big one.
(12:52):
That I would say was a rallyingmoment for myself and my team
and it still sits and resonateswith me and I still have to work
on it.
Honestly, I trust too quickly,so I always have to work on that
.
So I mean, throughout thatstory you could hear the
discomfort and I still have towork on it.
Honestly, I trust too quickly,so I always have to work on that
.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Yeah, yeah, so I mean throughout that story.
You could hear the discomfort.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Oh, I did, yeah, and it was years ago, yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
And so you feel those things.
But there's a lot of peoplethat have written books and
research and things out therethat discomfort is where growth
comes from.
Yeah, and if you're in asituation where it's always
comfortable, are you reallygrowing and doing some of those
kinds of things?
And so how do you maybe with asmall company it's more about
(13:34):
yourself than it is from theteam, since it's a smaller
company but how do you help theteam grow from some of those
uncomfortable moments or, say,get out of your comfort zone a
little bit so that we can allget better?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
um, I think the key I've found is letting them see
that I don't know everything.
And one could argue I've been acfo for a long time, I'm not
going to talk about that and.
And so one could argue I shouldjust know all the things and
what I find to your point,ashley, like I don't know all
(14:09):
the things, even though I'vebeen a CFO for God knows how
many years, and so I reallyfocus with my team on showing
them it's okay to not know, butyou got to go figure it out and
it's okay to fail and we have tolearn from it.
So it's like all those andspulling the ands together that I
(14:32):
found works.
Like I had one of mycontrollers tell me I was the
first boss.
That it's really interesting.
I had one controller tell me Iwas the first boss that made her
feel safe to fail and thegrowth she felt from that was
tremendous because she wasn'tscared.
She wasn't scared to come.
Oh, heather, I missed this, Iwhat you know, whatever.
(14:53):
And I'm like, yeah, you missedit.
And what?
What did we learn from it andhow do we fix it right?
The other thing was and I alsohad one of my VPs tell me I
didn't let her fail enough, andthat was very early in my career
.
Those are two very differentmessages, and so I try to learn
from what my team is telling meas well.
(15:14):
There isn't one size fits allfor any of them, and so how do
you adjust yourself to?
You, know what they need, butalso hold, like I always tell
people, my expectations are veryhigh and I'm I had to get okay
with that, but I'm also going tocome alongside you as we, as we
(15:34):
work toward, towards it, andwe're going to be I'm going to
be compassionately accountable,but we, we are going to do the
thing and it's going to be hardand you know you're gonna,
you're gonna learn and we'regonna be clear and kind not nice
which there's a very bigdifference.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I don't know, it's always just a phase.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Uh clear, as kind that's exactly what we would say
all the time, for sure yeah,exactly so you mentioned a
mentor, um, in the beginning ofthe conversation.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
when you're introducing yourself, how would
you say that mentors haveimpacted you throughout your
career and is there a piece ofadvice that you received early
on potentially that has kind ofstuck with you, that you revisit
when you're going through someof the harder times?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
in your career, oh, my God, all the time.
I think that one thing I'velearned in my career is, if
you're willing to listen, almostall people have something to
teach you and you have to kindof get out of your own way and
your own head and your own egoand all those things, or even
the personal side of it, like,because sometimes you can hear
(16:39):
things that could make you kindof curl in on yourself and and
um so, uh, there's been,honestly, I've had so many.
I mean there's a couple littletidbits.
Um, my first mentor that um Imentioned, uh, she's phenomenal
and such a strong female leaderin oil and gas um, which is
(17:02):
crazy.
Leader in oil and gas, which iscrazy.
And she taught me that andthat's really where I taught.
I learned just to try hardthings.
And I remember one time shetold me I was a senior associate
at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
I was acting as a manager ontwo of her large public jobs.
(17:22):
So I was up and she's handed mein accounting you have to do
something called.
It used to be called thephysical, who knows what it's
called now but it's this hugelist of things you have to do to
make sure that your publicfiling is accurate.
She's like here, do this.
I'm like I don't know.
Like what me?
I don't, I don't do that.
(17:42):
That's not what.
Like, senior managers do thatbecause it's so important.
She's like go do it, if youdon't come back to me with a
zillion questions.
You did it wrong.
And I'm like that's actuallysuper fair and interesting.
And she taught me, like mysecond year, that you need to
like working for leaders andyourself.
(18:05):
If you just go away and try todo something with and acting
like I know what I'm doing, it'snot going to get you anywhere
and most humans actually don'texpect you to do that.
So it allows you to try reallyhard things and I think that
what that taught me is I don'tshy away and I actually go
towards opportunities that Idon't know what the heck I'm
(18:26):
doing.
Like when I went to Europe, Ihad no idea I went over there to
be the head of internal audit.
I'm like, okay, super cool,I've been head of, you know,
senior manager at PwC.
I can be head of internal auditall day long.
I get there and our head offinance was really struggling.
And so, karen, within I don'tknow, it was like two weeks.
(18:48):
She's like hey, why don't youjust do the head of finance?
I'm like, do what you want meto do, what?
Yeah, we're going to go publicin three months and I need you
to unwind this, do that, sellthat and okay, whatever You've
told me.
You've shown me that if I try,I can do it, and it just why not
?
And you surround yourself withreally smart people.
(19:10):
You ask curious questions, youmake mistakes and then you're
like, yeah, that kind of sucked,but we can fix it, it'll be
fine.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
It reminds me of the conversation that we had.
I was consulting for HomeSmartat the time and the CEO took us
to dinner and was like hey, comeback in.
You know a full-time capacityback at the resident level and I
want to go public.
And I just looked at him atdinner I said like I don't know
how to do that.
I don't think I've never workedfor a public company.
I've never taken a companypublic Like let me hire you a
team that knows what they'redoing.
And he just looked at me andgoes no, hire yourself a team
(19:49):
that can go do it.
But you do it, and I meancandidly.
I remember Googling terms,being on calls with bankers and
lawyers and investment advisorsand sometimes I would get really
frustrated because they wereusing acronyms for things that
they didn't need to use acronymsfor.
But that is part of the processand everyone who worked on that
team just looks back at theentire thing as the biggest
(20:11):
learning moment of their entirecareer, no matter what role they
played.
It was just such a learningmoment because it was really
hard.
We had no idea what we weredoing, but we were determined to
do it right.
What made you do it?
Like, why did you say yes?
I don't know that I've everbeen asked that question.
I think in the moment it wassomething that you know
(20:36):
obviously I hadn't done before.
This is going to sound cheesy.
I think actually, in thatmoment I knew that I would
protect him over the glory ofgoing public.
Yeah, and I knew that by himhaving me do it and surrounding
a team like that's what he waslooking for is for someone to
still, like, have his bestinterests at heart versus
(20:57):
someone who had done it and itwas transactional and yeah, that
can get me a little emotionalat this moment, but like, yeah,
I think keeping the cultureconnecting with the people and
all of that was.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
So he wanted your how he wanted, like how he knew you
would do it and he knew youcould figure out the technical
yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Right, which at times went better than other times,
for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I always find it fascinating how, so many times,
we focus on the what, and it'slike most humans can learn the
what.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, like you can learn how toreconcile the thing or to fix
that thing or to learn thatprocess, but their how?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
yeah, that approach the intention, yeah, the
integrity, the you know the whywell, and that was at the end
when I was exiting and joiningRick and Apex.
One of the things that we wantto do or help business owners
exit right- and go through thatprocess and I called one of our
investment advisors and I saidyou know, I have one question.
Like we hired everyone youreferred to us lawyers, bankers,
(21:57):
like you name it.
We always went back to theirpeople.
We would do our due diligence,interview other people, but we
always went back to their kindof stable of referrals.
And I said you never referred acoach to us.
And he's like what do do youmean?
And I was like for like atmidnight, when I can't get a
model to work and the bankersare going to put us on hold, who
(22:17):
do I call?
You know, when you don't wantto look like you don't know what
you're doing in front ofcertain people, who's that
person?
Just to guide you step-by-stepthrough the process?
That only has our interest atheart, right?
And he actually laughed on thecall and he was like that
doesn't exist, ashley.
So my next question I was likewell, based on what I've done,
do you think I'm qualified to dothat?
(22:38):
Because I feel like that's agap, because it is so stressful.
It's such a crazy stressfulprocess and you just need your
person in your corner as you'regoing through it.
And thankfully he said yes, orI don't.
I don't know that Rick wouldwould have accepted me in apex,
but I don't know, I mean but Ithink some of some of that back
(22:58):
to your question of why you didit.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
it's everything happens for a reason, and the
fact that you had thatopportunity and that that he
trusted you with that, so thatput some more um more behind
what you wanted to accomplishand prove everybody else wrong
because they put timelines on itand you beat the timelines and
all of those things.
But now, having said everythingyou said, what you're doing for
(23:24):
our current clients is amazingthings and it's, I think, going
to lead us into kind of thatnext phase as Apex continues to
grow as well.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
It is fun because, like you know, you're taking
some of the pain away.
You know just that little bit.
You really are.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Probably more than a little bit, I'll be honest,
Having a great advisor thatknows what they are doing and
that you can connect with and bevulnerable with.
Because it's really hard, whenyou're in a C position or higher
VP right to show that I don'tknow and in a really critical
(24:01):
moment, you don't want to showyou don't know and so to be able
to just be like, yeah, I don'tknow how to do this.
Can you help?
Have that bat phone that youcan call?
Have that bat phone that you cancall yeah that bat phone that
you can call is really important.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
So how have you gone about choosing a coach more so
than a mentor?
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, so I do have a coach.
She has changed my life.
I've had a few.
The first couple I had werekind of really early in my
career.
I would say they were chosenfor me.
I'm honestly looking back soglad that that happened because
(24:44):
I don't think I would have knownwhat good looked like.
Because I think you can havecoaches that three varieties,
and I've had three and maybethere's more, but I've had three
.
You have a really great coachthat's focused on making Heather
better in this environment.
How do we make Heather betterfor this role, this environment?
(25:05):
Or you can have a coach that'show do we make this employee
good for this company?
It's a very different tone andtenor and discussion point.
Right, if it's the lens of whatthe coach is is using.
(25:27):
I found Christina I was, uh,giving Christine Christina's
name name when I was goingthrough my biggest failure,
personal, in my first CFO role,and I was one of those people
that always went up and to theright.
I was always promoted early,ranked one at big four, you know
(25:49):
, do all the hard things.
And then my first CFO role, Iran into a pretty big stumbling
block and it could have I don'tthink if I, if I hadn't found
her and gone through that, itcould have really changed the
the direction of my career.
And so Christina is more mycoach and what I would encourage
(26:13):
.
I think all humans I mean I'min behavioral health and I love
it I think all humans needsupport and I think all humans
need someone who has nothing init but a lot of and a lot of
skill to really help not tellyou what to do, but to listen
and guide you to the answer thatyou need to get to, and so what
(26:37):
Christina has done for me isreally help and and she would
when she hears this she's gonnahate that I said because she
always says I do the work, andshe's right, I do the work and
she guides me through the work.
It's a lot of work, it's hard,um.
She focuses on who who's heatherand how do we make heather her
(26:58):
best self, her most confidentself, her most accepted self,
and um this idea of you're in abox and you can be this cfo at
work and this mom and a wife anda sister and a and a daughter
and that right, all the thingsall of us humans are going
through every day and trying toshow up and and manage
everything.
Um, you're just one human andso that that's how I would like
(27:23):
you one.
Don't get a coach.
To get a coach, it's not worthit, it's going to be a waste of
your time and your resources oryour company's resources.
Get a coach because you want toknow who do you want to be
right and and be prepared for itbeing hard and be prepared for
(27:45):
maybe you're not in the rightplace for you and for where you
can show up as your best selfand be prepared like you.
It is a like, and so I've beenwith Christina for, um, it'll be
10 years in May, um, and soit's a lot of work.
I love it and I hate it all atthe same time.
(28:07):
Um, I don't, I actually don'thate it, but sometimes I don't
enjoy her.
Uh, she's making me look atreally hard things, um, and I, I
think also I'll just be real Ithink a lot of how we show up in
high stress situations comesfrom your childhood and past,
things that you haven't, youdidn't even know, you didn't
(28:28):
deal with, but it's driving yourbehavior and to truly accept
yourself, you kind of need toknow that and it's never done,
like I've realized, like whatit's done for me is, I feel I, I
can tell, I can tell when I'mlike little Heather's back, I
need her to go back on theplayground and let adult Heather
continue to to do this because,you know, she's really showing
(28:52):
up right now and so now I'm notshowing up as my best self.
So it just it's really allowedme to accept myself and even
accept all of my multitudes offlaws that I have in every hat
that I wear.
But I'm grateful for it and I'mso glad I did it and I'm, you
know I'm more more content withmyself than I know I would have
(29:14):
been if I hadn't done it.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
This is going to sound like the weirdest analogy,
but I equate coaching, likebeing a coach, to being an
auditor.
Oh, interesting, because whenyou think about it and learning
this.
Trying to go public, we had onebig four company helping us get
ready, but then we had adifferent big four company
actually auditing us and they'relike you pay them, right,
(29:38):
you're technically theircustomer, but they're there
basically to look at everythingand to judge and critique and go
through and form an opinion,right.
And I feel like that's howbusinesses have to look at
coaching, because if I'm payinga coach to coach one of my
executives, I am paying them, Iam the customer as the business,
but they aren't there for me,they're there for that
(29:59):
individual and that coachingmight lead to that individual no
longer being in theorganization and everyone needs
to be okay with it Because ifthey've gone through that
process, it's what was right inthat moment.
So it's almost that same typeof relationship from the
transaction standpoint of I'veheard you know different owners
and things.
So well, if I pay for a coach orI send to a peer advisory group
(30:20):
and they're just complainingabout me, it's like, well, one,
look at you Like that soundslike a you thing.
Yeah, that sounds like a youthing, you know.
But two, if they're needingthat outlet in order for
themselves to grow so they canhandle things better and they
can show up as their best selfevery day.
Why not do that, even if maybeit leads to a relationship
change, right?
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Because either way it's good for them too, right, I
mean, as much as uncomfortableas it is, everybody's better for
it, and we lose that a lot, Ithink.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
It goes to the joke of what if we pay for training
and coaching for our employees,and then they go somewhere else?
And then the other guy sayswell, what if we don't?
And they stay.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I agree with that, so so good.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I love that quote.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
I love that Switching gears just a little bit.
So one of leadership's mostchallenging tasks is balancing
high expectations withsupporting our teams and
developing our people.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
So, as a CFO, how do you go about balancing the
development of your people andexecuting the business strategy
at the same time?
How do I do that?
I, I guess I'm very intentionalabout it.
I try to use techniques tofully delegate, which is
different, in my mind, than justdelegation, so not just
(31:45):
delegating the work but alsodelegating kind of the outcome
and knowing that sometimes whenI do that, I and they are going
to fail.
And that's okay as long as weboth learn from it.
(32:08):
And so if because if I don'tfully delegate, I can't pick my
head up, focus on the strategy,it won't allow me to spend the
right amount of time with thehumans that report to me who in
my role I've often found arevery diverse.
(32:28):
So I have, in my current role,I have business intelligence,
implementation, it, accounting,finance, people.
So in that context, if I don'tdelegate, if I don't, I can't
strategically do what I need todo for the business and Eric, my
(32:49):
CEO, I can't be who I need tobe for my peers and I can't be
who I need to be for my team.
So I think full delegation isreally important to being able
to manage both.
I also, I'm very transparentwith my team so they always know
(33:11):
where they're at with me and Idon't hide my expectations.
So I am very clear about whatgood looks like for me.
I do a lot of work to not dothings for them.
I learned that we, we often oneof my my learnings in my career
is I, I love people.
(33:33):
I love seeing my team grow andachieve and become better than
me, which so many have like.
I have one of my past favoritehumans that worked for me.
She's the CFO of a publiccompany in Oklahoma and one
that's a partner in a firm and,like I still talk to them all.
I just it's so great.
(33:54):
So when you love people thatmuch, you're like, ooh, they're
struggling, let me do for you.
And I had to learn that youcan't do that Because then who
fails?
That would be me.
So I try to really keep that inthe forefront of if I see them
struggling, being honest aboutthat, helping them work through
(34:16):
techniques and tools to todelegate right, the urgent, the
important.
I also have I don't rememberwhat it's called but also, what
do we actually not need to bedoing?
Yes, yes, right, the whole cap.
So just being like reallyintentional, knowing, frankly,
that I need to spend most of mytime at this level not doing
(34:37):
things, talking to humans,reviewing thinking.
So that's kind of that mixtureof those things and really it's
clear expectations, outcomes andI again my term is
compassionate accountabilitylike I am going to be super
alongside you and I'm going tohold you accountable and I've
(34:59):
learned you have to have somereally really hard discussions
at times with some of yourfavorite people and, um, and and
it's okay, yeah, it's okay Itry to.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
I try to equate delegation with teaching yes
you're not pawning your work offon another person to do it.
You're helping them grow to thenext level and so.
But delegation is probably themost common thing I talk about
when I'm working with differentleaders and things.
They struggle with that becausesometimes they don't trust the
(35:31):
person that they need to do orthey've been burnt on it and
those kinds of things.
So have you had to deal withlike, do I trust this person or
not, and does the delegationsometimes build the trust back?
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, I definitely have to do that and I've learned
the hard way that I trust tooquickly and it's really gotten
me in bad in in hard placesbefore.
Um, you know, I I try to besuper intentional on now about
(36:03):
being a trust but verify andalso monitoring the environment,
for because you can get towhere you totally trust someone
and then either something goeson in their life and maybe
they're not super upfront aboutthat and maybe you see a change
in behavior, maybe something inthe environment and work comes
(36:25):
up right, and so I think thatyou need to be able to trust
your team.
But trust is earned and so youreally have to.
Just, it's a constant like I've.
I'll be honest, I I don't thinkI've learned.
I've learned so many thingslike leadership is the hardest
thing and you're never done andyou I don't know that you can
(36:49):
ever like spike that ball right.
It's like culture.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Right, we're like we'll fix the culture.
I'm like, okay, but what doesthat mean?
Right, like we can come in, wecan evaluate, we can evolve, but
you realize, like it's neverdone, you can't put a check mark
on it and say okay, we're done,we're.
You know, and just, I think,when you think you get those
things right is when they becomethe most fragile that's
actually interesting andprobably really true.
Yeah, because you start takingfor granted like okay, we're
(37:13):
good, we're good and then all ofa sudden you have a different
personality come in, or there'ssomething's going on in the
personal life or something whereit's like whoa, what happened?
How did that break?
Speaker 3 (37:21):
yeah, have you guys seen, as you've worked with
companies like what gets in theway, like what are the common
things of either establishingtrust or willingness to let go,
which is almost the same thing,right?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
Fear.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's just fear.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Fear is the big one, because fear, like kills
transparency.
It does kill transparency.
When you're not transparentabout what's on your mind, I
mean, then it just it tends tofail.
If you think about the fivedysfunctions of a team trust is
the bottom level.
Results is on the top.
People want results, but theydon't think about what they have
(37:56):
to do to get to the results.
Once you build the trust at thebottom and you can have those
conflicting conversations whereyou're not taking offense to the
conversations and things, andthen you work your way up, then
the results just happennaturally.
It's the same thing with culture.
I think too is like people sayI need to fix the culture.
I don't know that you can fix aculture.
I mean a culture.
A culture is just like in thenatural world.
(38:19):
It's it grows on its own andyou need to make sure that the
environment's right, the leadersare doing the right thing so
that the people feel trusted,and then the culture will just
kind of flourish.
But you don't fix it.
It's not like something that'slike okay, I'm going to send it
to the mechanic.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
That is very fair.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I agree with you, you have to nurture it, yeah and be
intentional about it.
I think right.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, I think the other thing is to speed of
growth.
I think leads to lack ofdelegation and some challenges
in that area because a lot ofcompanies will grow so fast and
they skip steps to implementproper like meeting cadences and
meeting rhythms.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
If you're a.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Vern, harnish fan and communication tools and
resources and process aroundthat.
And so all of a sudden, whenit's being implemented, it feels
like, oh, we're gettingcorporate right, like that's the
top track, that is the toptrack.
Yeah, versus it being somethingthat the team can rely on and
depend on and kind of lean into.
And then I think when you havethat type of really strong
(39:19):
communication cadence, then it'seasier to delegate because you
feel informed too, Because it'snot just about everyone else
feeling informed At the top.
You feel like you're going tolose information and not be in
the know because of that.
I think that speed of growthcan really add to that challenge
.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
It's funny.
I had a conversation just twohours ago and they were talking
about well, this person on theteam doesn't feel like they have
enough information.
So when they're at networkingevents they don't feel like they
have enough information.
So when they're at networkingevents they don't feel like they
can answer questions.
But if I were to tell you allof the things you think you need
to know, then I'm going to sayand you can't say any of that at
a networking event because it'sconfidential, but they feel
(39:57):
better because they're in theknow.
So the problem wasn't that theydidn't have enough information
for the networking event.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It was that they felt like they weren't hearing
something, and so it's like whatis the true issue?
Well, let's be real.
We, when we're making up anarrative.
It's never as good as the truth,we always go to the, to the
negative, when we're recruitingsomething.
Um.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe personal.
So I mean, obviously, hugecareer, um, amazing
accomplishments, um.
But as you mentioned being amom mom, a wife and a dog mom,
now, I thought we had a lot offur babies.
We have three, I have five andthere's cats as well.
Speaker 3 (40:30):
Oh goodness, Two dogs , three cats.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, love them all, what has been your secret and I
know it's not beautiful all thetime, because nothing ever is
but what's been your secret ofbalancing, you know, an amazing
career, amazing professionallife and everything at home and
showing up the way that youwould like to on the home front.
It's been a journey.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I think one thing is my husband, his willingness to,
you know, really put aside hiscareer, right, poor guy got his
MBA.
He's always like I'm the mostwell-educated you know CEO of a
(41:13):
home ever.
His willingness to do that.
We made a decision for us.
Personally, I think it's sopersonal how you choose to raise
your family.
We didn't want just for usagain, no judgment of any we
didn't want nannies to raise ourkids, um, and so we just
decided we'd we'll just make do,be a one-income family and and
whatever that looks like.
(41:34):
Um, he, he worked part-time fora long time but it gave him
great opportunities to be asoccer dad and all the things.
And I think for both of us it'sweird, it like worked out.
You know it's not traditional,right, and we both felt awkward
in very specific situations.
You know I'm the, the mom atthe meeting, the, whatever
meeting, parents meeting orwhatnot that nobody knows how to
(41:54):
talk to because I don't knowwhat they're talking about nor
does it it's just not becauseI'm not doing that every day and
my poor husband shows up.
There's never a dad anywhere atany of the meetings, so, which
is fine, it's just what worksfor us.
So I think that support andjust being both of us being
intentional, what partnershiplooks like, and and it's not
(42:14):
been easy we've had rounds andand and really understanding
right, because we both gavesomething up.
I gave up the time with my kids, he gave up his career, and I
think working really hardtogether to to understand that
we both gave something up rightwas important.
And then, honestly for me, um,I had to learn to be very honest
(42:39):
about my boundaries, and thatwas later in my career.
I really and that was a lot ofcoaching, I never, you know I
remember Christina and I talkingand one thing that always
resonated and what really, Ithink, changed it for me is she
(42:59):
said to me Heather, your jobcan't always win, and I don't
know that I had ever thoughtabout it that way that when I'm
choosing to always do that, mykids are losing my husband's,
I'm losing my sister, whoeverright, my mom, all, and it's
like how do you find thatbalance and be comfortable with
(43:22):
what that boundary looks like.
So I just started in my later,when I moved back here, and the
weird thing is, I would say forany working mom, what I found is
just my experience with mychildren is that when they're
younger, they're really focusedon just their world.
(43:44):
So when you're in it, they'resuper thrilled, and when you're
not, they're like whatever I'vegot my, whatever I'm watching or
whatever I'm doing.
And so I did a lot during thattime.
And what shocked me, I'll beperfectly honest, was when we
moved back to Arizona.
I worked in Big Four for almostnine years and I worked a lot.
And then I went to Europe and Ihad never worked more in my
life and so I thought, for sure,right, everyone's going to be
(44:07):
so happy when we come here andI'm like working like normal
human at least my perspective,right.
And my kids were like you'realways gone, you're not showing
up, and it shocked me.
And it rocked me a lot, becausehere I was thinking mom's
winning and now mom's losing,and I didn't want them to feel
that way, um, and so I juststarted being intentional.
(44:29):
Um, when I took my second CFOjob I I still remember the
conversation because it wasreally hard, because I really
wanted the job I said, hey, myson, my sons, are in soccer.
I'm never going to miss a game.
That's just a hard limit for me.
I'm, I, I'm not like I just Idecided how, um, how am I going
to do that?
So that both went, it did, and,and I had to be realistic,
(44:52):
meaning I chose to be a CFO.
I chose to be a CFO that does alot of deals, um, I have
certain standards and so therebythere are going to be times
where I have to work from Hawaiior from that vacation or're
doing deal, and my family had tocome around me on that.
So it's always just thisconstant like, what's going to
work?
What phase in your career areyou in?
(45:13):
And you can like, you can't,you can, and you have to be kind
for your kind, I guess that's.
The other thing is like I neverused to be kind to myself, I
never gave myself any grace andand I'm really try to be
intentionally kind to myself andand you know it's okay if I
screw up for a week and I'll getit right again.
(45:33):
I'm religious pride to bereally religious about working
out, so like doing those thingsthat you know are going to get
you started and are going to getyou to keep cadence.
So that's how I I mean it'smessy and you mess up and you
say sorry and and you know youmake sure that because it's all
important, like I love my jobright and so I.
(45:54):
I don't you know like I, but Iobviously I love my kids and my
husband all the things more likeobviously yeah, but a part a
lot of who I am is who I am as aprofessional Right, and I don't
think that's bad per se.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
My brother last week looks at me and he goes you know
your hobby is working.
And I said what?
And he's like you need adifferent hobby, like your hobby
is just to work Interesting.
And I had never thought of itthat way.
I haven't either.
Yes, I enjoy working Like, Ilove sitting down and you know,
getting into things and comingup with ideas and working Like
(46:28):
and I don't see a challenge withthat.
You're like it works for me.
Yeah, but I think to your pointa book that I read in 23 when I
was kind of making the decisionof when do I need to start
putting some boundaries andthings on.
It was called Breaking theGlass Slipper and it was really
great.
It's kind of like RachelHollis-ish, but what I would say
(46:52):
like more adult.
I think it's Elaine Turnerwrote it and it just really
makes you think through all thedifferent things and being okay
with whatever it is that youwant.
So it's really good about notsaying what's right to want and
what's not, which some of thebooks are right, but really kind
of what is?
I'm actually starting to rereadit again right now because I was
(47:12):
in a different phase.
Then I'm like what differenttips will I pick up from it this
time around?
Right, but I think to what yousaid.
I think you had to have thehard conversation.
I think it's easy, you know,men or women, I think, as we're
working through our careers, tofeel like certain things are
being done to us right, and thatit's required and it's expected
.
But if we never actually are,if we never set the boundary, if
(47:35):
we never articulate theboundary, oftentimes the asks
are coming in because you neversay no, you never say no Right,
or you never ask for help orthose kinds of things.
So how much of it really is onus as individuals?
Speaker 3 (47:46):
I think a lot.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
You know, to raise our hand and use our voice and
put those boundaries up, Becausemost companies are going to
work with that right.
They are If you're giving yourbest whenever you're there and
you're present.
Most companies are going towork with that and we actually
have a client.
They have a rule, as youmentioned, and their rule for
their entire company is nevermiss a game, and it doesn't
matter if it's a game, a dancerecital a gymnastics meet.
Speaker 4 (48:08):
It's the idea.
I love that.
That's so great.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
So for all their kids , it's always you go.
Yeah, I wanted to highlightjust one thing, just because it
brought up.
I had and I think this issomething a lot of people really
struggle with, youngerespecially.
I remember I was in DC, I wasworking fora partner, I was
trying to work part-time in BigFour.
(48:33):
I was the manager of thelargest public client for in the
DC office and I was trying towork part-time for multiple
reasons andI remember I startedfeeling like I was working more
and I was really mad at Larry.
He was my partner and I remembergoing in with all sorts of self
like you know, like just I'mright, feeling right, being so
(48:57):
mad at him.
And he's like you know, heather, it's really interesting, he
goes.
Well, we agreed you were goingto work part-time, right?
Yeah, that's my point.
And he's like I don't workpart-time, true, I'm like where
are we going, like this is goingto be fascinating, where is
(49:17):
this going to go?
And he goes do you think I havein my brain exactly what your
part-time schedule looks like?
I'm like no, he's like do youthink when I need something, I'm
going to like check and makesure am I going to call or send
an email and I'm like you'reprobably going to call or send
(49:39):
an email.
He's like so whose fault is itif you pick it up?
And I was like I just got that.
That's because I'm a veryaccountable person, like if, if
I can figure out where I did itwrong, I am going to own it,
even if I only should own twopercent.
And somebody else shown 98.
I'm like, oh my god it's all myfault yeah, but if we own it we
can fix it, yeah right exactlyand I.
(50:01):
Just that was one of the most um, and I use it with my team all
the time because I often tellthem, like look guys, look guys,
I'm not going to control here'sthe boundaries.
Now if you come to me and sayyou need this and I tell you to
go pound sand, then that's awhole other discussion.
But I am not going to manageyour life for you.
And I think learning that atthat stage in my career was so
(50:23):
powerful for me to like reallyand I mean, obviously I still
had to learn it because I didn'tset boundaries and all the
things, but then I just blamedmyself for it.
At least I knew where thatbelonged.
But I think as we work throughour careers, making that
separation is so important ofwhat should you hold your leader
accountable for versus what doyou need to hold yourself
accountable for?
(50:43):
So it was a good one in mylearnings.
Speaker 4 (50:46):
Really quick before we wrap up.
What was your favorite place tovisit when you lived in Europe?
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Oh boy, favorite.
There was a place, one I loveRome I don't know.
Rome is such an interesting,fascinating, beautiful historic
city, and so I really loved Rome.
My husband and I spent ananniversary in Monaco.
That place is super cool.
(51:14):
And then there was a reallysmall town in Switzerland and
right now my brain is goingabsolutely blank, but hopefully
it might come to me, but it was.
It was basically um, uh, prettyclose to us and it was a little
(51:40):
town that you had to take agondola to and and there was no
cars up there, and then youcould take another gondola, I
think it was to the top of theSchilthorn and it was just such
a neat little town that made youlike it was so Swiss and I
loved that town.
But there's so many greatplaces, I'm so glad I did it.
Yeah, so much.
(52:02):
There was so much eye-openinghappening when you live in
Europe versus being in the US,so it was super great.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yeah, it's amazing.
We love traveling and so it'salways fun to hear people's
favorite places.
So, with that, thank you somuch for being here.
I know that you are hiring andgrowing as an organization, so
if our listeners want to reachout to you or to get in touch
with the company, where shouldthey go?
Speaker 3 (52:26):
EvolvedMDcom we are a really people-first,
culture-first, mission-drivenorganization Lots of opportunity
, tons of great people trying todo good in the world and solve
a really important problemthat's facing every age group
that we have.
And you know, it's just areally incredible place.
I'm on LinkedIn and you knowwe're it's.
(52:46):
It's a just a really incredibleplace.
I'm on LinkedIn and yeah,either way, well, thank you
again.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
Thank you both.
Speaker 3 (52:54):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Thanks for tuning in to the Confidence Curve.
We hope today's episode leftyou inspired and ready to
embrace your journey confidently.
Remember whether you're leadinga team, growing your business
or pursuing personal growth,each step forward builds your
curve.
If you enjoyed today'sconversation, don't forget to
(53:19):
subscribe, share and leave us areview For more insights and
resources.
Visit us at apexgtscom.
Until next time, keep climbingthe curve.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.