Posts in Podcast
Demystifying Executive Coaching

Jimmy is joined by Katrina Calihan, Executive Coach and Co-Founder of Wind + Sail Leadership Partners, to discuss and demystify executive coaching. Jimmy and Katrina have been working together since 2019 when they launched L6, the leadership development program that has now become a staple inside ParkerGale and our portfolio businesses. On today’s show, they discuss the landscape of executive coaching and why the impact of an executive coach can be so profound by “bringing you into the room” to a coaching engagement. They also give tips for finding the right coach if you are currently on the market. Katrina even gets Jimmy to talk a little about his own experience with his coach.

This episode is especially for the skeptics. For you all, executive coaching may very well be one of the biggest investments in yourself or in the leaders around you that you aren’t making. Listen to find out why.

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How PE firms use the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework to drive a high-growth product strategy

In this episode of the Private Equity Funcast, Operating Partner Cici Zheng is joined by Jared Ranere, President and COO of thrv, a firm that delivers services, training and a software platform using the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework to identify and serve customers' unmet needs. We cover what the framework is and how it's used at PE backed portfolio companies, both during due diligence and post-close, how the JTBD framework potentially expands the total addressable market (TAM) of an industry we're looking at, and how the framework translates into product strategy and go-to-market execution.

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Defining Your Ideal Customer Profile

In the latest episode of the Private Equity Funcast, Operating Partners Cici Zheng and Paul Stansik discuss the ICP - Ideal Customer Profile. As investors, we're frequently asking our portfolio companies - who is your ICP? Which ones are your best-fit customers, the ones that your product is truly the best fit for to solve their pain points? How do we avoid trying to be the dreaded "swiss-army knife" and being everything to everybody? In this episode we discuss why defining an ICP is important to us and our 3 step process for building out an ICP.

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Value Creation through Human Capital with David Cohen, Partner at Kelso and Company

Jimmy is joined by David Cohen, Human Capital Partner at Kelso and Company. David has been working in the Human Capital / Private Equity space for over a decade and has helped shape the discipline across the PE industry. They break down the various ways that human capital can impact a portfolio business, including alignment to strategy, leadership effectiveness, talent acquisition, and org design. If there’s a word that defines today’s episode, it’s alignment. It is at the center of how both Kelso and ParkerGale think about the human capital practice. To be successful, leadership needs to get dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people organized around a common purpose and strategy. If you can’t do that, not much else matters.

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What is Human Capital Due Diligence? A lot more than you think.

In this episode, Jimmy is joined by Laura Queen, founder, and CEO of 29Bison, a Human Capital Consultancy focused on the PE space. Laura is also the author of the book “People Economics: Defining and Measuring the True Value of Human Capital” and is a genius at understanding how strategic human capital management contributes to the value creation process. They break down Human Capital Due Diligence – what it is, how it’s done, and why it’s the fastest-growing of all the diligence workstreams.

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DevOps with Dave Mangot

Jim talks all things DevOps with Dave Mangot from Mangoteque. Dave's philosophy is "Get Good at Delivering Software", and he has helped many well-known companies become "best in class" We discuss the four keys that define a company's competence in software delivery; deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to recovery. There's also a heated discussion about whether "the cloud" is cheaper than running your own data center.

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They ask, You Answer with Marcus Sheridan

No prospect is going to buy enterprise software on impulse. Prospects don't need advertising, they need help, help in understanding that they have a problem, help understanding their options for solving that problem, and help working their way through an evaluation and choosing a solution. Paul Stansik talks with Marcus Sheridan, author of "They Ask, You Answer" about these topics and more.

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Lessons Learned from Integrating Companies - and why you need an Integration Management Office (IMO)

Your company acquired another company - congrats! But what happens next? In this episode, Operating Partners Cici and Jimmy break down the Integration Management Office, or IMO. They discuss what it is and how they deploy it inside the portfolio to integrate recently acquired businesses into their acquiring entity. They discuss how they stand up the process, the key processes that need to be in place to make sure everything gets done, and how to make sure you don’t forget about the humans involved in the process.

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The Increasingly Important Role Talent is Playing in Private Equity

Jimmy is joined on the show by Ted Bililies, Managing Director at AlixPartners, for what is now becoming a yearly ritual to discuss the results of the 7th Annual PE Leadership Survey. This year, the theme is all about the COVID-driven acceleration of trends that is propelling human capital to the forefront of the value creation agenda. They discuss the great resignation, how CEOs are now more fearful for their jobs than ever, and the rising important of talent recruiting, engagement, development, and retention. They close with tips to help leaders and investors better manage in a world that is only become more and more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

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Mastering the Basics of B2B Marketing (w/ Special Guest Elias Rubel)

On this episode of the Funcast, Operating Partner Paul Stansik is joined by CEO Elias Rubel, whose team at Matter Made works with B2B marketing teams big and small to help accelerate their revenue growth. If you've ever wondered how to organize a marketing team, the right way to interview a marketing leader, the foundation you need in place to launch an effective demand generation campaign, or what leaders of companies like Loom, G2, Dropbox, and other unicorns are doing to tune their inbound lead machines, this one is for you.

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March Madness 2022 - Sweet Sixteen

It's our annual March Madness show. This year our intrepid Operations Team picks their 16 favorite podcasts. Have a listen as Cici, Paul, Cass and Jimmy along with Commissioner for Life -- Jim work their way down to a final four. And play along at home with our survey - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FMP6J8V The final four battle it out for supremacy on next Monday's episode.

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The Prospecting Debate

Sometimes the recipe for a good discussion is to simply pick an important topic, invite two smart people who disagree with each other, and then sit back and listen. Today Paul Stansik, Operating Partner at ParkerGale, is joined by Cory Bray (MD at ClozeLoop) and Nelson Gilliat (Author of Death of the SDR: And the Birth of Buyer Centric Revenue) to talk about how to get prospecting and growth right. In the course of a rousing hourlong debate, Paul, Cory, and Nelson cover the spectrum of opinions on “how to prospect well”, the evolving role of the BDR/SDR, and where sales and marketing teams should focus to maximize their chances for success.

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Cybersecurity Insurance and Litigation with Peter Halprin

Jim and Attorney Peter Halprin from Pasich, LLP discuss the ins and outs of Cybersecurity Insurance and Litigation. We cover a wide range of topics with a focus on what private equity leaders need to know about these issues, including: why private equity leaders should treat attacks as inevitabilities, how cyber insurance can provide breach response support and financial protection against cyber risks, and how companies may be able to find coverage under other policies for cyberattacks, including crime, kidnap and ransom, property, and technology errors and omissions.

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Nailing Your Product Positioning with April Dunford

In this episode, Cici Zheng talks with April Dunford, a positioning consultant, speaker, and author on how she helps growth stage companies with positioning. They discuss the difference between product messaging and product positioning, how to "fix" positioning problems, and why founders, PE firms, and portfolio companies should even care about positioning in the first place.

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We're Hiring a Platform Team!

Devin walks us through three (yes 3!) new additions to the ParkerGale team. We're calling it the Platform Team and it includes a Head of Community, a Head of Origination, and a Head of Research. Listen to hear a brief description of each role and if you are interested (or know someone who is) email your resume to devin [at] parkergale [dot] com and ryan [at] parkergale [com] with "Community" "Origination" or "Research" in the email title. We will send you a detailed job description so you can learn more.

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