Leading Through Change: From Setbacks to Success

Alana Muller:
Welcome to Enterprise.ing, a podcast from Enterprise Bank & Trust that's empowering business leaders, one conversation at a time. Each week, we'll hear from top business professionals about lessons on leadership and entrepreneurship that they've learned along the way. I'm your host, Alana Muller, an entrepreneurial executive leader whose primary focus is to connect, inspire, and empower community. We at Enterprise Bank & Trust thank you for tuning into another episode.

Hello listeners. Welcome back to Enterprise.ing Podcast. Dr. Jeremy Lurey is with us today, a talented family advisor, executive coach and business consultant. Jeremy is president and CEO of three businesses, Plus Delta Consulting, Chief Executive Coach, and Family Legacy 1st. Through these organizations, he enables business owners and CEOs to improve performance and create greater value for their shareholders. Dr. Jeremy Lurey, welcome to Enterprise.ing podcast.

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here.

Alana Muller:
Well, I'm delighted to have you. I understand that you work to support family offices and family businesses. First, if you would, would you share an overview of what a family office is for our listeners who may not be familiar with the concept?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Sure. So let's think about successful families who have high net worth. Oftentimes they could have multiple generations, so grandparents, parents, grandchildren, sort of multiple generations. They often will have multiple family branches, so multiple siblings or cousins involved. The family office is basically the business of that family. So whether they have their own operating company for business or not, how do they manage their assets together? Do the grandparents fund education for the grandchildren? They go to college. Do parents make down payments on houses? Do they all go on 70th birthday parties together and cruise the world? So the family office truly is that organization that manages the family and their relationships and their assets out of one single unit.

Alana Muller:
And so do you find yourself interacting with each generation separately or is it sort of the matriarch or patriarch who sort of is the CEO of that organization and you're the general manager? How does that work?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
It really depends on the family. I have one family I've been working with for probably eight or nine years now, and I lead their family business retreat every summer. So I have the ownership generation for the parents, together with their children. So three sibling owners, five children beneath them and some married-in partners and coupling and things like that. But we're all together and we do a lot of work in that meeting. But then throughout the year, I might do some life coaching with some of those children, this one right now is interviewing for jobs. We've been doing resume writing and interview prep for the older generation parents. I serve on their board and help facilitate board meetings and I provide coaching in the business. So every family's a little bit unique and we can engage at any generational level, sometimes together as a group, sometimes separately, at an individual level.

Alana Muller:
That sounds really fun. Okay, so now with a better handle of the family office, I want to go back to your businesses. Talk about your various business pursuits. So Plus Delta Consulting, Chief Executive Coach and Family Legacy 1st. What I want to know is what was the motivation to create these different businesses and how do they differ from and support one another?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Sure. So this is funny. Some might say this would be embarrassing to admit, but I'm an open book. June 17th, 2002: my last day with a paycheck. I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time, one of the largest consulting firms in the world, Anderson Consulting before that… And my business plan, my overall strategy and vision, "Get out." That was it. I knew I wanted to not work in big firm consulting anymore. Lots of reasons why we won't go into right now, but I wanted to start my own practice and I had no idea what entrepreneurship was. I have a Ph.D. in psychology. I don't have an MBA, I didn't take entrepreneurship classes in college. I just knew I wanted to get out and that I wanted some freedom as I thought I'd have as an entrepreneur business owner.

And so Plus Delta Consulting, the first firm, is really more of a consulting practice and I could go into details of that work, but think about helping organizations go through change and improve performance… because my wife is a branding and marketing expert, and we can stand up websites with new logos and things other people wouldn't be able to do. And because I have very much a change kind of drive, not wanting to do the, "Been there, done that," kind of cycle, but always reinvent myself, Chief Exec Coach came out of my consulting where I've now working with the business owners and the CEOs and so we also are launching CEO groups and I needed more of an executive coaching brand. And then Family Legacy 1st is the most recent, over the last five or six years… many of those business owners and CEOs I was working with were the family owners of their companies.

And you talk about pivotal moments, I led a strategic planning retreat with my executive coaching clients, I'll call them for the moment. And at the end of that, this one woman comes up to me and goes, "Wow, Jeremy, that was really amazing. Do you ever do this with families?" And being the overly confident person I am, I said, "Yes, of course." And then I paused and said, "What do you mean?" And that's what’s led to this family retreat for the three siblings and their partners and the five children beneath them for many years now. It really came out of the executive coaching practice, but their family as a family office really benefits from coming together and supporting each other and having these, what arguably are, very complex conversations at times.

Alana Muller:
Well, it's really nice that you've been able to take these different facets of your professional and personal interests and integrate them to serve your clients. As you have engaged with different generations, this is a topic that seems to return again and again, this notion of the different generations that we have right now in the workforce and really in life, how do you see their mindsets and their communication styles differing? Are you seeing different ways that each generation excels and how you engage with them?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Sure, and I need to be careful about stereotyping too much here. But in general, when I'm working with the larger family offices, the sort of patriarch of that family, often a founder or wealth creator, is a very dominant sort of autocratic, “my way or the highway” type of personality. And that's not uncommon where someone who's been phenomenally successful in his lifetime and without being gender-biased, this is more so a male dominant trait, because the matriarchs tend to be much more loving and gracious and engaged with their families. So, in that generation, they're not going to embrace new technology. They're not going to think they need consultants like me. They're just going to keep doing what they've always done. You come down to a second or third generation and now you've got siblings involved who can't all control things themselves, which they're literally split owners, cousins, who maybe not always been on the best terms, but they're cousins, but they're trying to work together.

Step down into more of what I'll call the child. I've got 20-somethings, I work with clients who have teens, and so at that level, they're just learning about business or about wealth, about having meaning and purpose in their lives. So yes, our communications are very different across the board. Some are much more directive, some are a little bit more inclusive, some are more participative and collaborative while some are very closed off and they tend to get triggered and go into these emotional states. And it really helps having my background in psychology coupled with my background in business consulting where I can think about a project and think about how I want to carry a business forward. You can see the artwork behind me now of a lighthouse. I'm a firm believer if we know where we're going, we're far more likely to get there. And so I bring that more linear consultative approach, but also coupled with the communications and psychology background to engage at different levels and with different generations.

Alana Muller:
Okay. Well, so many different things I want to ask you about based on your, so maybe not so secretly because I'm about to let the cat out of the bag here, but I've always wanted to pursue a Ph.D. You were talking about your Ph.D. in organizational psychology. Talk about that. What led you to pursue your Ph.D. and how has it helped you to navigate and enhance your career, especially with these three businesses?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
So, very transparent here. For someone like you who is mid-career and maybe a lifelong learner, just always wanted that achievement, I'm all for pursuing the Ph.D. and finding a way to craft a life where that's possible, because obviously it's a huge lift while you're working and maybe have children or family commitments, whatever. For me, it's very simple. I have what I call my inferiority complex. At the ripe old age of 22, graduating from college, I did not get the job that I had dreamed of coming out of college, so I went to graduate school. And by the age of 26, I now have a Ph.D. because I just applied myself four years straight through. And that's the way our program was designed.

Although most don't finish in four years, it's the way I sort of do things to focus on a goal and achieve it. And so, I came from a place of, "If I have those initials at the end of my name, the Ph.D., people will respect me." And generally speaking, that actually is the case. But that's a stereotype. I'm not any better at what I do because I have a Ph.D., I just have four more years of education than most people do. So, I didn't pursue it for what we would call sort of altruistic reasons, I pursued it literally from my own place of insecurity and wanting that credential at the end of my name. At the age of 26, not waiting until I was 66 or something, to have 40 years of work experience that then people might respect differently with a lot of gray hair and a lot of good stories to tell.

Alana Muller:
Yeah. Oh, I love that. Well, first of all, thank you for the honesty and transparency. I think that's super helpful. So, I get it that you're saying it's not really made you any better or worse at your job. Do you think that it's opened doors in ways that you hadn't expected or has it led you down a path that you hadn't originally anticipated?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
It definitely opens doors, right? So, if there are people who share my inferiority complex at any point in your life and you really want to open some doors, yes, the Ph.D. will help. The only thing that's been sort of a surprise, because maybe it's my humility, but I don't put a lot of weight in the Ph.D. I went through four more years of education. I wrote a dissertation, I went through the steps. Anyone I think can complete those steps. But when it comes to working with engineering firms, working in healthcare with medical groups and doctors, these very technical kind of fields, they actually do give me a level of respect that they would not for other consultants and advisors who don't have a Ph.D.

So again, I didn't pursue it because I wanted to be a specialist in engineering or working with clinicians, but it has helped in those areas. In general, it's just the face validity of having a Ph.D., especially when I'm working with more of the leading gen, Baby Boomers in their seventies or maybe eighties, they tend to give me a level of respect given my age and demographic different from theirs because of the Ph.D. that I would offer whether I deserve it or not. But yes, that credential does speak for itself. There are only 3% of Americans, last I saw the statistic, that have a Ph.D. And so it does distinguish me from others in my field and just in general.

Alana Muller:
Right. That's great. Well, so I want to go down a little bit of a different path. Going back to your earlier answer about how you engage with your clients. My area of interest in study is really on relationships, professional relationships in particular, but I think it really... I don't personally tend to delineate that much between professional pursuits versus personal pursuits. So with that in mind, what role does relationship building play in your work? How do you leverage the connections to enhance your success?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
It's critical. I can go to the professional networking side of how I'm connected with accountants, bankers, attorneys, insurance specialists, wealth managers, you name the professions. We are all in an ecosystem of working, whether it's with the family office clients, the family business clients or corporate clients. And so, the cross referral and support is key. I will end up in a situation where a client says, "I need X," and I can't help them. That's not my background. It's not my area of expertise. But I always want to be able to say, "Yes, I can help,” to my clients or I just want to better their circumstances. And so I will refer any of those other professionals to an IT specialist when you name it. So on that side, relationship building is critical because my arm only reaches as far as it does. I've always been a firm believer for 20-plus years now of, if I can extend that reach one or two or three times through the accountant, the banker, the IT specialist, insurance, whomever, that's just better for our clients and it's better for my practice.

On the other side, if I want to talk about the clients though. So relationship building within a client system, I have multiple CEO groups that I have led for many years now, those people I meet with four times a year. So quarterly, I'm getting to hear their stories about their family, about their business, it enables my coaching, but then somewhere down the road, they have a need that I can help with. The fact that I've been in relationship with people for seven or eight years, nine years, in some cases, I can think of some active clients, absolutely positions us for success where they're not going out to Google and just typing in a search for a consultant because of our history, which is a very rich, shared history. We do couples retreats over the summer. We do other workshops where I get to know them and their children or their families, and I'm extremely well positioned to provide support, again, when it's in my space or if I need to refer someone else if it's not in my space necessarily.

Alana Muller:
Makes great sense. Let's shift the conversation a little bit. One of the things that in talking to business owners or just business professionals in any field are just, we all face challenges from time to time. I'd love to ask you if I may, what are some of the biggest obstacles that you've faced and how were you able to overcome them to emerge as a stronger leader? And with that in mind, what advice do you have for others who have faced maybe similar challenges in their work?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
It's funny, I was at a gathering this weekend and one of our friends just left his job, so he's now on his own. And one of my biggest challenges, day one, I'm on my own and I no longer have the PricewaterhouseCoopers IT help desk to call when my computer crashes and something goes on it. I'll acknowledge I hate the administrivia of being a business owner, and it's not why I got into my craft of leaving again June 17th, 2002. But those things come up, obviously. We want to talk about sort of bigger setbacks. I've had some really high highs that I am very blessed with over the years, but I've had some really low lows. And sometimes those low lows are related to a specific client project where I may have a consulting team member who just didn't hit the mark for some reason, didn't meet expectations, and I have pulled money out of my pocket, out of my bank account and paid clients back at times.

And that's really tough to do when you're a small business, but I would believe it's just the right thing to do, from an integrity perspective. If we haven't met expectations, we're going to do that. I have situations where I have worked through whatever the project might be with a client, and there’s just been some challenges on the way, maybe they weren't fully engaged in the work, or maybe I wasn't perfect. I'm not perfect. But we get to the end of it and I'm ready to launch into the next phase of work and really try to add some value for this client organization. And they say they're done, they're moving in a different direction. And so I could talk about all kinds of setbacks. But in my life, I have learned breakthroughs come through breakdowns, right? Breakthroughs don't happen when things are fine. We think things are fine and we just can keep going day in and day out, business as usual. To when you have a breakdown, you start looking in the mirror and reflecting on what you're doing.

Our probably biggest breakdown of all time was post-recession. So, we did phenomenally well in 2008 into 2009 because we had some big CapEx corporate projects that were already committed on the consulting side. It was 2009 to 10 when that dried up. Well, at the time I had a $300,000 line of credit leveraged to the firm. I had never been a business owner entrepreneur in that way before. I'm used to refinancing my mortgage and my HELOC on my home, and I just assume every few years you refinance. But when you're talking to the chief credit officer of a bank saying they're calling that note, I could have had a heart attack in that moment. I thought that we were done and part of my fortitude and perseverance and gritty leadership of just day by day how to work yourself out of that hole. And I think for anybody who’s sort of listening, trying to figure out this entrepreneurship, how do I deal with life setbacks?

That was massive for me. But one day at a time, what can I tackle today? How can I make progress? And yes, I'm negotiating with the bank and extending terms and all that stuff that's tactical, but really I'd offer more from the emotional side of how can I maintain my focus on the future? How do I pivot given the current circumstances that I never envisioned and stay true to the lighthouse, stay true to the sort of North Star, whatever that may be, for each person. I knew where I wanted to be, I knew what it took to get there. I just had a massive headache and a whole lot of stress in between me and that finish line I was aiming towards, but just keep pecking away at it one day at a time. And thankfully, we're very blessed that that was 2009 into 10. So 15 years later now, our business is thriving. I don't even really think about that stuff that's so far in the rearview mirror at this point.

Alana Muller:
That's so great. Well, so with that in mind, what's something you're working on now that you're especially excited about?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
You were asking about the three different divisions and brands earlier. One of the things I'm really excited about now is that I can integrate all aspects of my professional life and sort of all facets of our team. So I may have a management consultant who sits in our consulting division who I can now bring to bear with my family business clients. So, I'm not just being a family psychologist. I get to be a great conductor, if you will, and bring the right pieces together to make the music. And so, you've got a Chicago Booth background. I've got a team member who went to Booth, has an MBA. He's exactly what you'd expect as a business strategy and operations person. They might hire me initially to do some executive coaching, but what they really need is him. And so now I can bring them into my clients, or I've got other consultants with more of an HR “people” background that I'm bringing in. And so, really being able to create a unified team, really trying to leverage all of those aspects. Because most of our clients just don't know what they don't know, and they wouldn't know to look for that Chicago Booth MBA to help with operational improvement when they're talking to me about board governance or C-suite kind of coaching. And so I'm really excited about being able to do that at this point in our firm's journey.

Alana Muller:
You're really coming at it as a trusted advisor in any capacity. And so yes, certainly the emotional pieces of it, but also the financial pieces of it, the strategic pieces of it. And from my perspective, it's always difficult to separate those things. And so the fact that you can provide all of it, I think is just really neat from a holistic perspective when you think about business from every angle. So, bravo.

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Thank you. One of the things I've shared just in my own conversation with people about business ownership and what I call “solopreneurship” of sort of launching your own thing, don't ever ask me to be a CFO of the bank. I don't have those technical skills, but I'm a great CFO of my boutique consulting and coaching firm, and you can play any role out in that regard, but I don't expect IBM to hire me anytime soon to be the CEO of IBM or Google. So I've got my own limitations and knowledge base, but I'm really proud at this point in my career, I can do business coaching with my clients. I can look at a P&L, I can give financial acumen kinds of advice beyond the psychology or the leadership. And so, I continue to evolve in my own practice and learn and grow and develop. And yes, I think that my clients look to me as that trust advisor in a lot of ways I never would've expected five, 10, 25 years ago.

Alana Muller:
Yeah, so cool. Well, so tell me this, you serve as an advisor to many people. Do you yourself have a mentor? Is there someone in your life who's had a particularly meaningful impact on your career or personal journey? And irrespective of the specific individual, is there a best piece of professional advice that you've received?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
I've been blessed with some great people by my side over the years. Some were former bosses and big firm consulting. Some were partners and just sort of collaborators on discrete consulting projects. I've learned as much on not what I want to do as I have what I want to do from different people and life experiences, but one message that has always stood out for me when I was at Anderson, and this goes back quite awhile, my partner there used to coach me around sales and client relationship, and he said, "Jeremy, you never want to win the project because of the money." As in, you don't want to be the Walmart, low-cost provider for a client. "You want to really speak to your credibility and your capabilities a lot, but you never want to lose the project because of the money." And so it just always framed for me, I don't do this work for the money.

Yes, I have an amazing lifestyle and I love to travel and my family is well cared for and all that, but that's very much a byproduct of doing the work I'm passionate about. And I think, for any entrepreneurs who are getting started, it's what calls you, and I've really embraced that language that many of my clients were more faith-based than I might be, I've truly found my calling and I've found the fit, and I've found the work that I'm passionate about and where I can make a difference and don't ask me to be a weather forecaster, don't ask me to be an engineer. There's a lot I will never be able to do well in this lifetime, but apparently I found a great niche that I can impact people's lives, and so that you never want to win the project because of money, but you never want to lose the project because of the money. There's this really good balance perspective on how to approach our client relationships.

Alana Muller:
It's just great. I love that as somebody who I myself feel incredibly fortunate to have found my purpose and to be able to pursue that every day, I can relate to what you're saying and I admire you for it. So, congratulations.

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Thank you. Yeah.

Alana Muller:
There's one question that I have finished every podcast I've ever done with every guest, and I'm going to ask you the same question. If you could go for a cup of coffee with just one person, it could be anybody living, not living, fictional or non-fictional, who would it be and why?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
I think about this from time to time. I lead leadership workshops pretty regularly. Last week, I had one of my clients and all their supervisors in a room and I asked them, “What is great leadership and who are those great leaders that you'd want to emulate one day?” And it's across the board from the Winston Churchills none of us will ever speak to, to the Oprahs who are still living today. It's a fun question to ask. I think for me, given a passion for music, given my most recent pursuits around happiness and family harmony and all that, one of my favorite songs these days is called “Brighter Day,” and it's by Michael Franti.

And he just lives his life — from the outside, I can't speak to his direct life, but from the outside, it seems to be so aligned with his life, mission and goals and such a free spirit, but so successful in bringing that positive energy into the world that that would be pretty amazing to spend a morning talking with him about how he has stayed true to his heart, yet obviously had a phenomenally successful life as a musician performer. So if you've never been to a Michael Franti concert, I encourage everyone to just do that, or go check out the song “Brighter Day.” It's on YouTube somewhere. It will absolutely change your spirit and put you into a different place.

Alana Muller:
Oh, what a great way to end this conversation. I so appreciate that. Thank you for sharing. I'm going to go check that out and add it into my playlist.

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
Absolutely, yeah.

Alana Muller:
Dr. Jeremy Lurey, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and about your various businesses, including Plus Delta Consulting, Chief Executive Coach and Family Legacy 1st?

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
The easiest way to find me would probably just be on LinkedIn. All of those divisions were represented. You can get to all of our company websites from there. We do have three different websites. The parent company, the original firm is plusdelta.net, “plus” for “positive” “delta” for “change,” so plusdelta.net. That's an easy place to start to drill into Chief Executive Coach and Family Legacy 1st. But I just offered, go to LinkedIn and find me there.

Alana Muller:
Fabulous. Dr. Jeremy Lurey, thank you so much for being on Enterprise.ing podcast.

Dr. Jeremy Lurey:
My pleasure. Thank you.

Alana Muller:
Thanks for joining us this week on Enterprise.ing. Be sure to visit our website, enterprisebank.com/podcast to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. If you found value in today's program, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or telling a friend about us. Enterprise.ing, powering business leaders, one conversation at a time.

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