Growing Together​

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Anderson Williams: Can you just give us a little bit of context for where SENTA was when you started and how it's grown. And then maybe just say a little bit about how you've grown with it, how your role has evolved and so forth.

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Rob Collins: So SENTA was started by Shore in 2019. I joined in 2021. Which is a little bit atypical of CXOs. I joined about two years in. The headline is that over three years, we've three X'ed. So when I got there, we had a couple of practices in the Atlanta market, we were still gaining some scale and size. We've continued to do that over three years and have three X and we're about 250 million in revenue currently. And in closing in our fifth year after starting.

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I think we've been through about, we're now in our fourth phase since I've joined. I think these are pretty typical of a short platform and it's been interesting for me to be in these four phases. And have my role evolve with each four.

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So right when I got there, after COVID, market was rip roaring. We had a lot of runway, almost complete focus on BD. You got to gain some scale, any platform like us, starting with one single practice and trying to create a roll up or just a density strategy. You have to create that scale and that was the initial focus on BD.

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Two is organic growth. So we started to gain some scale, get some size. Okay. How are we going to win? How are we going to add value to these practices outside of just buying low, selling high arbitrage? What are we going to do to make these things grow? And what's our story going to be?

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Three, we enter into an inflationary environment, rates raise, market slows down, we have the right size, which is a good exercise, a healthy exercise for any business, and it was the right time during really the 2023 period.

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And then four, we're now into year five, how do we optimize? How do we create processes? How do we create the frames that enable this business to scale? Going forward with additional capital.

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So my roles in those areas, as I started first, just get in, get your hands dirty, chief of staff kind of role, pick up whatever you can, whatever anybody doesn't want to do, pick it up and do it well, which was a great phase. Learn about the business, understand the transactional level of the business, gain the respect and trust of your teammates on the executive team that you're thrust into.

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So that was fun. A couple of quarters there, and then kind of raised my hand. I got this moment of, we had four businesses at the time and we had a general manager type role that had stepped out. A lot of turnover in the past. I wanted to learn more about the business, dive in, lead a relatively big scale business and have some P&L responsibility, which was great and the business needed it. And personally that gave me some talent management experience, which I think you can only learn through experience. So that was great.

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Then, as I said, number two, organic growth, had a conversation with our CEO, wanting to be closer back to the corporate side and got into the chief strategy officer type role. So. How do we win? What's our strategy? What's our playbook going forward? So developing these different levers, a DeNovo arm, a different services or different revenue streams model. And how do we invest appropriately to create growth going forward?

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Three, the, probably the most work fill and fruitful year was last year. Similarly, a scenario where I got this, raised my hand. We had a turnover at the CFO seat. A lot of things going in a lot of different direction and we needed somebody to come in, set the foundation, reset the foundation, if you will. Stabilize our teams, find the right talent, and create a back office that we could scale upon.

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So that was the CFO seat and then that and tied with a really important focus on profitability during that year with rates as they were. And it's one thing to talk about rates, it's another to see your interest payments go up on four X. Instead of paying a hundred thousand dollars, you're paying four hundred thousand, five hundred thousand dollars a month in interest. It really strains your cash flow and makes you think about your allocation of capital.

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And then lastly, as we're in now, as I said, you're five, how do we create a really scalable business with additional capital flowing in, cross functional leadership, helping all of our executive team move in the right direction. So a long winded way of giving the overview of the last three years, but it's been a fun ride.​

The CXO Mindset​

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Anderson Williams: I think it's interesting. You said a couple of phrases that feel like they're the theme for a CXO, you know, you know, I got this first of all, and then I love. Pick it up and do it well.

 

Is there an example for other young executives listening or other people potentially interested in the CXO program? Just one of those pick it up and do it well moments. Is there just an anecdote or story that really captures what it means to be a CXO with that mindset?

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Rob Collins: Yeah, I'll give two. And I think I alluded to them a little bit.

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The first, a super small example. As I said, when you get there, one of the things as any newcomer in any business, any organization, pick up something that nobody wants to do. That's really important. The most important thing that nobody wants to do. And for SENTA at the time that I joined in this first few months, that was board preparation, board strategy, board deck, board modeling. It's something that takes our executives away from their day to day jobs. It's a lot of work, a lot of preparation, a lot of thought, and it's something that as a former consultant, whether or not we like to admit it, we're good at it.

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So I got this raised my hand from the tactical, putting the materials together to the more strategic, Hey, what's our story going to be? What are we looking for from the board? What's our ask of them? So taking it from a really convoluted preparatory process and. resulting deck to something that we think is best in class and I've gotten great feedback from the board. So that was a quick win, something to get my name on the scoreboard and also a way to insert myself into the most important parts of the business early on. So that's one on a small scale.

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On a big scale, I think the CFO transition is something that I had not imagined coming into Shore or generally any business that I would have run. I don't have a financial or accounting background. I have a technical background, but not a financial background. And I think over the course of the two years in the business, I felt comfortable that I could do that. And with the plethora of support resources at Shore, I was humbly confident. That I could step in and be successful there.

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And I think we put the, we started moving in the right direction and put the foundations in place to get there again, something that I didn't see. I had to go advocate for raise my hand, put together a plan of saying, Hey, if I take the seat, if you would like me to take the seat, here's what we would do. And it was a really fruitful exercise for myself to go do that in a very fruitful year, as I mentioned.

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Anderson Williams: Will you just say a little bit more, because I suspect a lot of people have a consulting background, but just for context, what you had done before becoming a CXO, just for a little bit of context.

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Rob Collins: So I have a mechanical engineering background, did a mechanical engineering undergrad, a little bit of focus in aerospace and engineering, and that's where my interest lie in undergrad. I quickly realized that the speed and the entry level positions at those companies, you know, the big A&D manufacturers were not where I wanted to be post undergrad.

 

So jumped into consulting, strategy consulting, spent four years there, and I ended up doing a lot of work for those aerospace and defense companies, which was fun. Industrial products, manufacturing, insurance, crisscrossing industries. But that's exactly what I wanted, the broad breadth of industries. And I think in consulting or banking job at an undergrad, you learn the foundational skill sets.

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You learn how to put together a strategy, put together a story, a model, a deck, present to a board. These are kind of foundational skill sets that are commonplace to those that are in those roles as a consultant or any high rigor post undergrad job. But you come into a smaller private equity backed environment and those become real differentiators,. Not only in your abilities, but in the abilities of the company to present and execute on strategies going forward.

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Anderson Williams: Yeah. I'm curious with that breadth of experience, as you look back to probably particularly that first year, what didn't consulting prepare you for?

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Rob Collins: I think the the short answer is talent management, and not only hiring and firing, but getting people to execute properly. I think there's a common theme here in Shore of to be a good business leader, CEO. You have to set the strategy, hire the right people, get them to perform. And I think fourth is also create a culture of success. I think the strategy piece is something that you learn and can be learned through my experience in consulting.

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Hey, putting together, thinking about things logically, putting together a structure. But the hard part is. Hiring the right people and getting them to perform. And that was something that hit me right in the face as soon as I stepped into that general management role. And certainly when I stepped into even the chief strategy and the CFO role of managing the team, designing a team, properly incentivizing, properly communicating.

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And then also the mystery that is, you know, hiring and finding the right people for the right roles. So that certainly was the biggest learning curve and is the biggest learning curve for me over the last three years.

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Anderson Williams: Yeah, I think that theme is pretty consistent and particularly as I talk with CXO and other real high performers, high driven, it's like how do you prepare and temper yourself in your own drive and you're no longer a powerhouse individual operator, you know, executed all hours of the night while you might be doing that. You've got to build and scale this team to carry this. You're no longer a mercenary, so to speak.

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Rob Collins: Right. That's leadership. But an aha moment for me was Something that's certainly not novel. It's in every business book you read, but connecting the micro with the macro, connecting your big hairy goal with your investment return objective with what you are doing every second, every day, what your team is, what the frontline employee are doing.

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Every second, every day to know that we're all tracking towards that large goal. And man, it's one thing to talk about it, but it's another thing to execute it. And that's been a really fun challenge to go and try to think through. It's also something that reminds me a lot of the athletic background of creating a good team that every second of your practice, you're sweating, you're working hard.

 

You know, that you're pointing to that ultimate goal. And I think the best companies had that same mentality and that same laddering, if you will, of high level goal to minute by minute, day by day goal to really motivate and push their employees forward.

Expedited Experience​

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Anderson Williams: I'm curious, as you think about your own growth and journey, how has being a part of a CXO cohort and a CXO fellows program helped expedite or support you through all of this growth and change over the last three and a half years?

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Rob Collins: So connecting a few conversations we've had thus far out of MBA school, seriously considered going to buy my own business and doing a search fund and ultimately decided against that for a few different reasons, family and otherwise. But I can confidently say now because of the CXO program, because of my experience, that much better prepared to lead a business successfully now than I was three years ago, right out of business school.

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I think the shared experiences is huge across the CXOs. When I stepped into two of the three roles that I had, whether it be chief strategy officer, general manager, or the CFO, I had peers that were a year above me that had just done the exact same role. So on the phone with them right away, what did you do in your first 90 days?

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How were you successful? What pitfalls did you get into? That network is super, it's underrated how important that has been for us all. And then two is not only the connections to your additional CXOs, but other board members across all the portfolio. And I've been able and fortunate enough to develop a really great mentorship relationship with somebody in the Shore network organically through conversations.

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And we've been meeting here for the last year plus, and that has experience as CEO, as someone who's gone through the exact challenges and struggles that I've been through and providing advice on our business as SENTA as well as something that you wouldn't get in a, you know, in a, certainly in a search fund world, but in a lot of other private equity operational structures is not there.

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Anderson Williams: I'm curious as you, as you think about that, both in terms of what you've been able to leverage and teach to the other CXOs, your own mentorship and support in the process. If you went back to that version of you who just joined SENTA in 2021, What coaching or advice would you give that version based on your hard won wisdom today?

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Rob Collins: Oh man, I think a couple of things. I think, you know, it was certainly a difficult decision to, it was the right decision, but difficult decision to move my family down and with this program, right? You're signing up for something. You don't know where you're going to go for a period of time. And. We had two kids at that point and saying, okay, we're going to pick up and move to Atlanta, Georgia.

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We have no connection to Atlanta, but this is where we want to be. And, and that was a huge trust factor in Shore. And I think that a couple of things have come out of that. So if I was talking to myself when I started, there are three things that come to mind.

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One is be curious, learn the details, get in the weeds right away, and understand the transactional level of how your business adds value. The relationships with frontline employees, with people that are touching, in our case, the customer or the patient every day, the doctors, that is really what drives, that's why you're in business, that's what you do, being as curious as possible there.

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Two is raise your hand. Continue to raise your hand. Don't think anything. Don't be confined by your title. Don't even worry about your title. Just add value to the business and things will happen. There's no reason to be thinking about that outside of what am I going to do today to help the business and how do I achieve our macro objective back to the micro macro conversation.

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And third is write. I think I'm good at this, but sometimes I struggle for periods of time but writing really makes you think and putting your thoughts on paper, whether it be once a day, once a week, just a few bullet points about things you've learned and consolidating that into something that you can refer back to is something that I would like to do more frequently and more regularly.

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Anderson Williams: I'd love to pull on that a little bit more because I think writing, as you described, it is an incredible learning tool because pauses and you slow down and you reflect using just different tools, different parts of your brain and so forth.

 

What are the things that you have captured without, you know, sharing any detail you don't want to, but what are some things that you've captured by pausing to write that you might not have captured otherwise?

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Rob Collins: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I can think back to immediately that hits me in the face is It gives you a pause, a patience. There's a lot of times where you've had a busy week and you think that something needs to change right away. Well, let's take a step back. Let's put it on paper. Let's think through the options.

 

Let's logic it out before you go and react or it almost brings a level of humility to your own thought processes of hey, your first inclination is just your first inclination. It's just that let's think through it and maybe you end up in the same spot you started, but maybe you don't. That logical reasoning and even more so than You know, thinking on your own, you have to put in writing it, you have to really structure out sentences and thoughts and they cannot be incomplete if you're writing appropriately.

 

And then two, I think it helps back to the conversation of what's been most challenging or the biggest learning experience for me, which has been a human capital element of leadership is helping me understand how I am presenting to others, how I am interacting with those that are on my team or my peers or anybody else in the organization.

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And then also reflecting on, Hey, why this person after this step way, why, why would they be doing this? And again, some patience, some thoughtfulness. And then it's also a great memorialization of things that I hear from colleagues and peers that I want to keep in mind when I'm writing out a culture for my team.

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Anderson Williams: Yeah, I mean, I think there's something just to, as you described it, slowing down, putting it on paper, removing it from your head, removing it from your heart, being able to look at it right there on the paper and then, you know, see it differently as a result, right?

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And in the speed of what you've been doing, not to mention being a father and a spouse and all of the other things that is, seems really pivotal and really great advice to learn in whatever time you have to just pause. You might not even read it that day, but you may come back to it later and see a pattern that otherwise would have evaporated.

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Rob Collins: Yeah, I think just pull out your journal and look through what was I thinking about during this month or this month and some of the best and most fruitful journeys or most accelerated growth journeys have been when I was writing five bullet points a day of, Hey, here's what I learned, here's what I was thinking about, here's a challenge today