In this exceptional episode, R.J. Grimshaw, CEO of UniFi Equipment Finance and owner of Able Leadership LLC, shares how he exemplifies the spirit of entrepreneurship by fostering an intrapreneurship culture within organizations.
You will discover:
– How to tell if you truly have an innovative culture
– What an intrapreneur is and how do you identify them inside your organization
– How to succeed as an intrapreneur inside of your organization
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach and that is the one the only RJ Grimshaw. Now, RJ is journey is deeply rooted in a family of entrepreneurs after serving in the US Air Force RJ and his brother Eric, and their father gene co founded skriva town in a venture that blossomed into RJ his very first million dollar business. And it was within the equipment leasing and finance industry that he embarked on this remarkable career journey, he became the CEO and President of unify equipment finance, in 2013. Now, under his guidance, the 45 year old organization rapidly became one of North America’s fastest growing organizations. And throughout his visionary leadership, the yearly volume of unify equipment finance skyrocketed from $13 million to get this over $115 million. absolutely remarkable, absolutely remarkable. Given the age of this organization, there’s something special that happened and I can’t wait to unpack it. But before we kind of get into the work that you’re doing now, I’m wondering if you could just add some color to the story. How did you go from, you know, this massive success story unified to becoming a coach than the consultant you are today?
R.J. Grimshaw
Yeah, I appreciate you having me here, Scott. And great intro, probably when the best intros I’ve ever had, I might replay that for my family all the time, just to say, hey, you know, give me a little bit more respect. But, you know, my path led me there. I, as you mentioned earlier, my first business was at the age of 23. My dad, who was my mentor, as well, his business plan, actually Haynes behind me from one of his businesses, he started in 1983. And how I fell into corporate America was strictly by accident. Everything you just said was, it was a great story. However, every story, sometimes there’s a black cloud, and that black cloud was unfortunately, my dad passed away very young at the age of 61, from a massive heart attack. And I was still in the bar business at that time. And I was just turning 30. And I already had two boys. We married young. And I had to make a decision of continuing the entrepreneur path, which was very successful, or falling into corporate America, which I did by accident, I wanted to do it on my terms. And that’s where I learned about the term of intrapreneurship. And it really just blossomed and what I started learning more and more about the term and how it should be leveraged and utilized in different companies from product development to process improvement innovation. I really just that was my North Star. And quite honestly, if it wasn’t for that mindset and mentality, as well as being a life learner, I would never have made it to where I did it unify in 2013. And I appreciate all the credit you gave me. But in the same respect, it was all the team that I was surrounded with, I walked into our organization have a lot of long term employees. And they wanted that next level of growth, they wanted that next level of scale and things of that nature, and they bought in and with their buy in, we were able to grow the business. And it was from 13 to 36 to 72. And then we hit a plateau like so many businesses do where you hit in a certain revenue spot. And you really have to go do some self discovery and look internally on on what you need to do to go that next level. And after several months of doing that with my team, we made some conscious decisions, and then pivoted just a tad in 2016. And that’s where that next level of growth came to the 115. Mark, that we finished that last year long winded story there. But in the back of my mind the whole time, I knew that I wanted to go out and start educating other business owners around the term of intrapreneurship. And what it can do within their business because so many times people like to segregate the two between you’re either an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur. However, every great entrepreneur needs a great intrapreneur and coalition with them. And that’s where I come in and educate business owners on different fronts, from employee engagement to growth to scale, they all play hand in hand together, we’re not a cent for all customers, if they’re already innovating customer they have innovation is part of their culture, then we’re not a fit. And we’re very selective with the customers that we work with, because we want to ensure that we can truly help them.
Scott Ritzheimer
As a couple of things. One, I want to point out that intrapreneurs not a miss pronounced word, right? So we’re gonna dive into what the difference is between this idea of entrepreneurs in which many in our audience are very familiar with an intrapreneur ism. But before we get there, you just had a point that I want to grab on to and that is, I’ve found there’s a number of companies that that would say that innovation is part of their culture, right? It’s one of their values. They have this great innovation department that has articles written about them. What is it that separates those that that say they have a great innovative culture and those who truly have an innovative culture?
R.J. Grimshaw
Yeah, so innovation is very similar to people who say they’re in technology or they’re in health care. That’s a big word, it means a lot of different things to different people, if they truly do have an innovation lab within their organization, that’s wonderful. But what are they doing in other parts of their business in terms of innovating. And we actually have an assessment that we’ve been designing over the last several years that we will give the business owner and we actually start with the employees with a business owner says, or the CEO or the entrepreneur says that, oh, we’re very innovative, we do, you know, we’re very forward late looking so great. Let’s give you your your team members and assessment on online assessment that will take them 10 to 15 minutes, we’ll give you the feedback, no charge to you. And then you can make his constant decision. If if you’re doing everything that you that you think you are by the voice of your team members. I’m telling you, Scott 90% of time comes back. And they’re shocked, because they believe that they’re innovating. However, they’re out either communicating that internally, or there’s different pockets where they’re not innovating. And that’s where we can come in and identify those pockets, and have that part of the company become innovation, because innovation really starts with improvement. It’s just not innovating to innovate. innovating, is looking at your current systems, processes, product sets, and looking where you can make those improvements. And the only way you can do that is with your employees. It’s not people sitting in a conference room, it’s not people sitting in a boardroom. It’s the voice of the people in the trenches on a daily basis. And we provide the tools that they can provide that feedback to senior leadership or the owner.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So there’s this pattern that I see a lot. And I’m wondering if this is part of what you’re describing here, where you have, I tend to work in very entrepreneurial organizations, right, the scaling up and and oftentimes the helm, you have a very visionary leader, very innovative individual, and for quite a while. That’s not enough by itself, right. But that person tends to be the epicenter of innovation. But what I found is almost the more innovative they are, the less room there is for innovation in anyone else. Do you ever see that happen?
R.J. Grimshaw
You’re spot on with that. And that’s where we will work with that owner, that entrepreneur who was that visionary, we want that visionary to just absolutely foster in that environment. That’s where the intrapreneur comes in the intrapreneurs, the doer, the dreamer. So you have that visionary who’s coming up with the next idea or innovating, they need the backbone in order to execute upon those dreams. And that’s where visionaries get frustrated. Because they’ll a lot of times, we’ll be talking to entrepreneurs, and I’m sure you do as well. And they’ll say, well, they just don’t understand or, or they just don’t, they just don’t treat it the same way I do, or they don’t have the same vision as I do. Well, that’s because most likely, unfortunately, you’re surrounding yourself with people that are wired the same as you wherever you can find that intrapreneur that understands the role of an intrapreneur, which is a good segue to the definition. an intrapreneur is the definition of of an intrapreneur is someone that works within the business confines. All right, but they think just like that entrepreneur, they are very resourceful, they’re forward looking, they’re like minded, they’re passionate, but they’re not taking the capital risk, and laying out their own capital to start their own business. And that was RJ, I had the entrepreneurial spirit, I knew what it was to make payroll, I knew what it was to scale. I knew what it was to work with your providers. I just took that mindset. And when I went into corporate America, I thought differently, hats back to my core, my success and in my career. And also I was lucky, you’re surrounded by a lot of great people that I learned from. And that was the opportunity that led me you know, again, to unify. And now I’m trying to take that knowledge. I’m taking that knowledge and working with businesses and we’re very defined with the businesses we can help. Here in Ann Arbor where I’m based and live. It’s a significant entrepreneurs town, there’s a lot of, you know, startup grants, there’s there’s a spark, which is a local organization here. We I will work individually with startups. However, that’s not our core for our our coaching practice is really with a company between two, you know, above $2 million in revenue five years in business, and now they’re looking to go that next level.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Fantastic. So one of the things that I see and this is one of the things that jumped out of your story, organization has been around for 45 years, there tends to be a whole lot of momentum in a given direction, right? There’s a whole lot of of energy being spent, but it all seems to be going in one direction. And sometimes you need to shift that sometimes you need to move that and and would you say that that that’s part of the role of entrepreneurism is to start to turn some of that momentum.
R.J. Grimshaw
It is and it’s very important, we also work with individuals that want to become an intrapreneur when they usually self identify, and then they just wanted to know what they can do to because it’s a mindset, it’s a life, it’s almost a desire life mission to be that intrapreneur and there should be value associated with that. So we want to applaud our intrapreneurs but we coach our inch trainers that they have to be aligned their mission and visions internally after values have to be aligned with that company. Because if there’s not alignment there, it will not work. And most likely the the owner of the business and the intrapreneur will get frustrated with each other. For me, I was aligned, because I wasn’t an entrepreneur, I wanted to work with entrepreneurs, and business financing financier equipment for them was alignment with who I was and what I wanted to do. So I wasn’t that entrepreneur at the time, but I was able to fill my void of not being one, by working with entrepreneurs and bringing more value than just here’s capital to finding out your equipment, but there has to be the alignment is critical. So back to the the owner, they have to and that’s where we work with them in terms of the personal assessment to ensure that they’re hiring intrapreneurs. Now want to expand on that Scott, we coach and our principles are, you only want within your organization, probably 20% of your team members having that mindset, because you can’t have all intrapreneurs 100% intrapreneurs with your entrepreneurs, because quite honestly, it will be dysfunctional, and you won’t get anything done. So the first exercise we’ll do is work with that business owner to identify people within their organization that already have the traits of an intrapreneur, then we start talking about communication and culture. And in again, it’s it’s just not an initiative in so many business owners want to do a special initiative or a focus for a short period of time, it’s very similar to going to the gym to have true results, you have to be consistent with your activities of going to the gym. Same way with an intrapreneur operating system, you have to be consistent with your messaging and education on a regular basis to your team. And then that’s determined by the horse the organization size.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And so you also talked about this idea. So step one, find the ones that you already have, right, there’s probably at least a few that have been a little quieter than maybe we want them to be. But sometimes you also have to bring it in from the outside. So what are some of the hallmarks? How do you find a high quality intrapreneur.
R.J. Grimshaw
So the first thing we educate our business owners on is we like to look at their job descriptions that they’re placing, to look for new candidates for the organization. And a lot of times we’ll make some subtle changes to their job description as well as their content on their website to attract a higher caliber person. We actually beta tested this at unify, we ran one year job description, the old fashioned way. And then the new way was we just added something around intrapreneurship. We’re looking for someone with that intrapreneur mindset. And then underneath that we actually asked them to Google the term so they understand what it is. We saw the quality of the candidate with the be testing with that intrapreneur mindset listed, the quality of those candidates went up tremendously. Well, just because people want their voices to be heard. They want community they want to join an organization that they can come into and truly add value. And that’s what an intrapreneur does.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah. So good. So one of the things about intrapreneurs is, it is inherently messy, right? There’s some risk taking involved in it. And there’s this question when we start kind of giving people leash, what if it goes wrong? And so how do you manage these kinds of visionary leaders inside your organization to keep the thing from going off the rails.
R.J. Grimshaw
So we have a software that we actually deploy within organizations for those ideas, to be fed into leadership, to be able to determine which ideas are good, and then also stack rank those so we’re completing the loop back to the people who are giving the ideas, the last thing you want to do is, is roll this out, receive all these ideas and and nothing’s done. And then the organization are the, the team members on the team, especially for the smaller company say, well, here we go again, we tried something for 14 days, and it didn’t work. So that’s back to that consistency of messaging back to the your question in regards to the software, there has to be contacts in regards to the ideas that’s back to the alignment. For example, if I’m in a restaurant, that’s a steak house, and all of a sudden someone says, oh, we should be serving pizza, that’s not really in the same context of who we are, from an identity perspective, the messy part, and this is where a lot of my entrepreneurs get nervous. Well, what if I hire an intrapreneur? They come in, they add all this value, and then they leave within two years. Okay. You just said they join your organization, they added value for two years, and then they left. I don’t see that as a bad, bad thing. Unfortunately, it’s selfish, because I’ve had that happen to me, it selfishly. But in the same respect, I come from an abundant mindset, if I helped someone’s career along the path, and they went on to something that they felt was better for them. I applaud them and matter of fact, I’ll help them get to where they want to go. To do that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s one of those things and it’s changing so much, especially post COVID is, you know, if you get too when it comes in for two, three years, that’s a relatively long time these days. Right. And I think rather than worrying about what they will leave with, I think what we really want to do is focus on what they will leave behind? What are the true changes they can make in our organization?
R.J. Grimshaw
And I have a story of that we actually had an individual gentleman, he had all the traits and characteristics of an intrapreneur. Hands down the best candidate I’ve ever interviewed, he showed up with a binder of all of his accomplishments, his degrees, is, you know, school grades 10 years after the fact. And I merely hired him and he came in the organization did multiple roles. And he came to me again, we have we fostered the idea sharing within organization and he came to me and said, RJ, we have a blog, or we have an opportunity here to better serve our customers with an online payment portal, which we did not have. And it was a blind spot to me, Scott, I wasn’t aware of it. And we sat down, he mapped I said, map out the plan, map out, you know, what you would need to do and keep in mind, you still have to hit your cell, your sales numbers that you have to because that’s the action, oxygen that feeds the beast. Well, within three months, you worked with our IT department. And again, he asked to influence the behavior of it, the of our IT team, he worked with an outside vendor, and he was able to build out the portal to serve our customer needs. And that’s back to the alignment of vision and mission, he understood what we were trying to do. And now we process over $100,000, any given month through that portal, there wasn’t an initiative, it was all because of his idea. And there’s stats about researching of employees sharing ideas that 75% of every single team member or employee you have in an organization believes they have an idea that will make the organization a better organization and serving the customers.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, wow. Remarkable. Well, speaking of great ideas as a question I like to ask all my guests, and it’s this what is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
R.J. Grimshaw
Being an intrapreneur is just as sexy, as rewarding as being that entrepreneur. And what I mean by that is, if I was to do a math equation, which every Sunday afternoon, when I’m brainstorming, sitting down with a piece of paper, I think I should do this, and I’m going to do it, if I work backwards. And my income relative to I didn’t have to put any capital out in my career advancement from a monetary perspective, my ROI will be much higher than a lot of business people are a lot of entrepreneurs that want to go out and start a business. Yeah, most businesses are very difficult to reach into a million dollars. And again, I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer here. But if you studied intrapreneurship, go learn the business that you want to start if you have a dream or a mission or vision that you think you can own it, identify a company that does that today, go apply there, take the job, it’s not about what you’re being paid, it’s about the education you’re going to receive, then you can make a good decision while you’re being paid. If you want to go start that company I see so many business owners just jump into something without researching because they watched some video on YouTube. And they were sold all the positives and not the negatives of what it is to run that business. Yeah. And we’re we want instant gratification as human beings, that’s just natural the world we live in, however, take the long road go somewhere for that year, learn the business or six months, someone we were just working with work somewhere for 90 days. And she received all the knowledge she did. And then she ultimately left the organization. And we were not setting people up to just come and go, she felt she could learn at that quick. And she felt good enough to go to the business owner and tell them that she would stay on however, you know, that’s back to learning before you go out and start something that’s the secret. You know, intrapreneurs are just as cool as entrepreneurs. And guess what we need each other to succeed?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah 100% 100%. So speaking of kind of stepping into this entrepreneurial mode, I’m gonna have you put on your take off your coach, consultant hat for a moment put on your CEO, hat, and Douglas, what’s the next stage of growth look like for you in your business?
R.J. Grimshaw
Our next stage of growth is really trying to continue to identify technology to drive the culture and mindset within organizations, we have tools today, but we’re always looking to enhance those tools to take the friction out of the system, that people can have the iOS operating system. Today, or historically, people have captured a lot of this on spreadsheets and Google Sheets and things of that nature. And it’s messy. So we want a gamification piece of it. Because what happens is I talked about earlier that 20 percentage, phoners and 80%, your functional employees, when you deploy this operating system into your company, all of a sudden you see people that maybe were quiet or weren’t sharing ideas, they see the culture and all of a sudden they start giving more. And you see your level of engagement and your discretionary effort and the organization go up tremendously.
Scott Ritzheimer
Well, RJ such a pleasure. I know some folks are listening and just thinking, hey, we’ve got to have this. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. They’ve never even thought of intrapreneurship before but every word you’ve said they know they need it. How can they find more out about you in the work that you do?
R.J. Grimshaw
Sure rjgrimshaw.com is my website you can reach out to me contact me through there. I do answer all my emails. Just give me a day or so and I will respond. And even it’s just a general business question. I’m here to help if it’s career advice, I’m here to help. And you know, that’s the easiest way or just google me and you’ll find me on all the social platforms.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, RJ thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show today. Fantastic, fantastic advice and wisdom. And for those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact R.J. Grimshaw
RJ’s journey is deeply rooted in a family of entrepreneurs. After serving in the US Air Force, RJ and his brother Eric and their father Gene co-founded Scriba Town Inn, a venture that blossomed into RJ’s first million-dollar business. It was within the Equipment Leasing and Finance industry that he embarked on a remarkable career journey. He became the CEO and President of UniFi Equipment Finance in 2013. Under his guidance, the 45-year-old organization rapidly became one of North America’s fastest-growing organization. Through his visionary leadership, the yearly volume of UniFi Equipment Finance skyrocketed from $13 million to over $115 million.
Want to learn more about RJ’s work? Check out his website at https://rjgrimshaw.com/.
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