Approach your Business with Radical Courage

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let’s go.

Scott MacKenzie :

All right, thank you very much for joining the Industrial Talk Podcast where we celebrate you the industry heroes, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly, you solve problems, you’re transforming lives and you’re transforming the world that’s why we celebrate you. Thank you very much for what you do to make our lives better.

All right, in the hot seat, her name is Meghan Lynch. She is definitely the President and CEO of Six-Point Creative. And I got to tell ya I was jacked on this particular dog-gone interview because we talk a lot about being bold, brave, and daring greatly. It’s one thing to talk about it she does it. Let’s get cracking.

Yeah, which is really interesting when you get right down to it. I’ll sit there and I’ll talk about the necessity to be bold, to be brave, to dare greatly, specifically in this time of whatever the new normal, next normal, whatever we call it. I got to come up with a better name, however, whatever we’re living through.

You’ve heard me talk over and over again about, yeah, there’s the negative side, but I think there’s the positive side. And I think that there is a desire to be more vulnerable, to be open, to be… Just the necessity to be able to collaborate because we need to educate, collaborate, and of course innovate, especially now.

But it’s all great, and it’s all wonderful, and it’s all just dandy words. However, there’s got to be action to it. And what’s great about Meghan is the simple fact that she does. She recognizes the necessity to be bold, brave, and dare greatly. But what does that mean? How does a business do that? How do we take it today, whatever this world we live in today, and be able to survive, rebuild, and succeed?

And she brings that real-world. That ability to be able to do that, so that… I mean, we need people, we need to constantly be out there and innovating. We need to be out there collaborating, and definitely she brings the tools to be able to do that. Now in line with what she’s doing I just plant the seed again, Industrial Talk 2.0 is really just a neighborhood of industrial professionals.

Yeah, it’s a network, but it’s a neighborhood because we have a desire to make everybody succeed whatever that might be, whatever that level is. But more importantly it is a great location to find where people are truly innovating and truly having a desire to collaborate.

That’s Industrial Talk 2.0. It’s in the works. We’re doing it. It’s a neighborhood because we are bound together. We have ties. And whether we like it or not I think a pandemic has really highlighted the fact that we are. We don’t have all the answers.

But you know what we have out there, incredible professionals that understand what to do and how to do it, and be able to share that knowledge with you so that you can survive, rebuild, and prosper.

That’s my intro. It’s always the same because it doesn’t change. I mean, we just got to collaborate. It’s important to collaborate. All right, Meghan Lynch, President, CEO, Six-Point Creative, we’re going to be talking about real tactical solutions to that point of you got to be bold, brave, and dare greatly. You can’t have that legacy thinking. You got to do it. What does that mean? How do you find that help?

She’s all about that. She’s great. All right, enjoy the interview. Meghan, welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast. Again, an absolute honor that you made time in your busy schedule to talk to the wonderful and bright listeners of Industrial Talk. That’s what they are.

Meghan Lynch:

Thanks so much, Scott. So excited about it.

Scott MacKenzie :

It’s so cool. Man, I’m going to have a great conversation. I mean, listeners we were having a conversation offline. As you know we do all the time. We do that just because we have to, and we were sort of wrestling with the necessity to educate, and the companies that truly are committed to education will have, no guarantees, don’t go to somebody and say Scott guaranteed if I educate I’m going to be a success. No, that’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying companies that have a greater focus on education have a greater opportunity for success, and that’s all we’re trying to create here. And Meghan brings the lumber in this particular conversation. Before we get into that interview, Meghan, before, give us a little 411 on who you are and why you’re such an incredible professional.

Meghan Lynch:

Absolutely. So I have a company called Six-Point Creative. My background is in brand strategy. But really kind of what Six-Point’s focus is to help companies who are at an inflection point, we call them sec`ond-stage companies.

They’re often family-owned businesses. Companies that have kind of hit this point of a plateau of we’ve kind of tapped out our existing network. We’ve tapped out our growth opportunities, but we’re still looking for more, and we still feel like there’s more opportunity in the market.

Those are the companies that we really honed everything that we do to try to help. And I really did that because I have a second-stage company, and I just realize how different the needs are of companies that are established in the marketplace, who have a reputation, who have something to lose. How different they are from a startup company, and also how very different they are from a large corporation with deep pockets and multiple levels and lots of internal expertise.

These companies are really in this messy middle. And I feel although they’re being served, I don’t know that they’re often being so intentionally served right around that life stage.

Scott MacKenzie :

Isn’t that interesting because I could see if you’re at that position and you talked about second-stage companies, define what that looks like?

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah, so a second-stage company is a company that has anywhere between 10 and a hundred employees, those are loose cutoffs, but it tends to be the range that you see it happening. And basically, what happens is early on when you’re going into second-stage there’s often these, you start to see just the need for more process. Everything that you’re doing just feels like, oh man, when we were super small this just hummed and now everything’s just so much more difficult.

It’s hard for me to delegate things. People aren’t listening. You have a lot more people problems. People are asking for more process and you can’t give it to them. And then on the later side of the company this is usually when they’ve matured through that cycle and they have some expertise and they have some systems and processes.

And oftentimes, maybe if it’s a family-owned business maybe they’re bringing in a professional or CEO with industry experience for the first time who’s going to kind of lead this company into the next kind of generation.

And oftentimes what you start to see then is this push-pull between the past, which is valuable. And it’s where the relationships are, and it’s all this historical, again, from a brand perspective it’s kind of the reputation that you have and the goodwill that you’ve built up over time.

That track record that’s so important. And then the push-pull between that and then this vision for a future, which might mean doing things differently than we’ve done them or pivoting, taking our existing product line and moving it to a new market where we see opportunity, something that’s coming down the line and that innovation piece.

And there are these tensions between do we stay with what exists or do we do this new thing? And I think often companies look at this as I can only do one or the other. And I think what we’re really there to say is, no, there’s a third path where you keep your reputation. You keep your customers. You keep that strength that you’ve built.

All of that is super valuable and that’s an asset that you need to leverage, and you also have this other thing, which is this innovation, this new market, this maybe new sales strategy, whatever it is, new product, innovation, all of those things.

That’s going to be what’s going to sustain this into the future because it does become a little bit of that grow or die piece of if you’re not growing then you’re probably shrinking if you’re not out there.

Scott MacKenzie:

So this is what I… This is my head and I’m processing this information. All I hear is you need to change and you need to change more.

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah, exactly.

Scott MacKenzie :

And you need to change, and over here you need to change and change and change and change. And nobody… You figure if a company gets to this particular second-stage they’ve changed, they put a lot of sweat equity in that.

And now you’re saying, “Hey, hey, you still need to change.” I would imagine many of these companies are saying, “I just want to glide on into whatever the future.”

How do you keep them from saying you don’t want to do that?

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah, well, I mean, I think, again, it does become figuring out what is important to them. If change… If they’re really totally unwilling to change and they have no vision for the future well then that’s not going to be, that’s not really a second-stage company because they don’t have that next stage vision.

They’re not trying to grow into the future. So if really what they want and what they have is where they want to stay then that’s great. I don’t want to… I’m not going to mess when somebody’s vision for their business… Where we really thrive is with the companies that are struggling in this kind of middle area of we want to change, we see opportunity, there’s more people who need our product. They often call themselves we’re a best kept secret in the market.

I often hear that, that they’ll refer to themselves as like, Ooh, we are a best kept secret. And I’m like, okay, well, do you want to let that secret out because that’s not, it’s great that you have the confidence in what you’ve built and also you don’t have to be a secret.

Scott MacKenzie :

Yeah, that’s true. It’s sort of, I’ve heard that same thing, sure, absolutely, we’re the best kept secret. Well then you’re leaving money on the table or you’re not growing, or you’re not doing this, and that’s fantastic, but, but, but, but-

Meghan Lynch:

Exactly, yeah, they’ll say it proudly because they’ve built so much equity in what the product that they built or their service team or whatever it is. And the… But I always look at it as there’s probably more companies, more people. You’re always talking about these people are change makers. They are people who want to help their products get into the right hands of people who can do something amazing with them.

And so for me the question is always, don’t we want to get that into more hands? Don’t we want to increase that innovation in the market? If you have something that’s going to change an industry you need to let those engineers know, you need to let those product managers know, and give them the opportunity to use what you’ve built.

Scott MacKenzie :

Yeah, so okay, listeners, what we have, we’re talking about second-stage companies that’s between 10 and a hundred employees. But I think the key here, what Meghan has pointed out is that these second-stage companies want to definitely focus on growth. They’re willing to deal with the pain of change and go through that process, and that’s a great thing, and don’t be a best kept secret. That is where we’re at.  Now when we start talking about that, outside of all that, I would imagine because of COVID a lot of these companies have been hit pretty hard?

Yet they’re trying to survive, rebuild, and then try to prosper in this next normal, and what does that look like to you?

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah, so for me again, that one of the things that COVID has done is that a lot of the companies we work with were about to have their best year ever going into COVID. I heard that so much, like we are poised for our best year ever, and then they get the rug ripped out of them.

And that has an emotional, psychological effect on you, well, now I’m going to be a little bit more fearful. I thought I was doing everything right. I thought I had this figured out, and then this thing that I totally couldn’t control takes all that away from me, and we did not have the year that we wanted to have.

So, it becomes this balancing act of making sure that companies stay in some kind of comfort zone and keep some kind of realistic safety net for themselves.

But at the same time, I think, it’s also given companies a sense of like, hey, we were resting on our laurels a little bit. We were a little bit complacent. We didn’t make some of the big decisions that we knew we had to make, whether that was getting a product launched quickly, or whether it was some personnel changes that they needed to make, they’re carrying some dead weight. And I think that one of the good things about COVID is that it created a sense of urgency, right?

All the business owners that I’m talking to are like, hey, we made decisions that I knew I had to make I just didn’t want to make the tough decisions and COVID forced my hand.

Scott MacKenzie :

So this is interesting. Yeah, this is exactly what… I’ve heard the same thing. It’s like, I believe, yeah, there’s the pain of COVID, got it. Everybody knows, yes, yes, yes, yes, and we’re not going to go through that.

But, I think, there’s a silver lining in the COVID conversation, and that is the conversation of resilience and truth. Now we’re having conversations that make sense. I’m not going to sit there and lollygag and be lazy.

I want to build a business of resilience because when this happens again, if it happens again, heaven help us, I’m ready, I got a business of resilience. So I see it as a positive and a conversation in the business of resiliency. Do you agree?

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re totally right, Scott. And I think, one of the things that you talk a lot about is collaboration, and I think that that’s been the other silver lining of COVID.

And I’ve seen so many really cool collaborations of companies coming together to solve some really complex problems. I was just talking to somebody the other day who they have a kiosk and cart company and they serve industrial manufacturers of food products and they collaborated with some people doing some work in an electric vehicle technology, and some cold storage people, and they put together these cool mobile vaccine units that are now being used in healthcare.

This is a company that never had anything to do with healthcare. And now all of a sudden they’re in the healthcare industry. And it was through three or four small businesses putting their expertise together and saying, What do we all have that could help solve this problem, and maybe if we do it together we could do something bigger than we might be able to do on our own.

And I think that that’s such a cool opportunity, especially for these smaller players in the market. If we aren’t collaborating with each other then we are missing a huge opportunity to challenge those big guys.

Scott MacKenzie :

Huge, absolutely spot on, huge opportunity. And I think that the other positive associated with COVID is the fact that I can be humble. I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to be… I go to Scott and he has all the answers, geez, that’s a heavy, heavy thing to carry around.

Now I could be humble and say, “I have this answer, but I don’t have, I need help, I need to help.” And I think it’s just a really, in a weird way a beautiful realities of the marketplace. I just, I don’t know how else to put it because-

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah. Well, and it’s stripped away a lot of the pretense because I think people who didn’t have anything of substance to offer people quickly kind of turned away from them and said like, “Okay, well, I don’t have time for any more BS I really need.

 

To be with people of substance. I need people who are problem solvers, people who are humble, people who can collaborate, people who have ideas, not just people who are kind of sitting back going oh shoot what do we do now? But the people who are out there saying like, “I don’t know exactly what to do, but I do know I have this. Does anybody need this?”

And I think that that’s been really valuable too. I’ve seen, again from relationships that I have, I’ve seen kind of who are the people who you can count on, and who are the true experts, and who are the people who are those people who really truly care about what they’re doing and the people that they do it for. And then you’ve seen the other people kind of fall off.

Scott MacKenzie :

So I see this resiliency model including you got to educate businesses. These second, let me look at my notes, second-stage companies, the ones that are going to probably fair okay are committed to education, committed to collaboration, and well as there’s an innovation component there. They want to be more efficient going forward, I would imagine.

Is that sort of the mindset of these second-stage companies that truly want to be successful in the future?

Meghan Lynch:

It is. It is. I think that those are, when they’re at their best that is their mindset. I feel the kind of dark side of this is that these are companies that have put a lot of sweat equity into building what they have, whether it’s their IP, whether it’s their processes, whether it’s their people, whether it’s their relationships with their customers.

I mean, these are companies who have put decades of experience into what they have built. And so I think in their best moments they are innovative, they are collaborative, they are educational. At their worst moments they are fearful that they are going to lose everything that they just built.

They are fearful that the customers that have been so critical to that process are going to leave them. If they see them let’s say talking to another market or skipping a distribution model, or kind of innovating too much.

Scott MacKenzie :

Wow.

Meghan Lynch:

And they’re also afraid of their competitors. Well, we can’t educate people too much because our competitors are going to steal our information or copy us. And so they turn into, which, and all of those things, like what you were talking about are all these things-

Scott MacKenzie :

Legit.

Meghan Lynch:

Open people up and make them bigger than what they are. The things that I sometimes see are things that shut companies down and make them smaller than what they are.

Scott MacKenzie :

Well, that’s fascinating.

Meghan Lynch:

And so those are the types of things that we kind of have to help companies work through. And they’re legitimate. They’re founded on real fears. It’s not like, oh, you shouldn’t be worried about that just do it anyway. These are real fears.

Scott MacKenzie :

No, no, they can’t

Meghan Lynch:

But they can be problem solved.

Scott MacKenzie :

That’s… Boy, that is just a brilliant point. I appreciate that Meghan, because I always think because I’m just going to go out there, that’s me, but these companies that fall into that category who have invested time, energy, effort, money, and all of that over the years that is a difficult thing to stop. But that’s… And we were talking specifically about that fear of what’s holding companies back and that might be part of that, right?

Meghan Lynch:

Exactly, yeah, and I think that one of the things is that you really have to kind of meet those companies where they are and acknowledge that this fear is real because it’s so easy to come in as a consultant and be like, hey, well, you should do this, you should do this, you should change this.

Scott MacKenzie :

You can change this, yeah.

Meghan Lynch:

And they’re… And it’s like, well, you’re playing with other people’s money. These people are playing with their own money with their own team. It’s people that they have to look in the eye, whether it’s their customers, their suppliers, their employees. And so I think that if we as kind of the consultants, the coaches, the strategist, if we don’t take that seriously and really truly listen to those fears and help not just dismiss them, but help them problem solve for them then I think that we are doing them a disservice and we could put their company in jeopardy, which is something I would never want to do.

So for me it’s a lot about kind of like, hey, your fear is your brain telling you something. It’s trying to protect you, right? So let’s do a deep dive into what exactly is this worst case scenario that you’re trying to protect yourself from, and then let’s just come up with a plan to mitigate that risk.

And I think that again, risk mitigation has to be big in the way that we’re thinking about growth post-COVID because we both need to innovate and we need to protect what we’re building. We don’t know when the next pandemic is coming or whatever the next disaster will be, so we need to be smart about that and we do need to mitigate risk.

And I think that that’s important. So helping companies work through that change management in a way that takes those fears seriously and helps them put a very concrete plan together.

Because usually really most of those problems if I’m going to get to the heart of it could be solved by a really good communication strategy. If you’re worried that your customers are going to leave you, you need to talk to those customers. You need to confirm those fears or allay those fears, and that will bring them closer to you. People do business with people. And so have that conversation.

Scott MacKenzie :

That’s right.

Meghan Lynch:

And chances are if they’ve been with you for that long, and you see opportunity in another market and you’re committed to still serving them they are going to be like, hey, go for it, we want you to succeed because when you succeed that means you’re going to be better able to serve us too. So I think oftentimes some of those fears once you actually start putting a plan in place and doing something about them they’re not as big as people feel like they are when it’s just kind of this, ooh, we can’t take this move.

Scott MacKenzie :

See you’re touching on a point of you can be vulnerable, like as a business owner you can be vulnerable. That doesn’t mean that you’re weak. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got flaws. You’re just… It’s as simple as a conversation.

Scott MacKenzie :

You’re not… And when you start talking about… Nobody and I mean nobody had global pandemic in their business continuity plan, not one.

They might’ve had hey, this, that, and the other thing, but not the global pandemic. And so it starts with a conversation. It starts with just recognizing, being vulnerable doesn’t mean that you’re weak you’re just saying, “Hey, I’ve got to figure this out.”

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah. Well, and honestly-

Scott MacKenzie :

I like that.

Meghan Lynch:

You’re like everybody else. I mean, that was one of my biggest pain points starting up my business was I’d go to events, a Chamber of Commerce event, an industry event, a trade show, a conference, and you ask all these people like, “Oh, hey, how’s business,” and they’re like, “Oh business is great, duh, duh, duh,” and then you get the same CEOs in a room with just them and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, you’ve got to be kidding me, this is blowing up. This person isn’t doing well. I’m worried about cashflow. I’m worried about supply chain.”

All these things start coming out and you’re like, “Whoa, you just told me everything was great.” And for me it was such a big lesson. Now I start conversations with maybe one win that I’m having and one thing that I’m struggling with because chances are somebody else who’s in your business and in your circle wants to help you.

So if you tell them something that you’re struggling with they might have a solution for it. They might have somewhere for you to go. And so much of that stuff we keep so close to ourselves so unnecessarily. It’s crazy.

Scott MacKenzie :

Meghan, you’re hitting on really, really, great, great points. And I hope the listeners are looking at that. We’re talking about resiliency. We’re talking about collaborating. We’re talking about educating. We’re talking about risk mitigation, change management, and it gets right down to being vulnerable and having a conversation.

A real conversation, not something that is all, hey, I’m the best in the world, and then you go behind closed doors and you’re just, oh my gosh, what am I doing? Oh, I can’t get it.

And do you know what the best part about it is the fact that everybody, if somebody comes and tells me, he goes, “This was a fantastic year and all that stuff,” I’d have to just say, “Buddy, I’m not sure about that.” I think it just opened everything up and just said, “Yeah, my mind can’t handle it I need help.” I hope that’s the case.

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah. Well, and I think again, COVID even the people who are winning, are in some industries that have the business, have the sales they’re struggling with workforce and labor issues or they’re struggling with supply chain issues. The people who don’t have the sales are struggling with well, we need to get the sales up. We’ve got the people we don’t have the business.

And so, I think again, it’s such an even playing field right now. Even the people who you think like, ooh, they’re so lucky to be in such and such a niche because that niche is doing well right now. We work in a lot of industrial, like construction and things like that, people making knives, blades, things, and those businesses are doing really well right now because everybody’s working on their homes, they’re building. That’s going well, but they have problems too. That creates its own issues that they have to solve for.

Scott MacKenzie :

Isn’t that something.

Meghan Lynch:

So I think, it’s just a big piece of our process. We call our… The process that we created for these second-stage companies Solve for Y because, and Y as in the letter Y, but also kind of like the why are you doing this thing? Why do you want this growth?

Scott MacKenzie :

Why?

Meghan Lynch:

Because I think that everybody has some issue and they have some vision of how they want things to be in kind of a new future. And if we can take a very systematic approach to looking at that and dismantling it and then come up with a plan to address it then they can move forward.

But right now, so many of these companies are caught in this really emotional space of we want to do this, but we don’t know how.

And so we have these very circular conversations internally of like, are we going to launch this product? Are we actually doing this? Are we going into this market? We’re not sure we’re going to position ourselves that way.

Scott MacKenzie :

I like that.

Meghan Lynch:

And the internal teams get so frustrated because they’re just like, “Are we doing this or we not?” They don’t care.

Scott MacKenzie :

Right, right.

Meghan Lynch:

They just want clear direction on what they’re supposed to do.

Scott MacKenzie:

Again, we’re going to have to wrap the conversation up.

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah.

Scott MacKenzie :

And I think that the beauty of what you’re just saying is that somebody is just looking for just… I mean, I would imagine I’m wrestling with a lot of ideas and a lot of things, but I don’t know where to go and I think a conversation with you and your company and others will go a long way to sort of lay that path out. It could be incrementally approached.

Meghan Lynch:

Exactly, yeah.

Scott MacKenzie :

Just something. Just something.

Meghan Lynch:

Yeah, just to get them one step in the right direction. And yeah, so speaking of that… If people are listening to this and they’re like, “Ooh, I relate to some of these pains. I think we might be a second-stage company,” we have a landing page set up. So, my website is sixpointcreative.com

And then if you just go backslash Industrial Talk we have a quiz that they can take, your listeners can take.

And about 10 – 15 minutes of their time they’ll get a not a standardized automatic score, but we’re going to put together a customized report for them on this is what we’re hearing you say and here is some step one, step two, step three. Top one to three recommendations that we would make.

And just again, so that they can have that first step of how do I start to get out of this hole.

So all that’s for free and on our website. And there’s a couple other tools there as well that people can check out that are particularly valuable to second-stage companies.

Scott MacKenzie :

All right, it’s going to be out on Industrial Talk, so don’t fear. If you didn’t get the URL it’s going to all be there and you’re not going, you need to take advantage of this great opportunity. Meghan Lynch, thank you for being on the Industrial Talk Podcast. You are absolutely wonderful.

Meghan Lynch:

Thanks so much, Scott.

Scott MacKenzie:

I love it. Love the points that she was bringing up. Talk about bringing the lumber, man. All right, listeners, we’re going to be wrapping it up on the other side. Stay tuned.

Speaker 1:

You’re listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

Scott MacKenzie :

All right, again, thank you very much for joining the Industrial Talk Podcast, that’s Meghan Lynch, Six Point Creative. She is the President and CEO of how to get stuff done. You need her. You need what she brings to the table because she is definitely all about your success and being able to do that in a way that expands your market.

As you can tell, boom, in the interview bringing the pepper, absolutely like it. So go out to sixpointcreative.com find out more. I mean, she needs to be in your rolodex. If you’re old enough to remember rolodex she needs to be in it.

All right, we’re all about being bold, brave, and daring greatly. We’re all about the necessity to educate, absolutely collaborate, and of course innovate. We’re all about that. We’re all about taking action. We’re all about making things.

And we’re part of this neighborhood, this industrial neighborhood that is focused on everyone success. We need everyone to be rowing in the same direction. Industry is changing lives and changing the world. That’s what you’re all a part of. Hang out with people that are bold, brave, and daring greatly. All right, thank you, we’re going to have another great interview shortly.