The Createur Podcast

Growing Your Business the Jeff Williams Way Within a Framework of Faith

• McGraw School of Business • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Unlock the secrets to business growth as we chat with Jeff Williams, a serial entrepreneur who has mastered the art of scaling ventures within a Christian framework. Jeff shares his personal experiences on the right moment to take your business to the next level, taking into account significant life milestones like marriage and parenthood. He emphasizes the critical role of sales and marketing, providing practical insights into creating a market buzz and leveraging every opportunity to build connections. Whether you're curious about expanding your business or optimizing your sales strategy, Jeff's wisdom, drawn from his journey with Wellbridge Surgical, is a goldmine for entrepreneurs eager for success.

Step inside the world of Spry Brands and discover how a commitment to culture and philanthropy can elevate your company during times of rapid growth. Jeff dives into the invaluable strategies that keep quality and integrity at the forefront, from implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to measuring client satisfaction and employee happiness.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Checkout Jeff's most recent ventures: 
https://wellbridgesurgical.com/
https://sprybrands.com/

To learn more about other entrepreneurship opportunities and the McGraw School of Business’s very own Createur Conference and Pitch Competition, go to Createur.Olivet.edu.


Karli Byrd:

What does it mean to be a Christian entrepreneur? How can I turn my ideas into an actual business? How do I navigate my path to entrepreneurship?

Spencer James:

Welcome to Creator, the podcast brought to you by Olivette Nazarene University's McGraw School of Business to unlock the secrets to Christian entrepreneurship and fuel your path to success.

Karli Byrd:

I'm your host, Carly Bird, graduate assistant of Olivette's entrepreneurship program.

Spencer James:

I'm your co-host, Spencer, James and Olivette undergraduate marketing management and business administration major.

Karli Byrd:

Join us, fellow students, as we embark on a journey to discover the call of the entrepreneur. This week, we have the pleasure of being joined by Jeff Williams as we dive deep into the concept of scaling a business.

Spencer James:

Where faith and business meet. This is the Creator podcast.

Karli Byrd:

Hello everyone, this week I am so excited to be joined by an entrepreneur that I continuously find myself looking up to, jeff Williams. Jeff is a serial entrepreneur from Indianapolis that has made a name for himself by establishing numerous successful companies across diverse industries. However, when his businesses were severely impacted by exorbitant surges and healthcare expenses, he resolved to address the issue head-on, channeling his skills toward co-founding, well-bridged surgical. Throughout his career and personal endeavors, jeff consistently embodies the role of a disruptor, challenging the conventional norms and daring to take risks for the betterment of society at large. Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me today.

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.

Karli Byrd:

All right. So, jeff, the concept of scaling a business is a topic that we could truly spend all day talking about. You know, a common dilemma that many of our young aspiring entrepreneurs face is the question of when. When should I start scaling my business? You know, based on your experiences, what would you say are some of the signs that you've noticed that help you recognize when it's time to start scaling?

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, sure, I think you know. From my perspective for the younger listeners here you know, if you're not married yet, that's a great time to scale, because being married is expensive and then after that having kids is even more expensive. So I think the later you get you know in your life and when expenses are kind of piling up, it makes it a lot harder to you know, jump out, start to scale the business and go into it full time, you know. So that would be the first thing that I would say is if you're, you know, single or not married, I guess I would say and don't have kids, that's the best time to do it because it would be the least risk.

Karli Byrd:

You know, could you talk about some of those specific aspects of your business that you should really be focusing on? When you're scaling a business, you know where should your attention be.

Jeff Williams:

Well, I'm a big sales and marketing guy, so without sales it's kind of hard for operations to have anything to do. So I really focus on. You know, in the beginning with Wellbridge and with Spray as well, was really just the spray and pray model, not that we weren't trying to track ROI, but the main piece was just getting the word out that you're here, you have a product and you know you have something that's this differentiated within the market that people want to learn more about. So, yeah, I think just getting out there and in any which way possible whether it's just a coffee right with a person that you know as a real networker that knows a lot of folks would be huge. Obviously, social media everybody knows about that but, you know, getting into your network and getting the word out that way as well, anything you can do to start landing sales is the key.

Karli Byrd:

Yeah, that completely makes sense. Do you think you could dive a little bit deeper into that? You know the topic of sales and you know what are some techniques or practices that you have found are important to utilize when trying to make those sales. Or you know going about marketing.

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, sure. So I mean I break up sales and marketing into two different categories. In my mind this is just Jeff Williams. So marketing is really, you know, more of a I guess lack of a better term for me B to C type of play, where, especially at Wellbridge, where we need to get the word out to the consumer that Wellbridge is around and so getting out there through social media and then billboards and podcasts like this or different publications, is huge, right. But really for at least Wellbridge, where the rubber hits the road is sales, which would be you need to think about, obviously, who your target audience is, and for Wellbridge Surgical it would be self-funded insurance plans and within that, who's your target to talk to within that, which for us would be CFOs. So then the grind happens of how do I get in front of these folks? And so from that side, the sales side, that's really huge, getting in front of these plans as well, and then back to marketing on the flip side, making sure that when you're going in there that they've at least heard about you and are familiar with plus or minus what you do through your marketing efforts.

Jeff Williams:

I don't know if that helps answer, but that's in my mind. That's kind of the differentiation between it and for me, I really think that sales is really where you really start to make your way. So it's a long process. Wellbridge is my newest venture, so I was humbled over the last three years of having to go back to square one, of taking any meeting possible, whether I knew it would have ROI or not. Sometimes you're just not sure when you're starting a new business. So taking any meeting you can is important and you're going to have some winners, you're going to have some losers and that's just part of it. It's not wasted time if it didn't go anywhere because you at least made a contact and then from there feeling your way through of how best, through these meetings that you're having these coffees with folks that might be influencers within an industry that you're targeting, you can better formalize your plan on how you're going to get to your target client.

Karli Byrd:

Yes, absolutely yeah. That's definitely one of our continuous themes here on the Creator podcast of building those connections and really channeling into your network, as well as building mentors along the way. I'd also like to touch on company culture for a second, in regards to that concept of scaling. Every company, of course, has their own style, culture, way of going about day to day tasks and activities. When you start scaling, how do you ensure that you're maintaining your culture and who you are as a company? Never lose sight of that.

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, that's a great question and something I'm very passionate about.

Jeff Williams:

So I'll skip back to Sprye, my marketing company, to talk about that.

Jeff Williams:

At Sprye, I was the third employee back in 2002 and fast forward, I bought the companies and grew it and now we're 80 or so employees strong, and from three to 80, there's a lot of scaling that goes on there and you realize, as you're growing, what's gotten you there and losing track of that could be really, really bad. Right, and so for me, what I've done over the years is make sure that you, when we were smaller, making sure that you had a tight executive team that was on board with the culture and was making sure that that culture was going to stay vibrant throughout the company. But as we've gotten bigger, I would say this has been the last maybe five years I have a chief people officer, derek Gillum, and that's his full time job is making sure that the culture within Sprye stays consistent, that we don't lose focus of what's gotten us to where we're at today, and that's been huge. I mean, that is the biggest job. I would say even bigger than mine at Sprye is Derek's job keeping that culture solid.

Karli Byrd:

Now, yeah, that's incredible. Talking about Sprite in particular, do you think you could share what are some of those key components you follow at Sprite? What is your culture?

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, we're Christ-centered and this is his business, not mine, and I'm just here as a vessel. And so, you know, keeping that humble attitude is key for sure. So we try to push that down through the entire organization. And so you know, with that, one of the biggest pieces that we've done as a company mission trip we've been this will be our 11th year doing it we just finished up our 10th and trip in January. We work with Homes of Hope and we go down for nine years straight down to the Dominican Republic and we build a house for a family in need.

Jeff Williams:

This last, in January of this year, we have moved to Homes of Hope, costa Rica, and we'll be going back again in January 2024, bringing a team down there.

Jeff Williams:

And you know, just from a humbling aspect, you know we are so blessed here in America, and not that there's not folks that need help in the US, for sure, and we do that during the year domestically, within Indianapolis, helping folks out, but you know, outside of the country you know there's just so much need and so bringing employees of Sprite down to Costa Rica to bless a family with a home that would take them up to 15 years to build themselves. We do it in two days and it's just such an amazing trip that we've been doing so impactful for our folks to be able to A lot of them haven't been out of the country before and just to see how other folks are living in the world and what the company DNA is of giving back. Yes, we do need to make a profit, for sure, but that we can give of some of those profits and give back it's just huge. And so that's one of been probably our number one success story with our culture at Sprite.

Karli Byrd:

I know that we mentioned kind of maintaining your culture and to somewhat go along with that last point, how would you, you know, how do you ensure that your company is also maintaining the same level of quality in the service you're providing, not sacrificing quantity for quality, in a sense?

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, I think that's a great question. We've acquired three companies since July 1 of 2022. So we just kind of went through the next level of scaling and each level has its own challenges that you have to, you know, prepare for as best you can. But you don't really know At least this is this is my experience. You don't really know until you get into it, and so that is something we have our eyes on really tight right now at at Spray is is making sure that the quality is there, just like it was when we were half the size, you know, two years ago.

Jeff Williams:

And what we're doing right now is EOS. That is, it's that I think this is what it stands for entrepreneurial operating system, and so it's a book. There's a book around it called Traction, and then there's implementers that you can hire to help you bring EOS and and put that into your company. We've just signed up with EOS. I'm super stoked about it, been wanting to do it for five or six years, but I don't think we are quite, quite at the size where it would have worked well for us. But what's perfect size?

Jeff Williams:

Now to go back to your question, which is you know, how do you standardize an entrepreneurial growing company to make sure that the flavor that the clients were getting prior are the flavor that they're getting today, and so we're very passionate about that at Spray. But when you grow so fast, sometimes it's hard to know what to do, and so we've hired these experts to come in and help implement EOS into Indus Bray, and we believe strongly that that's what's going to help us continue that quality and integrity that has gotten us to where we're at today and be able to take us, you know, to the next run on the ladder of scaling.

Karli Byrd:

Well, that's great to hear. You know this might go along also with you know EOS, but you know how do you measure the effectiveness then, or success, of your scaling efforts? So kind of looking, you know, after you've been kind of implementing the scaling efforts for a while now, what does that look like? How do you ensure that you're meeting standards and on the right track?

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, I would say I'd divvy that up into external and internal. So external is the client right and you know that goes into. You know our reviews that we're doing with our clients. You know year-end reviews and then obviously the check-ins throughout the year as well and just listening to them. It's a basic principle, but one that as companies scale they sometimes tend to not do, which is listen to the client. And we're very, you know, client focused and we want to hear from them. So that would be where we're getting that feedback externally.

Jeff Williams:

Internally, you know, as you scale to keep that culture and to keep growing that team, you know people process profit, people is number one for a reason, right, If you don't have great employees, it's going to be hard to scale. So Derek Gillum, our Chief People Officer, like I said earlier, is in charge of that. But we've used a software called DuLiD in the past and we took a year off. But we're joining back up with them a year off just because of how crazy it was with some of the scaling that we've done. And they help companies internally make sure that they're keeping their culture and that their employees are happy, and that's been huge for us. Great company that's spelled D-U-L-E-A-D DuLiD.

Karli Byrd:

Yeah, that's so important to make sure that you're equally keeping track on both ends, internally and external.

Jeff Williams:

That's the checks and balances right.

Karli Byrd:

Yes.

Jeff Williams:

It's hard to keep up with the quality on the outside if you don't have great people that understand that on the inside, that are well trained and equipped with the tools they need. That balance isn't easy either. I want to make sure I throw that out there. I was high level with that, but balance is challenging In my opinion. If you don't have those two pieces, scaling is pretty scary because you don't know where the cards might fall.

Karli Byrd:

Definitely yeah. Do you think, really quick, you could share from your own personal experience what was it like when you were first starting out with Sprye and reaching that point of scaling for the first time? How did you handle that?

Jeff Williams:

Boy, I'd have to think back. It's a grind, right, I guess would be the piece. I think a lot of people miss here in the news of somebody who sold their company for lots and lots of money or are showing a lot of success. But I think sometimes what they don't show is what it was like to get there in the grind. It's really, really hard. From somebody like myself who's super impatient, that's part of the grind as well. When I started, I was knocking on doors one at a time.

Jeff Williams:

I think what keeps you going are those little wins along the way. There's a lot of heartache in every so often you get a win and you're like all right, I can keep going. I believe, on the scaling piece where you have your organic growth, which is the new sales that you're landing, you get to a point where for us, it's probably around 3 million in sales where it's like all right, we also need to start working some M&A into this as well. Since then, it's been a balance between organic sales and then purchasing companies in order to keep moving the needle forward. I think as you get bigger and bigger, it makes it even harder and harder because you need to land bigger clients, land, bigger acquisitions in order to move the needle, which can be a grind as well.

Karli Byrd:

Well, Jeff, it's actually about time for us to start wrapping up, but before we end, I do have to ask you what we like to call our quirky question of the week. Sometimes we really throw some curveballs.

Jeff Williams:

Okay, all right, all right.

Karli Byrd:

Looks like we have. If your company Sprye Brands was an ice cream flavor, what would it be and why?

Jeff Williams:

Oh, boy, oh boy, all right. Well, since my credit card just got hit recently with a Baskin Robbins bill that was not actually mine, I will go with. Who will I go with from Baskin Robbins? I think I'm just going to go with French vanilla. We are very consistent. But we're not vanilla, we're French vanilla.

Karli Byrd:

I like that.

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, we've got some. We've got some additional flavor to us, but you know what you're going to get into when you taste our ice cream.

Karli Byrd:

Wow, that's a great answer.

Jeff Williams:

You handled this very well I don't know if that was great or not. I just shot that from the hips, so if it was, then fantastic.

Karli Byrd:

This has been such a great conversation and I know that I plan on utilizing your advice in my own personal life, and I'm sure that many of our listeners will be too. So you know, thank you so much, jeff. This has been so great having you.

Jeff Williams:

Yeah, thanks for having me. You know like I'm here to help. I'm here to help you and others that are trying to make their way as entrepreneurs, and so if there's anything I can ever do, let me know. And our websites for the companies are wellbridge surgicalcom and sprybrandscom, and you can reach out through either one of those avenues to find me. If you have any questions yourself or any of the listeners would love to jump on a call or meet you for a coffee to help answer any questions, if I can be helpful.

Karli Byrd:

And listeners. If you want to connect with Olivet's entrepreneurship program director, chris Perez, or discover other entrepreneurial opportunities the program has to offer, such as the McGraw School of Business' very own Creator Conference and Pitch Competition, which Jeff happened to be a guest speaker in last year, then please go to alivetedu slash creator. We'll see you next time.