A Founder’s Journey to Clarity, Focus, and Growth

As the Founder and CEO of ResultsLab, a company that provides impact strategy and measurement services to nonprofits to further their efforts toward community change, I often look for opportunities that will accelerate our growth and the impact of our nonprofit clients. I became aware of Bridge Entrepreneurs Network (BEN) when my company, ResultsLab, was selected as a Denver Scaleup Network (DenSUN) company in 2022 and I was fortunate to have a consultation with a group of BEN advisors as a key offering for DenSUN companies.

Clarity.

In that first session, I walked in excited and nervous – I had heard these sessions were both deeply valuable, but also uncomfortable. The format is to provide an overview of your company in a structure that leads you to share the 3 biggest problems in your business. This is followed by questions and then a discussion about you and the company as if you were not in the room. Nerve wracking? Yes.

Yet as I moved through the process, the questions advisors asked opened my mind in a way that provided me a new perspective – and that was just the questions! The companion conversation sparked new ideas and energy, and I set my sights for ResultsLab to become a signature BEN company.

We were selected as a 2023 signature company and in reflecting back to my initial conversation with BEN’s previous CEO, Kay Henze, I wonder if Kay sensed my unsettled state of mind. After the stress of running a company through a global pandemic in 2020, ResultsLab had grown quickly and operations, systems, and processes, as well as our management, was not where is needed to be. In my personal life, I was supporting my husband in his cancer treatment journey that was intense and brutal. COVID stress, company growth, and the caretaking and concern for my husband had left me raw and unfocused, operating in reactive mode and far from providing the kind of leadership I wanted to provide.

There is much detail within that story, of course, but I recall preparing for and presenting to a second group of BEN advisors once we joined BEN. At that time, I was unclear about what I needed, and it was difficult to name our top three challenges, the core structure of a consultancy with advisors. A few advisors could sense this, and one commented that I should have more of an executive presence, which was not a helpful comment at the time, but was certainly an indicator that my state of being was shining through.

Ultimately, though, in that and following sessions key advisors asked me hard questions about the company and made insightful observations about being a leader. They named the realness of imposter syndrome, reframing self-talk, and the importance of discovering the alignment between what I want for myself and what the company needs. I needed clarity.

Focus.

I went for a three hour slow paced walk in the park after that second consultancy. There were many ideas shared and I needed to process. Many ideas focused on what was really the next right step for the company from clarifying and focusing our strategy, to considerations for scalability, ways advisors could support, and some hints at CEO burnout.

Of course, I knew a critical element of running a company is the health and wellness of its leaders and team, but I was underwater and didn’t recognize it. Insightful and probing questions from advisors helped me get my head above water and I could start to look around. Being able to lift up and take on these different perspectives allowed me to see things within the company (and myself as a leader) that I had not seen before. It was very difficult, and it helped me be able to identify the next right steps for the company.

Since those early sessions, I’ve had the fortune to engage bi-weekly with a group of BEN company leaders (BEN DEN). Here again I’ve been able to share key challenges and hear how other leaders have addressed these same issues. And, in hearing their challenges, I inevitably learn something new.

In a pivotal session, our moderator asked us to think about where we wanted our companies to be in a year, and once we answered he then asked “what is the one thing holding you back” from achieving that vision. My answer was immediately apparent to me, and once I shared it, we then dove into conversation on my topic. With insightful questions from the group, followed by other BEN DEN leaderships sharing their observations of my situation and what they thought I might be missing, I was then asked about my take-aways. This session influenced a notable decision I made for my company, and I have now moved forward with key actions that have shifted the trajectory and culture of the company.

Accelerating Impact.

Today, ResultsLab is one of the fastest growing Impact Management consulting firms across the nation. ResultsLab is now a B Corporation that has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 list two years in a row. As we continue to grow and scale in new ways, I remain grateful to this group and look forward to building on the relationships created along the BEN journey.

I appreciate the BEN advisors who recognized that the key challenges I named in my advisory session were only part of the challenge, and that they helped shake me up a bit to recognize the personal journey that accompanies the company journey.

Exposure and access to BEN’s bright and responsive advisors and signature company leaders is a unique and significant support for development of the Colorado entrepreneurial ecosystem. I deeply appreciate this, and the vision the original BEN founders had when developing this resource.