Building Flexible Tech Solutions: The Elevate Digital Story with Adam Morgan

Intro

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (13:26.166)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Adam Morgan, co-founder and CEO of Elevate Digital. They ensure that you have access to the right technical talent in a flexible delivery model. They don’t pin their clients down to a specific model, but rather give them a range of flexible engagement options, including consulting, training.

and a variety of staffing options. They fill the space between in-house talent and a traditional consultancy and have experiences across a wide range of platforms. They’ve been recognized on Inc. 5000’s list of fastest growing private companies in America for the fourth year in a row, an honor that only a fraction of 1 % of companies can claim. You’ll recognize the names of many of their clients, including Lowe’s, United Healthcare, Exxon Mobil, and Coca-Cola.

Adam himself is an accomplished leader in several startups, public companies, and private organizations, having been a part of the leadership team that made Sitecore the first unicorn exit in the web content management space and was part of Session which was sold to MasterCard. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.

One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. Now back to our guest today, founder and CEO of Elevate Digital, Adam Morgan. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Adam Morgan (15:15.089)
Anthony, I appreciate the opportunity to be on.

Anthony Codispoti (15:17.836)
So Adam, let’s talk a little bit about those experiences at Sitecore and SessionM before we dive into Elevate Digital. So maybe start with Sitecore. What did this company do that was so special that it was acquired by a large PE firm?

Adam Morgan (15:34.591)
Yeah, great question. And maybe it helps to take one quick step back from there, which was I had worked at Microsoft for eight years prior to Sitecore. And one of the things that we did at Microsoft was we acquired a company in 2008 called Fast Search out of Oslo, Norway. And at the time it was a relatively large acquisition for Microsoft at about $1.2 billion. And we took that acquisition and built ultimately what Microsoft would call their digital marketing platform group. And so at the time that felt reasonably forward looking

to look at a macro level and say, okay, customer experience, digital marketing, this is a trend that like cybersecurity had some legs to it and looked like it had a fairly long runway. And Microsoft really started to kind of waver in its commitment to the space at the time. And so I almost conveniently at the time met the founders of Sitecore who were kind of an up and comer in the web content management space. So think of the software that people would use to power their web and mobile experiences.

as a content platform and site core had a ton of momentum in market was growing quickly and was really looking to build out their leadership team to scale up and become kind of a global player as a web content SaaS platform. And so, we, jumped in, I actually moved over there with a friend at the time from Microsoft. We made them move together, join the leadership team to grow the, the sales and partner channel at site core. And it quickly took off. it was.

It’s actually a rocket ship of a ride. was a ton of fun. And we grew over the course of four years, actually more than six or 700 % in terms of scaling up, ultimately getting to about, I think a little over 270 million in revenue when we finally sold to EQT, which is a Swedish private equity firm. So on a valuation basis, it became the first unicorn. just over a billion dollars in valuation, first player in the space to achieve that valuation status.

It was actually the kind of beginning point, the inspiration for what would ultimately become Elevate Digital.

Anthony Codispoti (17:39.628)
So what was it that you guys were doing there that was so special that led to such this astronomical growth?

Adam Morgan (17:46.173)
Yeah, great question. There was, there was a couple of things that strategically really kind of gave the business beyond being a good software solution, right? It always starts with good technology, right? If you’re going to be a, software company and kind of get the momentum that site core had, but there were a couple of things that were really kind of foundational that really spurred growth. One, site core invested heavily in the developer community. One of the really intelligent moves done early on was to train as many developers as possible, right?

And the thought process was the more people who are familiar with the technology, more people want to use it. And so they invested heavily and really kind of fostered and incubated the developer community around the Sitecore platform. The other thing we did was we focused heavily on partner channel. As you know, in the software world, there’s companies that build the software and then the companies who install and deploy and configure the software. And Sitecore made the decision

very early on to not get into the business of implementing the software, lean on partners, right? Whether it’s an Accenture or Deloitte down to smaller kind of mom and pop agencies. The decision was made to invest in a partner ecosystem. That actually ironically ends up being the part of the business that I ran for the CEO was running the global partner channel. But what we did was we frankly recruited and developed thousands of partners, well, 1200 partners globally across the kind of three global time zones.

to deploy our software and promote it and configure it for our customers. And that turned out to be… I’m sorry.

Anthony Codispoti (19:19.648)
You had a built in Salesforce then right away. You had a built in Salesforce right away.

Adam Morgan (19:25.371)
It was unbelievable. When I left and was responsible for the partner channel, roughly 52 to 53 % of our EBITDA was partner initiated.

Anthony Codispoti (19:35.351)
substantial.

Adam Morgan (19:36.831)
It’s unbelievable. It’s, it’s, I’m either way, I’m in no way, or form taking credit for this. had a world-class team and an amazingly passionate group of people across the globe who were responsible for managing that partner ecosystem. but they were, it, was without question a strength. and it continues to be one for them today. Many years after I’ve left the company.

Anthony Codispoti (19:57.474)
Now I want to hear about session but you said that a lot of the work that you were doing there at Sitecore was actually kind of the inspiration for starting Elevate Digital. How so?

Adam Morgan (20:07.997)
Yeah. So like a lot of things, business ideas come out of pain points, right? Or a solution that somebody desires. so while we were this kind of rocket ship at Sitecore, shooting towards 276 million in revenue, my team globally kept coming back and saying, hey, we’ve got these partners we work with every day and they’re global systems integrators and they’re global agencies. And they’re calling us every week going, hey, we are looking for somebody who knows Sitecore and

you know, Adobe analytics or site core and Salesforce sales cloud pick your marketing technology solution. And they were constantly coming back to us looking for good people who knew specific marketing technologies and had specific experience. And out of 1200 partners globally that we were managing, we didn’t have a single one in the staffing space that we felt like was the answer there that could provide a compelling solution when we’d go with a really niche skillset that we needed to go to that partner with.

And so ironically, I knew my now co-founder through the gym. were, we were workout buddies in the morning talking and he had built and sold a recruiting company previously. And I came up to him one day in the gym and I was like, Hey, I got an idea. Can I just pick your brain for a bit? And, and we ended up, I don’t know, five or six coffee meetings at Starbucks later. I started pitching him on why he wanted to start a staffing business in marketing technology.

Anthony Codispoti (21:30.946)
And there it goes. so, okay, and before we get a little bit deeper into Elevate Digital and what you guys do, let’s hear about session and the exit to MasterCard. What were you guys doing there?

Adam Morgan (21:32.397)
And there it goes.

Adam Morgan (21:42.183)
Yeah. So, and this ties a little bit into the founding of elevate digital, but you know, like a lot of people when, Rich and I first started elevate digital, it was a side hustle for both of us. was like, here’s an idea, you know, w let’s, know, see if this thing has legs. And we both started kind of as a side hustle, me really as a board member, because I had a pretty demanding job. And right as we were spinning up the idea and getting it going, EQT had come in and bought Sitecore for that, you know, unicorn valuation. And so, I decided to, to do my earn out.

Anthony Codispoti (21:52.193)
you

Adam Morgan (22:12.121)
and then leave site core at the time and go do something else. I didn’t kind of want to stay on and work through the PE side. and so while Rich and I were still working on and getting Elevate Digital going, I met the founders of Session Am out of Boston and through, through an acquaintance of mine on the executive recruiting side. And he connected me through, went and met with them and they were a loyalty SaaS play. So they had built a software solution really focused on customer loyalty. And I met the founders.

Originally it was just supposed to be a lunch meeting about talking about what site core had done and lessons learned. And they just kind of wanted to pick my brain about building out the sales and partner channel. so I flew to Boston and had lunch with the founders and then ended up on the way to Logan, getting a phone call that they asked if they could hire me. and which was an amazing honor. And so while Rich and I were, were building Elevate digital and again, still side hustle, I needed a day job or wanted a day job. and so join them at session and we.

We built that for three and a half years, ultimately selling it to MasterCard in October of 2019. And that was when I left and came over to be CEO of Elevate full-time.

Anthony Codispoti (23:21.078)
And so having gone through those two substantial exits, is the process exciting, exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating? How would you describe it?

Adam Morgan (23:31.109)
that’s a great question. Can I say all of those at once? No, it is. For anybody, and I know there’s a lot of us out there who’ve worked in kind of the PE and VC ecosystem, it can be very tiring because you find yourself both managing the business as your day job, right? You got to run a business and grow it and usually grow it at a pretty substantial clip, but then also managing other stakeholders who have their own needs and agenda in terms of what they’re looking for as a financial investment. And so,

Anthony Codispoti (23:33.902)
sure.

Adam Morgan (24:00.691)
It became a process. It’s certainly educational. Ultimately, you know, it’s exciting in that I’m not one who tends to be at least personally driven by money as much as the outcome for the people involved, right? Like how does this become an opportunity for everybody, whether it’s a growth opportunity, a skill development in terms of the process, or ultimately, what is that bigger company that you become a part of? it create

New careers, new expansion plans, new acquisition opportunities. What does it enable the team to do that maybe we couldn’t do before when we were a standalone entity without that investment? And so all of it is exciting, challenging, stressful. I forgot all the adjectives you threw out, but I think they all apply in some way, or form. It’s unbelievable. And it’s like, it’s a great growth opportunity. It’s been educational for five lifetimes.

Anthony Codispoti (24:40.654)
a real emotional soup, huh?

Anthony Codispoti (24:49.646)
Okay, so let’s dive a little bit more into Elevate Digital. So obviously I gave the intro at beginning of the interview that sort of gives a high level, but let me hear it from you, the founder, the CEO, co-founder, CEO. What does it you guys do? What’s the pain point that you’re solving?

Adam Morgan (25:08.883)
Yeah, it’s…

The pain point we really focus on solving is that companies have business problems that can be either solved or enabled through technology. And we genuinely believe that the solution to that technology problem is usually the right person or the right group of people. And what we’ve worked really hard over time to do is say, we know the answer is the right person, but we don’t want to force you to commercialize it how we want you to. We’re not a hammer looking at everything like a nail.

And so we’ve tried to take this people first, but commercially agnostic approach to the market of, we want to solve technology problems. We want to solve it with the right people, great people. But we want to do so in a way that flexes to how your business needs to do it. So we talk a lot about being commercially agnostic, meaning you may have a problem to solve where you want to grow your own team. And so we want to help you build that team with the right people.

You may have a great team in place, but they’re lacking specific skills and just need a SME or a group of SMEs to come in and help them resolve that issue or solve that technology problem for a short period of time. So there’s staffing solutions for that. But we also see clients want to be able to hand us and take on a level of ownership off their plate where we can come in, bring in a team of talented individuals and solve the problem for them holistically. And that’s where our consulting and managed services function plays in.

But the difference is we don’t come in with the notion of how we’re going to solve it. We try to take a strategy and solution led approach in terms of how we’ve built the company out so that we can be very problem solution oriented and then again, diagnostic to how we commercialize it on the back end.

Anthony Codispoti (26:50.99)
I can see why this would all be very attractive to the customer. Kind of a one-stop shop for a lot of different technology needs, flexible sort of staffing model. But on your side, it seems like it is very complicated and difficult to be, to house so many skill sets and expertise under one roof, as well as, I mean, we’re kind of talking about even different business models here in terms of

I’m gonna I’ve got a consultant I can place with you for a little bit. I can you know find somebody to place with you full time. Like how do you guys wrap your head around all those different things?

Adam Morgan (27:29.471)
You are spot on Anthony. We try to wrap our heads around it every single day. And I guess the fun part is we never stop learning or testing new ways to figure it out. But you are right. It is not easy. And frankly, it requires a pretty substantial investment upfront in talented senior people who can diagnose and solution correctly, right? Because there’s got to be a business acumen there. There’s got to be a technical understanding.

We try to stay really focused in terms of which technologies we feel well suited to solve for. It’s one thing to staff anything across the kaleidoscope of technology, but it’s another thing to go implement something and own it. And so we try to stay really focused on the consulting side and where we can be good, but we have had to invest heavily upfront in a very senior staff that can check the strategy and solution box. But there’s also a ton of value add. And I think it’s why, or at least

I hope it’s why we have a high client retention rate is because they see that investment upfront and they know we’re committed to solving it the way they want to solve it, not the way we want to solve it.

Anthony Codispoti (28:36.194)
Talk to me about business development. You don’t get to the Inc 5000 list four years in a row without a pre-smart strategy on that side. What are you guys doing?

Adam Morgan (28:48.863)
Yeah, that’s a good one. I love to tip the hat to strategy, but I back up one step and say, we have a world-class team. They’re phenomenal. Love them. We have a hiring philosophy on our team, which is if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. And we buy into that heavily. And when I look around the team, it’s just loaded with talented people. You really enjoy, people enjoy working with. And so I actually think it starts with the right culture because

Anthony Codispoti (29:16.45)
Yeah.

Adam Morgan (29:18.591)
You know, it’s so cliche, the Clayton Christensen culture eats strategy for breakfast, but it’s true. And I think people feel our culture and they see there’s an inherent interest in that we’re not going to be perfect. We’re going to make mistakes, but we will keep clawing through until we solve it. And so it starts and ends there. But our strategy for business development has been to invest in sales. We have a sales driven culture. You’ve got a leadership team between Rich, myself, and a number of others that come from sales backgrounds.

And so there’s always kind of this mindset of solving a problem is the best sales tool we have. so, you know, client growth, client retention, because of that commercial portfolio mix, you and I just talked about, look at success as a client who wants to work with us across the range of services, you know, are they doing consulting projects and staffing with us? Well, that’s a, that’s even, they also doing managed services? Well, that’s a great indicator of a healthy client relationship. Right. And when I look at our.

Anthony Codispoti (29:54.168)
Hmm.

Adam Morgan (30:17.117)
our biggest and best clients. It is a hybrid of those different revenue streams and those different service engagement types. And that’s a great business development tool, right? Is go do a great job.

Anthony Codispoti (30:27.99)
What does future growth look like?

Adam Morgan (30:31.379)
Yeah, we’d like to continue to invest in expanding a couple of key service areas that we feel like our clients have needs around. has historically been very client driven to say we want to expand our services portfolio in a way that we can offer them more compelling solutions. Some of that, much to our point about the beginning of the company, we do a disproportionate amount in customer experience, right? And if you look across kind of that spectrum of customer experience, we want to continue to expand web.

commerce, CRM, customer data platforms, marketing automation, data and analytics. We want to continue to build out and expand those investments, broader team, deeper in strategy, be able to help recruit more effectively. Sometimes what we’re doing is we’re delivering consulting engagements with contractors embedded in so that the client can hire them out from alongside our team, training and enabling them into the client.

So continuing to invest in those deployment models and then a big investment in machine learning and AI. And I know that sounds cliche to say, but you can’t be in tech and not have a strategy for both how you use AI for your own internal delivery and then how we use AI as a customer enabling technology. so we’ve got investments we’re making there, we’ve got acquisitions we’re targeting there and we want to continue to invest.

Anthony Codispoti (31:52.534)
What can you say more about AI and the way that you’re using it or hope to use it?

Adam Morgan (31:57.407)
Well, politically incorrect answer I’d say first would be that if we played a drinking game on AI, you and I probably wouldn’t make it very far on how abused it gets, whether you’re at a conference or some other technology event, right, with the AI terminology. But we have key technology partnerships with Adobe, with Microsoft, with Salesforce today. And when you look at those partnerships and the projects we do around them, as an example,

Look, these are the 800 pound gorillas in tech, right? They all have their own AI strategy. And so we find ourselves not only having to understand their AI strategy and how it gets embedded into our offerings, but how we leverage it ourselves, right? Internally to drive solutioning, to drive, enablement, et cetera. So, we’re getting our arms around it. Like everybody else, it’s really hard to separate the noise from the reality. and so we find ourselves spending a lot of time right now, trying to focus on what’s real.

and helping our clients discern what’s real.

Anthony Codispoti (32:58.776)
Talk to me a little bit more about your team. You mentioned a couple of times you’ve got a world-class team. Describe them. Where are they? What are they doing? How do they all kind of fit together?

Adam Morgan (33:10.355)
Yeah. Gosh, they’re outstanding. it’s, it’s a motley crew of personalities. If, know, if I think about our head of product versus our head of consulting or head of sales or head of recruiting, everybody’s got a really diverse set of backgrounds, ironically, more than you probably think. But they all have a number of common factors, which is they’ve got great personalities. They’re all great human beings. And that’s a key piece for us because I’ll go back to culture.

You can get people to train into roles, but the culture is king. so you’ve got the team is from all over. There’s only a handful of us that are actually in the same city. When you look at the leadership team, but then even broader, when you are, our team is spread out. Most of it is concentrated in North America. We’ve got some international folks in other markets, depending on the technology set. But it’s, it’s an ambitious crew and they are heavily motivated by, bluntly.

succeed, helping each other succeed. We just did an exercise not long ago and it was kind of driven by a blurb we heard from, from a podcast interview, which you’ll appreciate. But we went through the exercise first with the leadership team, and then we broadened it and we said, you know, why did you come to elevate to start? Like what’s, what was the reason, reasoning you came here? And then why are you still here? Right? What keeps you here for the forward, you know, for the foreseeable future? Why are you staying at Elevate? And you universally.

Everybody on the leadership team and what we call the extended leadership team said the team they work with is why they stay here. Why that what’s keeping them here for the future. And that says a lot, right? Because commitment to your teammates and commitment to each other and what success looks like will carry a long way and help you tolerate a lot of things while we’re figuring stuff out.

Anthony Codispoti (34:42.35)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (34:55.686)
Yeah, I’ve talked with a number of folks in the staffing space or HR space and you know, I like to ask the question what’s what’s the biggest reason that you think people switch jobs and They say the biggest thing that they find is that it’s who they they work with They don’t like the manager that they report to and on the flip side You’re saying people stay there for the opposite reason because they really enjoy who they report to they really enjoy who they’re working with so

Adam Morgan (35:13.563)
in.

Anthony Codispoti (35:24.238)
I’m kind of curious, you guys have this distributed team, you talk a lot about culture. It seems like it be difficult, it be a challenge to kind of build and establish culture without people being physically together. How do you guys approach that?

Adam Morgan (35:40.419)
Boy, that’s a big question, Anthony. Right. And you know this, right? Because since COVID came about, everybody’s been grappling, right? When you entered this world of remote work, right? When it became the reality, that became everybody’s challenge was how do you build it, right? And I’d say we’re no different. And we’re a team that prides ourselves on getting together and having a good time.

And I don’t know if swearing is inappropriate on your podcast or not. I certainly don’t want to offend you, but we have a poster internally and it’s these five people lined up with party hats and it says, fun. We take that shit seriously. And we do. And it’s hard because we’ve all been remote. We’ve tried to actually allocate a very dedicated budget to getting everybody together. And because we’re headquartered in the Carolinas, historically we used to be really good and want to get back to this of getting everybody in.

Anthony Codispoti (36:07.79)
Come as you are.

Adam Morgan (36:32.083)
getting them to the mountains. love going either Carolina mountains or the beaches, which are epic on both sides. And within a couple hours of us each way, and God bless the Carolina mountains, we’ve jumped in from trying to contribute there lately with everything that’s happened. But that stuff’s near and dear to our heart. We love being outdoors. We do take fun seriously. And it’s just gotten way more expensive as the team’s gotten bigger to get us all together. But that is something we were working very deliberately on.

club trips, we took everybody in the company in a plus one to the Dominican Republic. and that was amazing. we, we had five employees. never forget who had never left, not only never left the country, but never left the state. and that blew my mind. And so the idea that they had to get a passport. Right. And so that type of stuff, when the spouse is coming up to you and talking about how epically cool the trip was, or, you’re talking about it year round, it’s,

Anthony Codispoti (37:13.284)
wow.

What a neat opportunity for them.

Adam Morgan (37:27.691)
You cannot put a price on that. I, you know, again, my hope is that we can afford to do that every year because it has a profound impact. in fact, if you don’t mind me telling this quick story, cause it was, so the president of site core, when I was at site core, we used to do a company trip every year and you got to bring a plus one and one year it was Napa and one year it was Cabo. but, but everybody went and I’ll never forget, we were sitting at Cabo in a resort one year and the, the president of the company, was my boss at the time.

He and I both were early risers and it was like, I don’t know, 5 a.m. whatever. We were both down at the restaurant having breakfast. And we’re looking out at the Pacific Ocean. And he looked at me and he said, you know, Adam, I could give everybody, every employee in the company, you know, $5,000 and they’d go buy a new washer dryer or a new fridge or whatever. And they just, that would be an annual bonus and they do something with it, goes. But we do this trip for the same amount of money and everybody talks about it year round.

Anthony Codispoti (38:17.165)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (38:25.678)
Mmm.

Adam Morgan (38:26.237)
And it’s a profound culture builder. And that was a real North star. And I remember when Rich and I first founded Elevate, we had a discussion and I said, is, as we talk about whatever the future looks like, this is important to me. Whatever, like whether it’s the mountains, whether it’s the Dominican Republic, whatever, getting everybody together to break bread, to be together, to be people and not employees and spouses or whatever. That’s a big deal. And selfishly, I hope we can do it forever.

Anthony Codispoti (38:55.362)
You know, I think those kinds of trips are important, even in environments where everybody, you know, is in the same office and gets to see each other on a regular basis, because you’re so busy and you’re passing by and maybe you don’t know Susie in accounting or, you know, in a different delivery area. And so now you get to see somebody in a social situation. Like you said, you get to sit down, break bread, share a glass of wine, you have some laughs. Like I had no idea I had so much in common with that person. And, you know, it just, it forges a bond and it makes you appreciate.

that work experience a little bit more.

Adam Morgan (39:27.743)
100%. And also, you know, for spouses plus ones, whatever, they hear these names year round, but don’t get to put a face with it. So for them to meet people, to be there, it makes them human too, right? Because all of a sudden that name they hear all the time on the phone or these they see on Teams or hear on Teams, all of sudden they get a chance to meet them. And that was really cool.

Anthony Codispoti (39:34.124)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (39:50.454)
That’s neat. I want to shift gears a little bit here. You know, as CEO, somebody who’s, running a decent sized company, obviously been involved with really big ones before, you know, not running charities, got to have a company that’s profitable, got to always keep the eye on the bottom line. And, you know, sort of I think about that two big levers that we can pull, you know, one is, how do we raise sales? And the other one is, how do we, you know, decrease expenses? As you think about all the different

roles and businesses that you’ve been involved in, any particular creative levers there for either one of those that you want to give voice to?

Adam Morgan (40:26.879)
Sorry, you just reminded me there’s a running joke and metaphor that with our CFO Chris that I’m the gas pedal and he’s the brake. And so I’m always trying to hit the gas pedal on why we should grow faster and do this. Always. Yeah, I feel bad for him because he’s, mean, I don’t know, one tells me no in this world more than Chris, but he is definitely the brake pedal constantly kind of challenging me. But honestly, it is such a good thing.

Anthony Codispoti (40:36.782)
You

So you’re pushing the growth lever. He’s got the expense lever over here.

Adam Morgan (40:56.497)
because that sanity check needs to happen or we’d been out of business eight times already. yeah, because I am always thinking grow higher, who else can we bring onto the team? And he’s sanity checks and it’s like, that’s great. But let’s talk about a zero based budgeting approach or incremental revenue for this head. He is a really good, it’s yeah, there’s a litany of great things I could say about him. And by the way, my co-founder, Rich, is also very sales oriented. and he may be more of a gas pedal than me, but.

Anthony Codispoti (41:25.25)
Okay.

Adam Morgan (41:26.079)
But Chris and I have a good balance there and yeah, and you know how this is in a services firm, know, salary expense, people are, you know, 80, 85 % of your total costs. So the hiring lever is the one we’ve got more than anything, right? Travel expense, all that other stuff is a rounding error compared to what people cost. so the good news is, is we got a good gas pedal, brake pedal situation between Chris and I.

Anthony Codispoti (41:50.604)
And so what are some of the more effective strategies you found to recruit and retain good folks? We’ve talked a little bit about retention, building that culture. How about getting them in the door in the first place?

Adam Morgan (41:59.357)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Morgan (42:03.731)
Yeah, we’ve gotten far more rigorous about that than we did in the past. Frankly, if we were to sit here and talk about the mistakes in the company in the last nine years, so we’re coming up in December on our ninth anniversary, technically, since we incorporated. And without question, bad hires have been lessons learned. So one of the things we’ve done is, and this sounds cliche for a recruiting company to say, but focusing within our networks first, people who’ve worked with us in the past and want to work with us again.

But then we’ve also, what’s been great is we’ve used that to train our own recruiting team on what we’re looking for and how to evaluate people better. And then we’ve gotten really rigorous in our own hiring process, particularly because, and you know this, I know I’m preaching to the converted, but at our size, right? When you’re 100, 200 people, one bad hire has a ripple effect, right? You can, at a 10,000 person company, you don’t always feel a bad hire unless it’s at the very top, but at our size company, a bad hire is felt.

and so we’ve really tried to vet and be really different, deliberate about when are we vetting people for technical acumen versus culture fit versus people skills. and, being really specific also. And I think the supplies across the board about what success looks like in that role. we see this with clients and, you interview people who, who own and run staffing companies all the time, but it’s unbelievable how often people are hiring without a clear understanding of exactly what’s expected.

and what good looks like, particularly once they get going. And so we challenge a lot of people, clients included, to think 90, 180, 360 days out, what does good look like? How are you gonna know if this person is winning, if they’re delivering? And if you can’t quantify that, there’s a challenge there, right? Because it’s important, so.

Anthony Codispoti (43:52.952)
Do you find that you can easily quantify that for most roles?

Adam Morgan (43:57.087)
We’re getting better at it. Yeah, we’ve, we have tried to, know, some of them are a little more nebulous like HR and so on, right? There’s, there’s certain roles, accounting and finance where it gets a little more difficult, but, but, we’re getting better at it every day. And we’re, mean, there’s, there’s a cultural mindset here of constantly trying to learn and get better. We’ve got it as an example, we’ve got a process improvement initiative going on right now. We literally buy, buy team.

documented every core process that that team operates on from employee onboarding to offboarding to promotions to reviews like, like pick the process we’re going through and documenting it and then saying, okay, who owns this process? There’s got to be a functional owner. Is it documented? And if it is, is it scalable? And then how do we automate it? And just stuff like that, that helps us really look and understand what really comprises our business so that it’s built for scale. and then measure people on their ability to.

to analyze and improve it.

Anthony Codispoti (44:55.736)
You know, mentioned some different areas that you’re trying to be more deliberate about in assessing people before you bring them on board. I would think that technical skills would probably be one of the more easy ones to evaluate. You can look at work that they’ve done. You can hire them to do a test task and get a sense of the quality of their work. My sense is that do they have people skills and are they a good culture fit are probably the more

difficult ones to ascertain upfront. I right or wrong?

Adam Morgan (45:27.295)
Boy, that could be a long debate. I think you are right in that people skills and culture fit are definitely, well, they’re critically important and they can be hard to ascertain. That being said, and the irony again that we do this for a living is it is amazing sometimes how challenging it is to assess technical skills. Cause you do, mean, and we all run into this, right? You can look at somebody’s resume and you go.

Anthony Codispoti (45:47.79)
Okay.

Adam Morgan (45:52.787)
They’ve done everything. They’ve worked on every technology. got front end experience, back end experience and run down the list. but then you get in and you go, okay, well, the resume looks good, but they haven’t actually done the work or the difference between I sit in a 10 % technical team versus a hundred person technical organization. And did I just do this small part or did I actually work the, you know, the complete stack there in terms of what I’m saying I can do. So I think it’s difficult to assess all of them.

Anthony Codispoti (46:04.366)
Mmm.

Adam Morgan (46:21.079)
And maybe that’s a good thing or else maybe we wouldn’t be in business if it wasn’t. it is, all those things are important. And you know, because you can get the technically brilliant person who has the social skills of a snow pea and then get the person that you love and you want to go out and break bread with. then you’re like, yeah, they just, can’t deliver every time you put their feet to the fire, they fold. So I don’t know. I think they’re all difficult for different reasons. And again, maybe grateful for that or we would be out of business.

Anthony Codispoti (46:50.53)
How do you go about the assessing the people skills and the culture fit? How can you run some sort of a litmus test upfront?

Adam Morgan (47:01.161)
Yeah, I mean, are you asking in context of how we do that for a recruiting client or more for us internally?

Anthony Codispoti (47:06.964)
I guess both.

Adam Morgan (47:10.231)
All right, that’s a tough question, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (47:13.122)
Pick one that’s easier to answer then.

Adam Morgan (47:16.255)
No, they’re both tough for a reason. I wish there were a silver bullet. On CultureFit, we try to really explore how they explain their background. And as you know, there’s a lot of telling signs sometimes, whether somebody says I or we a lot. When they talk about wins, they credit themselves or do they credit the team? Do they talk about the people they work with or solely in context of what they did and so on?

And I don’t know, a lot can be said by asking, we take a very Socratic method, right? Ask a ton of questions. And the nature of the answers is really indicative of us, of whether they’re a team player or not, right? And how they talk about their effort relative to their team, the skill sets relative to their team, their contribution. When they talk about the culture of the places they’ve worked in the past and why they left, you can glean a lot, right? I’d love to tell you we were.

the best in the business at it. think we’re very good at it, but we are always learning new ways to improve. And to your point, it makes it really difficult when you’ve never met somebody in person, right? It’s one thing to hire over a Teams meeting or kick whatever, know, Zoom or whatever. It’s another thing to sit across the table from somebody, right? And read their eyes and look at their eyes and how they engage you directly. And so for us internally, we try as much as possible to bring people in in person or go meet them.

I’ve flown to meet people in person as well as the members of the leadership team. yeah, it’s a task.

Anthony Codispoti (48:48.312)
Yeah. Adam, let’s talk about a personal or professional challenge or maybe one of each that you’ve overcome, kind what you did to get through it and some lessons you learned coming out the other side.

Adam Morgan (49:03.955)
There’s been about a million of each. I’m trying to think of what would be, let’s start with professional. And there’s been hundreds of both mistakes we’ve made and lessons learned. And the two biggest would be either bad hiring or bad hiring decisions, particularly on the leadership team or bad financial decisions. And it’s funny, I’ve been asked this repeatedly and I bet my co-founder Rich would agree with me, which is,

If I could go back and do anything over again, I would have hired our CFO five years earlier or four years earlier, because if we had had a C, I’m a technologist by trade, Rich is a people person and a sales guy. And if we had had a CFO, Chris, who’s amazing, if we had had him four or five years ago, we probably could have avoided 80 of the other bad decisions we made, or 80%, I should say, of the other bad decisions we’ve made, because so many of them were based out of a

Anthony Codispoti (49:38.455)
Mm.

Adam Morgan (50:02.239)
poor understanding of where we were financially or exact impact of a decision on our financials. And it’s for a long time, like a lot of small businesses, we did bookkeepers and staff accountants and so on. And having a strategic financial partner probably could have avoided a litany of bad decisions made. So that was definitely a lesson learned and God forbid I go do this thing again. No, we do that. The other second.

Anthony Codispoti (50:24.514)
Hats off to Chris.

Adam Morgan (50:30.623)
is certainly more personal or other maybe learning experience or challenge is far more personal, was, I mentioned, touched on this a little bit earlier, but up until 2019, I was working in another company while also helping build Elevate. So there was a couple years span, and I hate to talk about myself, but we’re talking about personal challenges. But there was a couple years span where I was both helping build Session which was a very demanding.

VC and PE backed company, ultimately, that write the MasterCard plot. But building that, which was running a very dispersed sales team and partner channel team, and at the same time, trying to help Rich build Elevate. And running those two things meant I was working basically nonstop, except when family time was allowed or otherwise. And it took a toll on my health, where I had health issues from it. It took a toll in my family life and had a serious impact there.

and I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, but it forced a big reset from a prioritization standpoint, from a lifestyle perspective. and the real question mark of, you know, maybe, maybe this isn’t the case, but you know, thinking we’re all superhuman, and kind of a reset reality check of, Hey, you’re not superhuman. In fact, quite the opposite. You’re very human and, and you can’t do all this. It’s unreasonable. And the people you care most about are paying the real price from it.

And that was a, you know, missing moments with kids traveling globally, you know, doing that stuff. Those are all really hard reality checks. And I’m glad it happened because it becomes cathartic, right? You learn from it.

Anthony Codispoti (52:09.986)
Was there a point in that process that there was sort of a light bulb moment where you were like, yeah, I am just a human. I have to change something. Or was it more of a gradual realization?

Adam Morgan (52:22.783)
Yeah, it definitely happened in the ER. I had a thyroid issue act up where my thyroid went hyperactive. And so my heart rate was elevating. No pun intended. But my heart rate started increasing dramatically and I didn’t know what was going on for a bit. At first thought it was just stress and kind of dismissed it and then started losing about a pound a day. And in about a three week period suddenly realized it was looking gaunt, skinny, was having…

and ended up in the ER and they were worried I was gonna, is it AFib? They were worried that my heart was gonna actually have a cardiac episode because I chucked myself into the emergency room. And that was a very real come to Jesus moment to call my family and say, hey, I’m in the ER and here’s what’s going on.

Anthony Codispoti (53:11.66)
And so what did steps look like after that? Getting out of the ER, how quickly did you make changes and what did that look like?

Adam Morgan (53:20.297)
Yeah. First was the health thing, getting thyroid issue contained and it’s now in remission. So thankful, thankful for that, that that’s contained and seems to be well managed now. But the second was the life reset. Actually started unplugging from Session at that time. I was really fortunate. It actually timed kind of serendipitously with us starting to sell and there was a couple of different exit options for Session at the time. So it was very clear we were going to sell. And my boss who’s

CEO, Session at the time was very understanding in terms of letting me start to unplug, letting me start to, it was clear I wasn’t going to stay on through an exit, just do the earn out piece. And so he was very understanding in terms of letting me start to unplug and unwind it and kind of wind out. And so it, and then there was the deliberate effort, deliberate effort with the family to start to make it clear to them that they were a priority and that there were certain things that were going to be.

off limits from work perspective ever interfering in that again.

Anthony Codispoti (54:18.198)
You had kids at the time?

Adam Morgan (54:20.19)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (54:21.292)
What were their ages then?

Adam Morgan (54:24.23)
geez, great question. So six years ago, so I had a 12 year old and a 10 year old.

Anthony Codispoti (54:28.014)
Okay. And what was their receptivity to this announcement?

Adam Morgan (54:34.227)
They were worried. I don’t know. I’m a pretty high energy, intense person, so I might have scared them at the idea that I might be around more. no, everybody got it. I think we all, as a family, had a scare with me losing weight and looking like I did and going through all that and ending up in the ER, that it was a wake-up call to all of us.

Anthony Codispoti (54:55.896)
Yeah.

What’s a fun fact most people wouldn’t know about you, Adam?

Adam Morgan (55:03.025)
I’m gonna at least I was growing up an adrenaline junkie and so for a long time did a bunch of crazy stuff from skydiving to a lot of scuba diving did a great white shark expedition in southern Australia a lot of rock rock stuff MMA was a martial artist growing up so always kind of an adrenaline junkie and when the kid my kids were first born I remember being told by my wife

Those days are over. You’re not doing great white shark expeditions anymore. have kids, et cetera. there was a big component of getting out of the adrenaline junkie days, but I loved it for a long time. Still love scuba diving and stuff like that, but yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (55:43.81)
I was gonna say, are there other safer endeavors that you’ve found that allow you to still get that adrenaline kick? Or you just kind of moved away from that altogether?

Adam Morgan (55:51.423)
That’s tough.

still love scuba diving and whatnot, but had to move away from the ones involving great white sharks and jumping out of planes. yeah, I just still love anything with, just love having a good time, being outdoors, anything like that. It’s fun. trying to get back into martial arts a little bit, but I’m an old man now, so.

Anthony Codispoti (56:11.63)
Any specific mentors, books, podcasts, other experiences that you want to call out for being helpful in your process?

Adam Morgan (56:23.223)
that’s like also another good question and, almost too many in ways. I love reading love consuming podcasts. There’s a ton of good ones. Yours is excellent. Grit is excellent. one of my favorite books, I don’t know if you ever saw the bear, on, the, series about the, the restaurant in Chicago, but there’s an episode in season two, I think it’s episode seven where the, the cousin goes to work in one of the top Michelin rated restaurants in the world.

And, and then he’s reading a book, which clearly looks like a product placement, but I ordered it. It’s called unreasonable hospitality by Will Gaderra. And it’s about, his journey, him and his partner’s journey to build the number one restaurant in the world. And unreasonable hospitality is about this idea of being so exceptionally customer oriented that you want to deliver a world-class experience to them. And, I love the book and the mindset and the fact that it’s around a completely unrelated industry to what we do.

But there’s so many good lessons and our whole leadership team is either reading it reading it now. But it’s outstanding. And just the idea of how do you exceed expectations is a great mindset, right? For our employees, for our customers, and then a ton of mentors. But we have two board members that I look up immensely to and rely on daily for guidance, Art Hopkins and Paul Noble, who are both outstanding.

Anthony Codispoti (57:44.408)
So I’m completely aligned with the idea of delivering just an outstanding customer experience. How can you over deliver? How can you wow the person? How can you just deliver the best of what you have to offer? Some people listening are like, yeah, but man, that takes a lot of effort and energy. And for those people, I feel like what they need to hear is an example of

Yeah, but here’s the ROI. Is there any way that you can, even if it’s just a single anecdote, give somebody, here’s the ROI, here’s something I did, and here’s something that it led to.

And I almost hesitate to ask the question because it almost feels like in some way doing it for the wrong reason.

Adam Morgan (58:29.812)
That is a great.

Adam Morgan (58:37.861)
I that’s so that’s Anthony. You and I think alike. I was, that’s kind of where I was going is in my mind. I’m like, don’t do it for the ROI. Do it because it’s the right thing. And the ROI comes naturally. I, your point, it, it’s almost, it’s almost like the what’s in it for me. It’s like, no, don’t, that’s not the reason you do it. We’re not doing this for what’s in it. If, you do the right thing, things will play out the way they’re supposed to. And we actually talked about this with our sales team a lot, like

There are a litany of decisions we’ve made in the last four or five years that were us coming out of pocket for a client because they thought something was wrong or we thought something was wrong and we never stopped. It was always just do it because it’s the right thing because you’re investing in the partnership and the ROI will be there. It will. Right. And it’s just don’t want people thinking about the ROI. I want them thinking it because it’s the right thing to do.

Anthony Codispoti (59:11.692)
Hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (59:18.402)
Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (59:28.91)
But I, and I agree 100 % and that’s how I approach things. But I feel like we could pull more people into doing the right thing if we could show them that there was ROI. mean, look at, look at all the green stuff going on, right? Like, you know, do this because it’s good for the environment. Well, you’re going to get a heck of a lot more people to do it once doing what’s good for the environment is also good for the pocket.

Adam Morgan (59:54.963)
Yes. So fair. so let me, gosh, I worry. I’m always hypersensitive about anything that sounds like a chess beat. but, how about this for an RO statement, ROI statement? We, we try to do the right thing all the time and we always should as much as we can because it’s the right thing to do. And the ROI is four straight years on the Inc 5,000 for fast growth, right? The frames on the wall.

that are the very definition of a team award. It’s not a CEO award, it’s not a president award, it’s certainly not an executive team award. It’s a team award, and we talk about that all the time. And there’s the ROI. We would not have achieved those growth numbers if we weren’t trying to do the right thing every day.

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:36.024)
Bingo. There we go. That’s the exclamation point. What’s something you wish you could teach a younger version of yourself, Adam? Something that’s super obvious now that, if younger Adam knew that.

Adam Morgan (01:00:52.467)
Don’t drink vodka on an empty stomach. No, that would have been high school. So, gosh, that is a great question. And there’s so many lessons there. I would say, and this sounds cliche, because I’ve heard so many other people say it, but it’s so true, which is don’t fear failure. Like embrace it. There is no such thing as failure. There’s just lessons learned. that is to some degree, I think I’ve always believed that personally, but

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:55.084)
Hahaha.

Adam Morgan (01:01:22.013)
but you can’t, repetition’s the mother of skill, right? So I’d go back to young me and beat myself over the head with it and just say, don’t fear failure, fail it, embrace it, pivot, keep going. If you don’t stop moving your feet, you are going to make progress. You might vector and veer a bit, but you’re gonna keep moving forward. And I say this to my kids all the time, like, no, embrace it, you know, just move from it, pivot, keep going, but don’t fear failure. That is in life.

I can’t imagine a more valuable lesson.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:53.208)
I think that is powerful. Did you find a way to phrase that for younger kids in a way that they actually understood it and at least somewhat embraced it?

Adam Morgan (01:02:06.355)
Yeah, I mean, at least I can only speak from parenting mind, my two, right? But, and I’ve got, you know, a son and a daughter and they think very differently at times, God bless them. But, but I do try to present it around optionality, like what happened, right? What’s and very outcome orientation, right? And if you think it was a failure, okay, is that an endpoint or are there additional options from here? Right? What’s the direction forward? And if you kind of reorient them to that, this is a point in time.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:28.738)
Yeah.

Adam Morgan (01:02:34.579)
and that there are options from here and maybe revisiting. All right, my options four weeks ago before this decision were X. Here we are at this point in time. If they think they’ve failed, all right, do you really not have options? you do? Great. Let’s reframe those. What are the options from here? And this is coming up a lot right now. I’ve got two kids looking at college and so, and both student athletes. So having conversations around the path forward is front and center every day right now for us.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:03.534)
You know, and part of the reason I asked the question, how to teach it to your kid is because I think if you can teach, if you can figure out how to teach it to a child or a younger person anyways, obviously there’s, sort of a cutoff point in terms of being able to conceptualize and understand things. But if you get to that point of being able to explain it for a younger person, we’re all really kids at heart and also someplace in our reptilian brains. You can explain it to your team members, your coworkers, and more importantly yourself as well.

Adam Morgan (01:03:25.777)
Amen. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:33.26)
Right. can reframe it in language. It’s like, that’s what I needed to hear again. And so I liked what you were saying. Don’t feel fear failure. And then, okay, this didn’t go well. This I failed quote unquote. I, this didn’t work out. Okay. Is this an endpoint or what are the options from here? I really liked that last part.

Adam Morgan (01:03:55.711)
I think it’s helpful. You and I were talking about this a little bit when we introduced ourselves is I think the athletes mindset is immensely valuable for that reason. You know, some people say they love hiring athletes. I love talking to athletes because you cannot play a sport no matter what sport it is and not have experienced failure. You’ve lost at some point, you’ve failed, whatever. I don’t, again, not failed, but you’ve lost at some point.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:12.835)
Yeah.

Adam Morgan (01:04:18.079)
There’s just so many valuable lessons there. And that is one of the effective ways with both my kids as student athletes is using sports metaphors. Like, okay, you didn’t win here, but you won there. And you know, this happened here, but sports is a great teacher of the fact that you’re, still try and get better and you’re not failing. You’re just learning new ways.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:37.688)
What sports did you play?

Adam Morgan (01:04:39.967)
I wrestled and did martial arts primarily growing up. It’s funny, I’m old enough that they didn’t call it MMA back then. was just, were taking Kempo, Jiu-Jitsu, Taekwondo, et cetera, kickboxing, but would call it MMA today. So, grew up doing martial arts and wrestling and a little bit of track to just be in shape for those other two. What about you?

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:58.784)
And did you find some level of success in any of those?

Adam Morgan (01:05:03.025)
Yeah, I ended up finishing fairly high nationally in martial arts a long time ago and had some success at wrestling, but an injury actually derailed me from the opportunity to play, do college wrestling. So, I had some success at both, very fortunate there.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:18.86)
Now, Adam, one more question for you. Before I ask it, I wanna do something. I just wanna let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What is that?

Adam Morgan (01:05:27.615)
I would assume LinkedIn is probably the best, right? Or email. I’m adam at elevate-digital.com is the easy way. But certainly on LinkedIn and live there, right? In our space is a foundational point. But we’re headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and I’m frequently on the road and love meeting people. And always if there’s an opportunity for me to be of value to someone else, I’d welcome and appreciate that opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:52.162)
That’s terrific. So last question I have for you, Adam. What do you see being the big changes in your industry in the next couple of years?

Adam Morgan (01:06:01.823)
In the industry, think we’re going to continue to see consolidation. The interest rates in the political environment have created a lot of kind of dry powder sitting out there. And I think PE firms are going to play a heavy role as well as the strategic players and services are going to continue to consolidate and buy companies. We’re also seeing some thinning of the herd, if you will, right? It’s been a tough market, particularly in the recruiting space over the last couple of years with fluctuations in hiring. And that’s forced some people out of business or into right sizing.

So it’s going to be, we definitely think there’s going to be some consolidation. There’s still a very unclear hiring market trend, right? For the foreseeable future, just given macro conditions. So it’s going to be interesting to see it play out. We think there’s opportunities on both fronts because you still see the end of the day, a shortage of resources relative to work. For the CIOs we talk to on a regular basis, particularly in our client base, most of them are

being tasked with delivering more and more projects without the benefit of additional headcount. And that creates an interesting spectrum or dynamic for the rest of us who are out there helping to try those, help them try and solve those problems.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:03.299)
Mm-hmm.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:08.341)
you

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:12.684)
You know, just even a couple of years ago, anybody would have agreed that if you can learn good coding programming skills, like you’re going to have job security. And I hear people sort of poo pooing that now that AI has made coding easier, more accessible, faster. What’s your take on that? Is this still a very lucrative career endeavor for people or should they be thinking of

shifting gears into something else.

Adam Morgan (01:07:45.021)
Yeah, you know, it’s funny, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of great debate among a number of smart people out there on this exact topic. And I tend to subscribe to the way a lot of the folks who come from the AI market right now believe, which is, don’t think it’s necessarily going to displace, you know, I think there’s, there’s a little bit of overdramatization on all the jobs going away, but, I think anybody would be crazy to not look at how AI could enhance their skillset, right?

No matter what job on there and everybody should be looking at AI and going, how does this help me be more effective at my job? I think not being able to use AI in your job is a bigger risk than AI taking your job. And that the people who learn how to harness it and use it for in particular, the productivity gain that it represents are going to be at a distinct advantage going forward. And that’s kind of how we’re treating it, right? Is you’ve got to be able to use it in your job.

It’s an efficiency game, right? In the same way that enterprise search was when it came out, the mobile phone, right? These are enablers. And it should be viewed as a tool that makes you more productive, not something that takes your job away.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:48.182)
I had a very similar conversation with a woman who used to work for me years ago. She came back and she was kind of all in a worry, a panic. She was sort of discovering what chat GPT, I think it was 3.5 was able to do sort of like, my gosh, like, maybe she was very creative. She was great at copywriting. And now she thought all these skills that I built up over the years, like are going away, like I’m going to be out of work pretty soon.

And I gave her, I framed it exactly as you talked about there. Like, don’t be afraid of it, embrace it. How can it help you enhance your skills, be able to deliver them more efficiently, maybe to more people, maybe help you brainstorm, give you new ideas. And she sort of went away for a few weeks and ensconced herself in chat GPT and what the prompts were and how to use it. And she came back to me a few weeks later and she was so excited.

Adam Morgan (01:09:33.816)
Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (01:09:39.884)
and had this new lease on life and she had all these ideas for how she was going to grow her business. And so, yeah, I think that’s the right way. I think it’s a smart way to approach it.

Adam Morgan (01:09:48.639)
Love it. Love it. That’s a great story too.

Anthony Codispoti (01:09:51.692)
Well, Adam, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Adam Morgan (01:09:57.917)
Likewise, your time is your most valuable thing, Anthony. So it’s been an honor and just appreciate the opportunity to spend time with you.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:05.449)
Absolutely. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.