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Through the SRT Lens: Bob Pollard on Growing as a Leader and Mentor
In this episode, Bob Pollard, Senior Director on the Shore Resource Team, shares how the SRT prepared him for a longer-term interim CFO role. He discusses stepping into leadership, driving change, and mentoring team members. Bob also reflects on projects that transformed companies by taking on tasks that the founders did not have the capacity or resources to do before. He speaks about his personal growth as a leader and emphasizes the importance of collaboration and mentorship.
Transcript
Introduction
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Anderson Williams: Welcome to Bigger. Stronger. Faster. the podcast exploring how Shore Capital Partners brings billion-dollar resources to the microcap space. This episode is part of a series in which I interview members of the Shore Resource Team, better known as the SRT. about the work they do to support success across the Shore Capital Portfolio.
In addition to enabling portfolio company growth and success, each member of the SRT is growing themselves and their own careers on the Chief Financial Officer path. In this episode, I talk with Bob Pollard, Senior Director on the Shore Resource Team. Bob describes the role of the SRT in supporting the Shore portfolio and how they help drive collective success.
He describes work that includes both the implementation of Shore best practices for scaling companies, as well as projects for founders and partners that they've known will help the business, but they just haven't had the capacity or resources to do before. He talks about his opportunity to serve as an interim CFO and how that experience evolved and how he had to grow with it.
From maintaining the status quo to becoming a change leader, from thinking with a project-based mindset to becoming a strategic financial leader and thought partner to the CEO and leadership team. Finally, Bob talks about using his experience to become a mentor within the SRT to help expedite the growth of younger team members.
Well, welcome, Bob, and thanks for joining me today.
Bob Pollard: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is very exciting.
Anderson Williams: To get us started, will you just say who you are, what you do, and where you do it?
Bob Pollard: My name is Bob Pollard. I am a Senior Director on the Shore Resource Team known as the SRT. I do that for Shore Capital Partners.
Anderson Williams: And just in your own words, what is the SRT? How would you describe that?
Bob Pollard: The SRT is basically an in-house team of consultants, mostly financial focused. We have a shared interest to help our companies kind of efficiently scale, grow, and perform as well as they can. The team is 20 people, roughly. We have varied experiences, generally four to eight years of prior work experience.
Most of those are in kind of the big four accounting or that kind of world of previous experiences. And I think what we bring to the table for Shore is we can kind of help de lever management to continue running the business while we help on special projects or other areas of the business that need attention without having to have them completely take focus off of that.
Anderson Williams: What does that look like in practice? So, if I'm listening and I'm not real clear on what Shore is or what the different things our portfolio companies do, when you think about particular projects that de lever, so to speak. Give me an example or two of what that looks like in real world as an example.
Bob Pollard: Yeah. So, a lot of our companies before they partnered with Shore, they don't have the time or resources to put in to do all the projects they probably want to work on over time. So, one of my favorite parts of it is during the 100-day plan, which is kind of a three-month crash course onboarding where we help put in financial reporting and other areas of the business to help upscale them.
One of the favorite moments I have during that is being able to talk to the seller or management team and say, you know, before Shore, you didn't have the time or resources to put behind these things. What are some projects you want to do? And usually the sellers and management teams, they kind of light up and they have a great long list of things they've wanted to work on for two, five, ten years sometimes even, but they just haven't had that time because they've been a team of two or a team of three.
And now we could say, hey, we have all these people behind you ready to help, so let us jump in and kind of knock out that list for you.
Anderson Williams: Well, and I love reframing that, honestly, about thinking about what you guys do, not just as, okay, now you've partnered with Shore, here's a whole bunch of stuff we want you to do for us, but rather, I mean, there's some of that, we've got to get the house in order and ready to grow and scale with Shore, but thinking about some of those historical projects that have been put off.
Just pick a company as appropriate and give me an example of something that somebody might have put off for a couple of years because they just didn't have capacity but now that they're partnered with private equity, partnered with Shore, have the SRT that they can finally say, yes, with you guys, we can finally do the thing we've been putting off.
Bob Pollard: Yeah, I think I had two good examples. One being the company had kind of never looked at their employees and figured out a way to make sense for the employee, but also for the business. So, all the employees of this company were 1099 employees. None of them were W2, so no benefits offered. You know, there wasn't that kind of group collective that you could have if everyone's kind of under the same company umbrella.
So, we spent time to get the necessary information and work with external parties to help us bring all of them on to W2, kind of. roles, no change to their jobs, but just kind of offered a fulsome package. And it just really helped the company kind of come together. I think that was a pretty good experience.
And then another kind of just more so in terms of the baseline deliverables we'll put in place, they never had done cash forecasting or looking at that area of the business. They knew at the end of the month or quarter year that the account had X amount of money in it, but they didn't know. What they were spending money on or, you know, how they were doing overall.
So, we put in place the whole cash forecast in that kind of process that we put in place at all of our companies.
Anderson Williams: And it's just two examples from a people perspective and a process perspective of exactly why it seems to me that someone would choose to partner with private equity. They're running their business. They're doing something that they love. They've built something, but they know there are places they can do more for their people. They know there are places they can optimize better as a business. business and for their customers and so forth.
It just seems to be fundamental to the idea of why you would even partner with private equity in the first place.
Bob Pollard: Absolutely. And that's probably the area of the job that I enjoy the most is the humanity side. It's not coming in and doing X, Y, Z. It's understanding what the company needs and saying, hey, we can help you do that together. And seeing the benefit when you put employees on W2, and they now have. benefits and 401k, the things that matter to employees.
That's pretty rewarding to do that as your day job, but it matters so much more than just myself.
Interim CFO​
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Anderson Williams: What are you working on right now?
Bob Pollard: For the last 13 months, I've actually been interim CFO of one of our food and beverage portfolio companies. The role originally was supposed to be shorter term. The way I got there was the CEO called the Shore team one day and said, hey, the CFO needs to take time away from the business to help with an ill Family member.
So, I jumped in supposed to be short term that ended up becoming more medium term and now kind of longer term, but it's been by far the most rewarding year of my career and just being able to be in the seat and learn and affect change has been incredible.
Anderson Williams: I know a lot of the Shore Resource Team members ultimately aspire to become CFOs.
I'm curious from that experience, that 13 months, what was the transition like? What were you sort of. prepared for in terms of stepping into that role? And maybe what was your learning curve that maybe you expected or didn't expect?
Bob Pollard: The learning curve was steep. I'll say that given that it was supposed to be a shorter-term engagement, I was kind of focused on maintaining the status quo.
So, most of my first few weeks were meeting the whole team, understanding what was needed there, learn the processes, learn the responsibilities of both my role and the department. So that was kind of my baseline is what I was trying to understand when I jumped in. And then given that that initial scope was shorter term, I kind of focused on quick wins that I could do along the way to help the company when the CFO came back.
As that role evolved and turned into what it is now, that's where the learning curve kind of really picked up. So that's where I shifted my focus away from the status quo. And I really wanted to take the department to a new level. That's where I got really excited to help things on the process side, such as improving monthly close, putting in place cost controls. Improved reporting to the management team, working with the board directors and the short team and all that in between.
It was also great. I got to personally hire and onboard three new members to the finance team, which was a very rewarding experience to kind of have that opportunity. And then as a team, once we got to kind of full scale, we were able to take on some large transformational projects that would help move the department and the company forward while I was in that space.
Anderson Williams: How have you thought differently, or maybe it's the same, but as you've done the work in SRT sort of as a project based and short term based consulting model, how have you had to think differently stepping in, and even though it evolved, it was going to be short term, became mid-term, long term? You're now stepping into and evolving into a company culture that already exists.
You're stepping into C suite norms that already exist. You're stepping into relationships and a history that already exists, that now you're not just in temporarily, but now you're getting rooted in. How do you have to think differently about your approach or your work in that scenario versus sort of the project based?
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Bob Pollard: Yes, absolutely. That was a big change in my mindset when jumping from project-based work to this kind of in the seat role. I think a few areas where I had to focus on and kind of really quickly get up to speed was in strategic financial leadership and risk management. Those two areas are just so key.
You don't really get those from project-based work. You have to be doing it to understand it all. So, on the strategic financial leadership, you know, that's not something that can be learned on projects. So, when people were coming to me looking for answers, I have to focus on the longer term and what decisions we make today make an impact on the future.
And really being a thought partner to the existing corporate team. When I jumped in, the corporate team was fully built out, as you said. So, it was basically replacing one role with myself. And then I had to fit into a lot of the norms they had going on and all the good things they were working with. So, it was trying to understand how I could be a thought partner to that CEO and how I could partner with the rest of the corporate team to help make decisions that better the platform overall.
And that's something that I don't think you can learn just doing short term project work where you are coming in to do an objective and then you're leaving. And then in that same regard, risk management is just a very critical area of the business that you also don't learn on short term projects. You have to really understand all the different pieces of the business so you can know what levers you can pull to help the long-term success of that company.
So that was pretty critical during my time jumping in.
Ramping Up​
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Anderson Williams: So how did you do it? So practically speaking, you've got somebody listening here who's in a consulting role, or maybe it's somebody that's in SRT or thinking about SRT. How did you grow into that role? We know you had to shift mindsets, but what did you have to do to make sure that you understood and picked up on without plowing through or otherwise ignoring the norms and processes and practices of that company as you stepped in?
Just any thoughts about practically speaking, how did you ramp up your learning fast enough?
Bob Pollard: I would say once I got my feet below me and understood what the status quo was, I spent time with the CEO and then the other three members of the corporate management team to understand from their perspective, what has worked well and what could likely have some improvements from the finance department and from the CFO seat itself.
That list of learnings was rather long and very exciting opportunity to say, okay, now I know what needs to be blocked and tackled. Let's go take on some of these roles and projects. And that I think was how I was able to assess what needed to be done and also prioritize that list. Every different person on the management team for marketing to sales, the CEO to HR all had their own views of importance.
So, understanding what could be done in timeframes and in tandem with them really made a difference.
Anderson Williams: So, I love that. I mean, basically starting by listening, right? I mean, going in and having those one-on-one conversations, listening to those different perspectives. So, I just want to take that a little bit further because now you've listened to a half a dozen different people.
They have, I won't even guess how many ideas about what things need to improve and change and you mentioned prioritizing. How did you take those conversations and organize them and then come back and say, here's my priority list, or here's what we're going to work on first. How did you take it to the next step after you had done this sort of listening with this group of people?
Bob Pollard: Yeah, I think that was a mix of working again with the CEO, also with the Shore investment team and a couple of members of the board of directors to understand what the problems were from their perspective, right? So, the management team is in the business every day, but the Shore team and the kind of external parties are not.
So, a quick tangible example, the monthly closed process from the finance department itself was taking far too long and kind of delays were happening. So, I knew that had to be focused on right away. And then from there, each little thing within the monthly closed process, you'd realize you could improve upon or can change or delegate to somebody else.
And as I said, we brought on other members of the team. So, it was also bringing them up. along the way and helping them take on other projects in that process really helped out. So, we were able to bring that time down to 10 days roughly. And that also helped the HR department because then they had better data available for running payroll and things like that.
So, it was a mix of working with people inside and outside of the business to see where the holes were, and then focusing on those to kind of solve them.
Anderson Williams: Yeah, probably identifying things that were truly critical, but also balancing some of the things that you likely needed to be able to deliver to show some of the quick wins you were referencing before about, you know, I'm here. I know what I'm doing. You might not know who I am, but you start building that confidence with the team and with the company around you.
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Bob Pollard: It was great to talk to each member of the corporate team and understand what needs they had and desires they had, because some other areas too, I was able to focus on working with them to get those done quickly and I prioritize them because I knew that once completed, I would kind of earn their trust and their respect.
And once we got those done, we really were able to kind of move on from there into being much more successful together. So, I thought that was a pretty interesting way to kind of get myself ingratiated with the team that was there in place.
Understanding the CFO Role​
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Anderson Williams: So, I'm curious, after 13 months, what do you know or understand about what it means to be a CFO that you didn't know prior to this experience?
Bob Pollard: There's still a lot I don't know, that's for sure, but one area that I learned a lot of is just navigating complexities. You know, during periods of downturn with the business or areas where you need to focus a little bit harder, there's always times where you have to make decisions that you're not going to be made on these projects that we do on a short-term basis. So, it's really focusing on the long-term success of the business and working with the team around me to kind of help us get there together.
We all want things to be changed day one, but that's not really feasible. So, it's understanding how can we move this all along together and why are we the team in place to do that? That I think was something that. We learned along the way.
Anderson Williams: As I listened to that, I hear you talking about working with the executive team and building the team underneath you. I suspect the CFO role is much more of a team and a people leading role than a lot of people think of as with the title of Chief Financial Officer. It's a whole lot of people stuff too, I imagine.
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Bob Pollard: It is. And I very much enjoy that aspect of the business. I like being able to talk to people and understand what their challenges are as well and working with them. It was also building up the finance team, helping the HR team, kind of everyone working together because you're never going to get to where you need to on your own.
But if you do things together, you can move a lot quicker. And I think that's an area where we were able to all team together and excel. And a lot of the things that I'm doing on a day-to-day basis are not just numbers as someone with a CFO title would think. It is a lot more people based and that's an area I really enjoy.
Professional Growth​​
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Anderson Williams: So, I want to come back to the SRT because you've been a part of it for several years now. And just as you've grown and evolved in this role, the SRT is growing and evolving. Can you talk a little bit about how SRT has changed since you've been a part of, and just some of the work you're doing now in particular around mentoring and leading some of the younger team members in the SRT?
Bob Pollard: Yeah. When I joined roughly three years ago, the team was eight people. And back then we had more of a defined role in what we did, and it was much more quick hits. And then you jump back out and you were called upon when needed and I think now the team's up to 20 and of those original. Eight. When I was the eighth on the team, five have actually gone on to be CFOs of Shore portfolio companies, which is very rewarding to see, but we've also grown the team back up to 20.
So, the growth is definitely there. And I think along the way we've earned the respect and shown that we can help our companies by both the management teams and the Shore investment team, because now we're called upon to help with really any challenge our companies face. We used to focus on strictly financial or operational challenges.
But now we'll get calls to help with really any problem or area they need help in and that is pretty exciting for the team to see because we'll always have something new to work on. And that learning curve for us is really exciting. Of the team of 20, I think a lot of us are similar in that we like the fast pace of play.
We like that everything's always changing and that we get to learn something new every day. There's a little bit of that pain tolerance in there as well along the way. But I think that's where the 20 of us have come together to help our companies and earn the respect of both the management teams and the Shore deal team.
Anderson Williams: And so when you think about the mentoring work that you're doing and how you in that environment approach new people on the SRT, what are some of the things that you focus on as someone who's now a seasoned veteran and looking at somebody who may be in their first six months or year on the SRT?
Bob Pollard: Yeah, so we just launched very recently a mentorship program.
So right now, I have three people on the SRT who my mentees and we have 30, 60, 90-day check ins. The goal of it is to help them with things like goal setting, project staffing and alignment, kind of performance reviews, and reviewing their project deliverables, being someone there that they can go to for questions and not feel silly for asking, or when they are near the end of a project, I can help with understanding what they need to do to close it out.
And then I can help gather feedback and give that feedback to them in a real time. And that's really an area where the team's been able to excel in building up the team because we have so many processes and best practices in place. So that's very exciting.
Anderson Williams: So you've done a variety of projects over three plus years, including obviously, as we've talked about today, being an interim CFO, if you had, let's say, no more than three pieces of advice to offer someone who's either considering joining the SRT or maybe early in their journey, based on what you've learned so far, given your growth, given the growth of SRT, what advice would you offer someone?
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Bob Pollard: I think first and foremost, be eager to learn. Being part of the Shore team, we have the Monday Morning Meeting. We have all these other meetings and things taking place where you get the chance to learn about every Shore portfolio company and you get a chance to meet, you know, 10 executives from every company.
It's something you don't really get in any other role. So having that chance to jump in and being eager to learn and listen is something that is taken for granted in other areas. So, coming to meetings and just wanting to learn more about the companies, going to all the Shore events that we have throughout the year and meeting the executives and understanding how they got there and how they work in their role.
All of those things are opportunities to take something away from that for your own career. And I think that's an area where we get to excel. On the SRT for example, we own the CFO cohort for all Shore. So, Shore has roughly 50 companies to roughly 50 CFOs. Four times a year, we all meet with them and it's the 20 people from the SRT and the 50 roughly CFOs.
And we go over various topics. One of every year is in person and it's a pretty great experience to get to talk to 50 CFOs four times a year and take away their biggest challenges or their biggest wins. I don't think that's something I would have ever been able to experience anywhere else, so I don't know how I would have gotten there without that.
One Last Question​​
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Anderson Williams: What haven't I asked about your experiences on the SRT that I should have?
Bob Pollard: That's a good question. I think one area might be the culture of Shore, but also within the SRT on its own. So again, we're one team within the larger Shore organization. A lot of us come from a similar background. We very quickly get comfortable around each other.
And we have a very good team culture where we're very collaborative. People will come over to your desk and ask questions. Chat and want to learn more about you. And I think coming to the office every day is a chance to kind of learn something new. And a lot of the times it's because of someone else on the team that does that.
Another one might be, how do we share learnings? So the SRT internally, we have kind of a gold standard kind of repository of deliverables and projects and learnings along the way that we share internally with each other, and then externally, we have the CFO cohort, which as I mentioned is It's roughly 50 CFOs of short companies and anything that we kind of learn that we think goes out to everybody and applies to everybody, we will bring up during one of our CFO cohort meetings.
And that's just a great way to make sure that everyone at the portfolio companies is also getting some information that they can take away from it and kind of better their job as well.
Anderson Williams: And that sort of goes back to the whole investment theory to some degree of being able to recognize patterns in microcap companies.
There's, you've got this whole, these are not one off projects, they're projects that exist within a certain environment where patterns exist and patterns can be shared so that learning gets shared and so that each iteration of SRT is a little further ahead than the last iteration, it seems like.
Bob Pollard: Yes, I agree.
I think right now with the team as it is, where we have people that are leaving to go be CFOs with short companies and other executive roles with short companies, it's a really big opportunity to make sure all those learnings are passed down and shared along the way. And that happens from a variety of points.
things from project-based work where you'll work with someone else on the team, might be junior or senior to you or the mentorship program that we now have on the SRT or our Friday meeting we have every week, just the 20 of us. These are all chances to make sure that what we're doing is known by the rest of the group and the biggest learnings and takeaways and benefits that we're taking from our projects are being shared so that someone else can learn from something that you've done.
Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure and check out our other Bigger. Stronger. Faster. episodes, as well as our Microcap Moments and Everyday Heroes series at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners with story and narration by Anderson Williams, recording and editing by Austin Johnson. Editing by Reel Audiobooks. Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.
Special thanks to Bob Pollard.
This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use Page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.