Right Culture, Right Support for 4 Generations with Lisa Hirsh
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In this episode, I will be speaking with Lisa Hirsch. She's a third-generation CEO of a family packaging business called Accurate Box. She joined her father in the company after graduating from Smith College with a liberal arts degree. Lisa thought she would learn and move on to a "real job," but 40 years later, she is still leading and thriving in her leadership role. Lisa will share everything she has learned in her journey as a CEO, working with consultants and meeting great leaders along the way, including her dad. We will discuss what has helped her to create a great leadership team and how that leadership team drives a great company. She will also recount the importance of company culture, the power of communication, and how they have allowed their core values to guide the way to success.
https://www.instagram.com/accurateboxco/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accuratebox/
What do you attribute the success Accurate Box has had over the generations?
Disciplined execution: Executing on our vision, executing on what we want to accomplish. We execute what we say we're going to do. That's key to building our credibility with clients and customers.
You also have to have the right culture. A culture of people holding themselves accountable and committing to that.
Give me a sense of culture and how you're using a set of core values to help make that culture come alive.
Through total quality management, now called lean manufacturing. It is how you put a team together to solve a problem completely, instead of just solving it for that day. My focus has been on how we solve the problem by solving the process and not necessarily pointing the blame at someone but rather considering if there was a process that we didn't have in place. The focus on the process led us to acknowledge our core values.
Developing those core values was key to helping everyone to recognize what it was about our culture that was successful.
How were your core values created, and what are some examples of what you're doing to make sure it's not just a plaque on the wall?
Customer-Focused: Customers are the center of the company
People: Treating people as you would want to be treated
Teamwork and communication: Making sure that everybody is going in the same direction and that the ship is sailing in the same direction
Are Core Values Coachable?
I have found that if someone is not as productive as you'd like them to be, but they're living the core values and they care, those folks are typically coachable, either in that job or maybe in a different role. But I found whether someone's productive or not if they're not living your core values, it's rarely a coachable situation. They're not bad people. They're just a bad fit for your organization.
The Benefits of an Advisory Board
Added discipline
Outside point of view
Additional knowledge from the industry
Adds different skillset
** This is not a board of directors but a sounding board that can ask tough questions without an agenda: Why are you doing this? What, why does that look like that? Why is that different from what it was last year? What are you focusing on?
YPO -Young President's Organization
What's unique about the Forum for YPO is that it's a very confidential group of people you can talk to about anything, and they have no agenda. These are a group of business leaders who have no stake in your business. They're not going to benefit from anything they tell you. So they can be brutally honest, and that Is very valuable. Some of them have been through the same things that you are going through, and It's so important to have that type of support system.
What else are you doing to help the next Generation of Leaders in your company?
It's essential to develop their skill set to become leaders. One of the mistakes that family businesses make is promoting too fast. Long-term experience is key.
This allows us to develop and make our own mistakes. Making mistakes is a huge part of the business, and you have to try a lot of different things.
What other advice would you give CEOs who are looking to build a Better Leadership Team, looking to build a great company?
Build a team around what your skillsets aren't, recognizing what you're good at and what you're not. Then, make sure you can build a team that likes to work together and that also brings to the table things that you are lacking or require, which ultimately helps to avoid blind spots and is crucial for the development of a great leadership team.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman: I am excited to have Lisa Hirsch here with us today. She's a third generation CEO of a family packaging business. And no, that doesn't mean she packages families. It's a packaging business that was started by a family CEO of a packaging, business called Accurate box. She joined her father in the business after graduating from Smith College with a liberal arts degree. She never expected to sit, and stay. When she started, she thought she'd learn and then move on to a real job. But 40 years later, she's still there. Lisa says everything she learned on the job working with consultants and meeting great leaders along the way, including her dad.
Mike Goldman: Lisa, welcome to the show.
Lisa Hirsh: Thank you. It's nice to be.
Mike Goldman: Thanks for doing this. Hey, so, you know, I know we had a pre-call. I was so impressed by some of the work that, you have done over the years at Accurate Box, and our focus always on this show is, through the lens of, how to create a great leadership team and how that leadership team, drives a great company.
But before we get into the leadership team and some of the interesting, things you've done as a leader. Tell us a little bit more about Accurate Box. Tell us a little bit more about the company.
Lisa Hirsh: So was started by my grandfather in 1944, he was a salesman in the packaging industry and decided to try and strike out on his own. He bought some used equipment in 1944 and started simple, you know, plain boxes at first and then two color boxes, with two or three pieces of equipment.
My dad was 20 years old and in college when, his uncle called him and said, you need to come home. Your dad needs you in the business. They were, they were struggling. and my dad, 20, left college, and went to help his dad in the business and then, of course, stayed. The same way, the next generation, for me, stayed.
I think it was rougher for him than it was for me. his dad died when he was 34, so he was running the business in the time he was, in his early thirties, and so didn't have the mentorship that I had with him. my dad is 93 and, still a wonderful, you know, sounding board for many things that I talk to him about, although he doesn't come to the office anymore, much, sometimes he's here, but most of the time he is not, but he, grew the business and we made, large boxes at that time. You know, a lot was manufactured in the United States in the 1960s and seventies. All the toy business was here in the United States and being manufactured in the United States.
So we made a lot of toy boxes and before everything moved overseas, we had a lot of different kinds of folding cartons that we used to make, for the toy industry and other industries as well, in the houseware and hardware industry. And then, in the 1980s, my father got interested in a product that was just being invented called litho lamination. And it was, marrying a printed sheet to corrugated, and having full graphics on a corrugated box. And that was brand new at the time. And, he bought it with me. I had started at that point, but he bought, one of the first machines that could actually do that; both make corrugated and then combine corrugated.
So he was, instrumental in getting into that part of the business. And, from there, we grew. So now today, and for me 40 years later, we are a fully, a corrugated company. We no longer make folding cartons, and we concentrate on what's called this litho laminate packaging.
And it's the packaging that you see in the club stores that are packed pallets high of large boxes of cereal or large boxes of crackers or cookies. and those are the boxes that we produce.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. And it's so refreshing to hear. You said it started in 1944. It is not common, and you probably know as well as I do, it's not common I've worked with a number of family businesses, and I'll tell you, I've never, I work with clients that aren't families, and they say, oh, our culture is, we're like a family. And normally, I say, please don't do that, I've worked with family businesses, and it's not what you think. So it's a pleasure to hear a family business that's actually thriving and do you, is there still, other than yourself, is there still a lot of family left working in the business?
Lisa Hirsh: So, when I started, it was just, actually, my brother was in it for a short period of time, but then decided to go on and get into the journalism field. And he had a very successful career in journalism but didn't wanna be in the box business. but my husband, after we married, joined us. He was in sales, and my father kind of went after him and said, if you can sell, he was selling radio at the time. My father said, if you can sell air, you can sell empty boxes, so please come and join us. And so he took over sales after some time, and now he's been running sales and marketing for also almost 40 years.
So, he joined me about a year and a half after I joined, so it's unusual in that we have the husband and wife team that runs, I run operations, and he runs sales and marketing. And now we have our daughter, who has been in the business for almost 10 years, and she works with my husband in sales and marketing. it's been nice. That part has been great. you know, I think that I was told hundreds of times with me being the third generation, oh, you're the generation to screw it up.
Mike Goldman: Wonder Thunder Blunder, you've heard
Lisa Hirsh: Right, right. And, you know, three generations and it's over. And, so I think, you know, that was my mantra the whole time. I was, you know, in the business, and then running the business was just, don't let me screw this up. I just don't wanna screw this up.
Mike Goldman: So, it, seems that you haven't, so that's Amazing that you,
Lisa Hirsh: My goodness, I haven't so far.
Mike Goldman: you know, tell me, since you know, the lens of this show is really focused on leadership teams and how those leadership teams, impact creating either a great company or the opposite.
I'd like to start off when I talk to CEOs. tell me, and you don't have to name names, but give us a sense of the structure of your leadership team, how many folks report directly to you, and what are some of those functions or titles you have on whatever you would consider to be your leadership team?
Lisa Hirsh: Yeah, I think, you know, we have, maybe, five or six of us on the actual, what I would call the leadership team, but there's two or three younger, people who are definitely making an impact, and we'll be moving into that leadership team.
We've developed some nice talent, at the younger level, and that's exciting for me because my daughter is only in her early thirties. So this is her future leadership team. As they develop, they become more empowered to make decisions.
But we, you know, I have our COO and our CFO, and my husband, of course, who's running sales and marketing, and, the operations guy who kind of runs the plant on a daily basis.
And that, you know, that's our team that we kinda, and my daughter, of course, who's joined us now in that leadership role as she starts to take over more sales and marketing. So we have like five of us that meet pretty frequently and, talk about things. We also, one of the things that I developed recently, in the last five years, is an advisory, board, an outside advisory board, which we, report to twice a year. we brought on, three or four people. were in our industry or are familiar with our industry or in small businesses in general and have them as kind of an outside sounding board, and we report. And I like the discipline of putting together our business plan and then reporting it to them on a yearly basis. but I, you know, I think we started off so long ago with the idea of changing how leadership works. My father, had a smaller company, and so he, you know, he wore all the hats and made all the decisions, and he didn't have a lot of consulting. He had a banker he consulted with and an accountant he consulted with. And otherwise, he really was kind of on his own, and I think it was probably lonely for him. and one of the benefits that I had when I became president is, and my father encouraged this, getting involved with the Young President's Organization, which for me was really terrific because I had an outside sounding board of people who were also running businesses at the time. We're now like, I think 23 years with almost the same group of my forum mates from the Y P O, and it's been, it's really been life-changing for me to have that sounding.
Mike Goldman: I wanna come back; I wanna come back to two things. One, I wanna come back to the advisory board because I think that's a really interesting, you know, normally public companies, they certainly have their board, which is sometimes functional, very often dysfunctional. and for a private company to have an advisory board is so smart and adds such discipline. So I wanna come back to that in a couple of minutes, and I want to come back to the YPO as well. But if we look, the bigger picture, the last time we talked, you had mentioned, that the company, over 10 years, has grown about three x.
Right.
So just so everyone knows, this is not, oh, it's the third generation. She hasn't blundered yet, but she will. They're hanging on. This is a company that's gone three x over 10 years. Give us a sense, and the advisory board and Y P O may be a part of this, but what do you attribute that to, that success over that period of time? what do you attribute that to?
I think it's multiple things. I mean, certainly, you know, being in the right product line at the right time plays a part. I think for us executing, n our vision, executing on what we wanna accomplish. You know, we saw it in this last three years with Covid and the shortages of supply chain and all the supply chain issues and you know, one of the things that I think is so interesting; like I have, Kelloggs coming to visit us tonight and tomorrow and, we saw them a month ago. I went out to visit Kellogg's, and they're one of our larger customers, and he said to me, I don't understand how you guys were able to do what you did during Covid and your bigger, much bigger competitors Couldn't. I think that comes back to executing on what we say we're gonna do. and so if we say this is what we can deliver, we're gonna deliver it. And if we say that our, you know, our quality is going to be 99.98%, then that's what it's going to be. And so we execute on what we say we're gonna do. That's key to me on building our credibility and building our ability to go out to the customers and say, yeah, you know, we can take care of you in a way that you're not used to being taken care of.
Mike Goldman: And to me, that sounds like, yes, of course, that's disciplined execution, but you've also gotta have the right culture to do that. A culture of people holding themselves accountable, and committing to that. Tell me a little bit about the culture, and I know, the core values are very important to you. Give me a sense of culture and how you're using a set of core values to help, make that culture come alive.
Lisa Hirsh: So I think, you know, for me, right from the beginning when I started working with my dad, I recognized that there was an old way of managing, do it because I said so management style, which was, you know, my father's style more or less, although he never, he was much more collaborative than many of his generation. But he still made all the final decisions building a, team, problem solving, and putting together teams that could cross-solve problems. And, doing more of what was called at that total quality management and, now it's called lean manufacturing. At that point, it was how do you put a team together to solve a problem completely instead of just solving it that day, but solving the process. and so right from the beginning, my, I guess my focus was how do we solve the problem by solving the process and not necessarily pointing at someone and saying, that was his fault. it wasn't really his fault or her fault, it was the process that we don't have in place. And so I think that focus on the process was what led us down the road of really looking at what are our core values. And then once, you know, that was one of my concerns as we grew and got bigger and doubled in size, you know, and then tripled in size, was how do we keep our core values? How do we make sure the culture stays with us as we grow? So developing those core values was key to helping everyone to recognize what it was about our culture that was successful. I think
Mike Goldman: that's great, and I wanna dive deeper on that because. I spent, the first half of my career as management consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and they all had the plaque with their core values in the lobby because some smart consultant told them they needed core values and they wanted to, later on, they wanted to put it on their website.
But if you asked any of their leaders what their core values were, they'd have to run down to the lobby and take a look at what they were, you know, and I, for many years, I thought it was corporate BS., and now I know different, and I work with a lot of my clients on core values, so I know how important it can be if you do it right. So I'd love to get a sense of how your core values were created. Was it you in a corner office just coming up with them and then, you know, two tablets on the mountain. Here are core values, everybody. How did you create them? And then kind of the second part of my question's gonna be, what are some examples of what you're doing to make sure it's not just a plaque on the wall?
Lisa Hirsh: I think, you know, for us, by the time we really sat down, and that was our leadership team with some outside consultants sat down. We already knew what our core values were. They're not really that difficult, and they're also very simple. it's, you know, treating people as you would wanna be treated, which is key to me that, you know, there's no yelling on the plant floor. There's no calling someone out on the plant floor. If you have something to say to someone and you need to discipline them, then you bring them into an office, and you have a conversation, no humiliation of any kind. Those kinds of things, to me, are key, are the absolute key to the way we operate. And so if that's one of the core values, then when you hire a supervisor who can't seem to do that, then you know, right away, they're not gonna last because that's not our core values. and so we've had situations where we hire people and then realize, you know, we really need to make a change there because that's, it's damaging our culture out there by not having that core value. And then teamwork is the other core value. And as simple as it sounds, it is one of the keys to our success, the communication and the teamwork, of making sure that everybody is going in the same direction, and that the ship is sailing in the same direction. And, so, the communication is there to know that, yeah, everybody makes mistakes as long as we correct them and keep moving forward. So, you know, they're pretty simple core values, but it's very obvious when someone doesn't fit into those core values, how fast that, that shows
Mike Goldman: and how many core values do you have in
Lisa Hirsh: I think there's actually three or four. Well, we put the customer as one of our core values because we basically start with the fact that if we don't take care of our customers, someone else will. And if we don't take care of our customers, we're not gonna be here. So, you know, customer-focused is the first one, and then people, and teamwork is the second. And. and then dignity. Treating people with dignity and respect is part it's our people, it's our customers, and it's, the culture that we wanna have as a team.
So it's pretty simple.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. Excellent. And are there any other things you do if I, so, you use them from a hiring standpoint? You use them as you're evaluating talent. You said if there's someone that doesn't fit, they're not living the core values; you know that are there other times those core values Come into play? If I was, maybe the way I ask it is, if I was a team member in accurate Box, other than when I'm hired, there's probably some onboarding, and it says, here's the core values. When might I hear about those core values?
Lisa Hirsh: We talk a lot about them. I mean, safety is a big part of our culture. We're trying every day to be safe. So that's part of the people portion of it. So I think, you know, for us, it really shows up in, management training and, you know, I think of one example where I brought, someone on board to be the plant manager, and he talked the talk. He, you know, I would; we need everybody to go in the same direction. We need everybody to work together. He talked all the right skills and said all the right things and did absolutely the opposite, and was screaming at people on the plant floor, and you're stupid, and why can't you get this and why can't you figure it out? And so within, a year, we knew that we had a situation and, my, I guess error is always trying to change that person or see, you know, because he talked the talk that maybe he can walk the walk and you realize, no, they really can't, and so you, you need to make that change.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. It's so important.
One of the interesting things that I have found is you certainly like to believe, as a human being; you'd like to believe that everyone's coachable. What I have found the reality is that if someone is not as productive as you'd like them to be, those folks if they're living the core values, and they care, but they're not as productive. Those folks are typically coachable either in that job, or maybe you've gotta change their role.
But what I found whether someone's productive or not, if they're not living your core values, it's very rarely a coachable situation because you are, you know, and what I tell my clients is, if someone's not living your core values, it doesn't mean they're bad. people. You've got someone who's just not about teamwork. They like sitting in the corner getting their work done, leave me alone; then I go home. Doesn't mean they're bad people. They may be a genius. They're not bad people. They're just a bad fit for your organization, and I don't know if you found the same things, but I find coaching on productivity, not all the time, but you could sometimes make that work. Coaching on core values, that's successful a lot more, more rarely than we'd like to think.
Lisa Hirsh: Yeah.
And I do think that does ring true. I'm always, because our, I really feel like our core values are pretty simple. And so I'm always kind of surprised when there's not a fit. And, you know, because you know what our core values were, we talked about it in the interviews, we talked about it, and so, why is, why was it such a mismatch? You know, it doesn't happen often, but when it does, I'm always still surprised by it. And, and disappointed. But, you know, in the end, you have to really stick to that. And I think, it does help to clarify things very quickly. if somebody doesn't fit that, in the end, it's just not gonna work
Mike Goldman: Let's go back. You mentioned earlier something that I think is really important and could be such an important learning for other leaders, and other business owners out there. You talked about the support system and the fact that you talked about using your dad as an example, but I think all of us that are leaders, if we're not careful, leadership could be really lonely, it's, it is a lonely place. You mentioned two things that I wanna dive into; the first one is your advisory board; you said meets twice a year you get together with that advisory board and it's really added some discipline. How did you, and I think you said they were industry folks, but give us a sense, cuz I think other people may want to create an advisory board, or maybe they have, but it's not working as well as yours is working.
How did you find the folks for your advisory board? And how many people do you have on the board? did you have to find, is it kind of a cross-functional kind of group, or are they all pretty similar? Give us a sense of the board and how you filled it.
Lisa Hirsh: So I, I mean, I thought about it for many years and actually waited for a few of them to retire. Cause they were, you know, one, in particular, was in our industry and could not have been on my advisory board, until he retired, and another as well was too busy to do it until that point. I thought about it for a long time.
One of my concerns as my daughter was getting involved, and it was obvious, I have three children, but she was the only one really interested in being in the business. and she's a lot like my husband and that she, you know, thrives on sales and marketing. And, you know, for me, that's my most uncomfortable area.
I'm more; I'm much more comfortable in the operations of the business. but they both thrive on that sales call and going after the sales. So, for me, it was, you know, my dad is older; he is not involved. I wanted my daughter to have a different, group of support that might help her besides, you know, she is also now getting involved with YPO. With the YPO NextGen group, which is great. She has her own little group of people whose families grew up in YPO, who know YPO culture and so she can talk to them. But I want, for me, I wanted to have some outside, opinions.
so it's not so centrally focused. You know, for our leadership team, we come to work every day. We're, you know, we're not remote. We're here, on the factory floor. We have one plant. And so unless you get some outside consultants constantly coming in and saying, how come you're doing that and questioning why you're doing that, it gets to be, too, I don't. I don't, how would you put it?
Mike Goldman: the word is slipping my mind.
Lisa Hirsh: right.
It was like,
Mike Goldman: You're in a vacuum, but that's not the word you're looking
Lisa Hirsh: Yeah. it's just every day, we're making decisions among ourselves, and there's no outside opinion about it. And I felt like it would be, and I was really careful to say, this is an advisory board. This is not a board of directors. you know, in the end, we make the decisions, but it's really nice to present to a sounding board and have them ask those questions.
Why are you doing this? What, why does that look like that? Why is that different from what it was last year? What are you focusing on?
You know, when we were having some, frankly, too many safety, Accidents on the plant floor. that focus of, you guys have to get this under control. You know this is a real catastrophic accident waiting to happen,
Mike Goldman: tell me a little bit about the, again, the types of folks.
did you, was it all just, Hey, let's get a bunch of really smart people from our industry or similar industries? Was it, Hey, we should have a finance person on there. We should have a manufacturing person on there. We should have a marketing person. what did you think about as you were building that group?
Lisa Hirsh: I, it was a little bit of that. So one of the advisor advisory board members is a gentleman that we've known for 25 years that, we met. he's a little older than me, but not much. And, we met him; he ran, factories for one of the major integrated, paper companies. So he ran about 14 factories, in the south.
He's from Georgia. and I've known him for many years. We met when we started working together on a project for their company. It was Warehouser at the time. Warehouser was bought out by a bigger company called International Paper. And he ran a bunch of plants for them. So he's very aware of the plant floor. He is very aware of the culture of a plant floor and what, you know, he's very focused on safety and building teams and problem-solving. and it was a slightly different industry than what we're in, but not that different. So he was someone that I wanted because he has such a knowledge of the paper industry in general, and then the factory floor as well.
And then another, advisor was a dear friend who is an accountant who grew his own business to be very large. It was bought out by one of the major accounting firms, and he sold his very large accounting company to an even larger accounting company and then retired. And so his expertise is in really smaller businesses because that's what his clientele were businesses our size, or even smaller. And, so he, you know, he can look at the numbers in an instant and say, why does this say that? And why does, you know? And that I thought was important. And then the third advisor that I, picked was a guy who is a representative of the folding carton industry, who we've also known.
He helped us to do. He was a consultant, and he still is. And, He helped us to do our first business plan years ago, 25 years ago when we did a yearly business plan. He helped us to do a three and five-year window, you know, the BHAG and, you know, big hairy, audacious goal that we were setting. and when we started doing those business plans, we hit our goals every single year with him.
So, he was key because he knows our business well, but he also knows the industry in general. And then my sister, who kind of campaigned to be on the advisory board, she said, you know, you don't have any family members. I think you should have a family member. And I said, okay. She's in, she's in charity development, and she does; she runs a very big foundation for the Jewish Federation in New Jersey.
And so, she has a different skill set but has brought a lot to the table and for her, it's about helping to support her niece and support the family. And she's still a 10% owner of Accurate Box, so, that was also good for her to be on our advisory board. so those are kind of our outside advisory members.
And then our key, our core group of, managers. Our key managers are all at the meeting, so we're about, 12 or 14 people. I also asked my daughter, she's a product manager. She does not work in the business, our older daughter, to be in it because she has outside eyes, but also to support her sister.
She's not interested in working in the family business, but she is, gonna have that as part of her legacy. So, She also joins us when she can. There's been a few times she hasn't been able, but she joins us.
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love that. And you said it's twice-a-year meetings and is it a couple of hours? Half a day, full day? How long do you meet with them?
Lisa Hirsh: Aday and a half. And we have dinner together the night of, we, we start at eight-thirty on, go to four or five one day, and then we have dinner, and then we have a half a day the next day. And then we do an executive session as well, where we dismiss all of our, all of our hired guns are our hired people, and we talk among the family and the advisors, just the family, which is also helpful. And I think good for my daughter to have that as another avenue to talk about issues.
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it.
I wanna go back to something you talked about earlier, which is YPO. as well from a support standpoint, and I've had some involvement with Y P O and EO, so I'm very familiar with that, but I think that support's so important. Tell me a little bit about your experience. YPO and specifically how it's helped you as a leader.
Lisa Hirsh: So, I think, you know, my father, we were, we were a part of this independent carton group. that, is a bunch of folding carton companies, and they still are in existence, and we're still members of this group. and my father had become very friendly with a few of the other business owners of, family-run, box businesses, and one of them in Chicago, Crane Carton. The son was a member of this YPO. And he and I, spoke a lot in the beginning because he was just taking over his father's business, and I was kind of taking over leadership in my father's business. So we would talk, we're in similar businesses, and he said, Lisa, you have to join in this YPO, I had never heard of it. And my father said, oh yeah, you know, I wish I had joined that when I was your age. You know, it would be a good thing you should pursue. And so, at 38 when I became president of this company, I joined the New Jersey chapter. And, it was, to me, a great organization because there were a lot of different, businesses, and some of them were family-run, and some were people who ran big businesses.
But the best part of YPO is this group called the Forum. Which is a group of about, we have now we have, 10 members, but a group of about, six, seven to 10, 11 members that meet once a month. And there are strict protocols on how you speak with each other and talk to each other. We used to meet in person. Now everything's on Zoom since, COVID, but, I started with that group 22, 23 years ago, and there were all different kinds of businesses in it. What's unique about the Forum for YPO is it's a very confidential group of people you can talk to about anything, and you don't have to worry, about anything getting out of that group.
It's very, it's, you know, confidentiality is very, strict, but also they have no agenda. You know the one thing you have as a leader is when you talk to your accountant, there's an agenda. When you talk to your banker, there's an agenda. When you talk to your CFO, he has his own agenda. I mean, you could say that he's there to support your business, but even in the way, they think there's an agenda behind that.
Whereas with YPO, you have people who have no stake in your business.
There's no. , you know, they're not gonna benefit by anything they tell you. So they can be brutally honest, and tell you, no, that makes no sense. Or, yes, keep going in this direction, and you can have a sounding board that's very valuable because some of them have been through the same things that you are going, so when it came to personnel issues, insurance issues, or things that were going on in my business. I got some very sound advice from my Y P O group, which really helped me, to run the business.
Mike Goldman: That's great. I know, and in fact, the person who introduced us Is part of a CEO group that I'm a part of, and quick little aside story about how they do. That honesty is so important. I remember it was a couple of years ago, and I get bored pretty easily, and every five years, I need to do something big and different. and New, the podcast is the newest one for me.
I remember it was a few years ago when I was trying to figure out what was next. The business was going well, but I was trying to figure out what was next, and I decided that maybe I would go back to school and get my master's and maybe even a Ph.D. in organizational psychology.
Lisa Hirsh: Wow.
Mike Goldman: And I brought that to the CEO group, and Darren, who's the one who I.
Lisa Hirsh: Yep.
Mike Goldman: introduced us, said, you know, he's asking me these great questions. And his final question was, he goes, he says, wait a minute. So you are gonna spend all that money and all that time going back to school to get your master's because you're bored, and I went, huh? When you say it, it sounds really dumb. and I didn't do it. So thank you to Darren for that, and thank you to Dave for introducing us. But it is, it's so important to, to have that support system. And I guess the last thing I want to ask you about, speaking of support systems is so many businesses struggle with succession.
Lisa Hirsh: Right.
Mike Goldman: And as you know, it's not always assumed that the next generation is gonna run the business. And in your case, you know, you are, but you mentioned a few things you're doing to,to get your daughter ready, for that next piece.
And the advisory board is part of it. what else that we haven't talked about or are you doing to help with that next Generation?
Lisa Hirsh: You know, I worry a lot. she's got really young kids, and she's young, and so I worry about her taking on too much too quickly.
One of the things that I had the privilege of is working with my dad for a very long time. I was, you know, working with him for 15 years before I became the president. And I think that's really important. I think one of the mistakes that family businesses make, you know, three years a kid can work for their father and then, they're suddenly president, you know, and I think it takes a much longer time to develop their skillset to be able to become a leader.
Plus, it's really important for everybody in the company to see them develop so that they have trust in that person; that person can make the decisions that need to be made.
Long process. It's not something that happens in a year or two years, or three years. And I always worry when I do see families, where suddenly, you know, the son or daughter is running the business, and they've literally been there for three years. And, I feel like, you know, some of the mistakes that they could make could be really catastrophic as opposed to when you make mistakes, you know. But the final say is still somebody who has. Longer term experience. So, dad was great about allowing us to develop and make our own mistakes. I think making mistakes is a huge part of business. and you gotta try a lot of different things. And he used to say, as long as you keep making more right decisions than wrong decisions, you probably will stay in business.
Lisa Hirsh: And
I always thought that was pretty simple, but true. You know? you gotta make a lot of decisions. Some of them are gonna be wrong. And you gotta move forward and make more right decisions.
Mike Goldman: Excellent.
Last question for you before we wrap up. What other advice would you
give CEOs who are looking to build a better leadership team, looking to build a great company? Anything else we haven't talked about?
I listen to a lot of podcasts myself. I, you know, I'm always struck by the phrase that, you build a team around what your skillsets aren't. you know, you have to recognize what you're good at and what you're not good at and make sure you can build a team around the things that you aren't good at because not everybody's good at everything.
And so, having that team that likes to work together but also brings to the table things that, that you can't are, is really crucial, I think, too, to a good, you know, functioning team. So
Mike Goldman: great advice cuz we have a tendency to wanna hire people just like us. And then you wind up, you know, you. With a whole lot of people, you'd love to go out and have a beer with, but you're also gonna have some blind spots that are pretty dangerous. So, so I think that's great. Great advice. Thank you so much, Lisa, for doing this. where should people go if they wanna find out more about your company, about Accurate Box, where should they go?
so we have a website, accuratebox.com. and that tells you pretty much everything you wanna know, including the history and, and everything that we produce. And I think we're on Instagram and LinkedIn and all of those other connections that, my daughter works on that I don't. So, we're all; we're on all of those as well under AccurateBox.com
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. So go find her. Thank you again so much. A lot of great learnings for leaders
Lisa Hirsh: nice
Mike Goldman: and teams. Same here. Thanks.
Lisa Hirsh: You take care.
Mike Goldman: Thank you.
Lisa Hirsh: Bye-bye.