Jon Morris 11:44
So I’m a huge believer in doing a few things incredibly well. And when you feel like you have the right amount of infrastructure, then start expanding to your additional services. I’ll give you an example. When Steve Jobs came back as CEO of Apple, I believe one of the first things he did is start limiting his products down to like six products, and just be amazing at those six products. And so I would much rather be an inch wide and a mile deep. Now I’ll just give you an example, I’ll use the paid search industry. Paid search, as far as I know, is around a $65 billion industry growing at about 20% a year. So if you can be amazing at just paid search, you have wind at your back, you know, you don’t have to offer everything. So, you know, you have to determine as you start widening your services, your innovation gets harder and harder and harder because you have to innovate in all those services, or you’re just going to have something neglected. Yeah.
John Corcoran 12:52
Now, the company existed through 16 and continues to exist 16 1718 years, as I said, Now, at some point, you decided that it was time for me to step aside as CEO and take a board role, which is what you did. It was interesting timing, though talking about the timing of when you announced this.
Jon Morris 13:14
So I announced on March 2 of 2020, that I was stepping down as CEO at that moment in time COVID was there was a lot of chatter about it. But you know, there was nothing that in my mind would have been like 10 days later, which is exactly what happened on March 12. We went to work from home. And so I now is on March 2 that March 31 was my last day as CEO of Rise. And I turned it over to Larry who’s the current CEO of Ries and wished him luck as I gave him a full pandemic to lead the company.
John Corcoran 13:51
And he’s like, thanks a lot, dude.
Jon Morris 13:54
You know what, I will tell you this. He was absolutely the right person for the job. He did such an amazing job of building calm and proving amazing leadership to everybody in that time period.
John Corcoran 14:08
Was there ever a moment where someone came to you or you thought maybe I should put a pause on this step back into the CEO role for a little while until this blows over?
Jon Morris 14:17
You know, I know because I knew that Larry was up for the job. And I you know, we we had a good plan in place. He executed the plan. I was there for guidance when he needed it. But he was already the president of rise. And so it wasn’t like a massive like turnover transition. You know, at that moment.
John Corcoran 14:38
Yeah, yeah. Now at this point, you’ve started a massive agency, you’ve successfully replaced yourself and transitioned your way out of it. Naturally, you think Well, let’s start another company. So where did that come about? What and Why are you not just sitting drinking a Mai Tai on a beach somewhere?
Jon Morris 14:55
So that way, if you talk to Larry, who’s the current CEO of rise, I’ll tell you that his biggest brush stration as it relates to me, is that enough on the beach somewhere drinking on my site that I started a business right away. And I think there’s a couple things. April 1, for my first time ever, I am not our first time after starting rise, I’m not running rise, I don’t have at our, you know, responsibilities per week at April 1 of 2020, or April 1 2020. Okay, one of my favorite things is April Fool’s Day. So maybe this was an April Fool’s Day joke on me. But you know, the airlines are shut down. The golf courses aren’t going anywhere, I’m washing my furniture, or my, my grocery groceries. Because, you know, you didn’t know if we can eat our groceries or not. Yeah. And so, I have three young kids at the time, they were six, eight and 10. And so, you know, I needed to do something with my time. So I think that COVID helped accelerate when I started my next venture. When I was at rise, we had a business coach who provided a lot of guidance for us. And we would meet with him quarterly. And he saw all of our financials. And he kept on saying that, you know, he hasn’t seen financials like this anywhere else. He’s like, it’s a business within itself. And what does that mean? That he just thought that a lot of companies could use these insights into the business. So so
John Corcoran 16:28
so the what became Ramsay Innovations? It was a business in itself is like another business you’re incubating?
Jon Morris 16:34
Exactly. Got it? And, and so that just stuck with me. You know. And so when I was trying to think about what I wanted to do next, I love connecting with other agency owners, and I understand the complexities of agency businesses, professional services really well. And I thought it’d be really fun to help other agencies emulate the success I had it rise by giving them the financial insights to make better decisions.
John Corcoran 17:03
Yeah. And so there’s definitely a shift in who you’re working with, then write for us because you now you’re working with you, what were your peers, right, rather than existing with the clientele? Or competitors? Yeah, peers, a competitor? What was that like switch shifting? Because that can be a major change is working with a different type of clientele? Yeah, well, that
Jon Morris 17:22
was, you know, I didn’t go into the reasons why I left Rise, but one of the reasons why I left was my favorite business day of the year is the first business day of the year, which I call a game day. And I always have a really solid plan for how I’m going to have a successful year, you know, going into that first business day. And as I was preparing for 2020, I thought I had a great plan. The only problem was it was the same plan as 2019. And I just didn’t feel that I was growing and getting the challenges that I was looking for. And so I decided that it was time to look at something new. So you know, I’m dealing with a much lower average order value, the idea is to have a much higher volume of customers. We’re building a SaaS products, or we’re building technology that will be licensed, and I had technology at rise, but it wasn’t a SaaS product. It wasn’t a standalone. It’s not
John Corcoran 18:25
a human capital labor involved.
Jon Morris 18:27
Exactly. And so. So to me, I’m excited about the new challenges. And to be honest, these are people I know, you know, maybe not know that personally, but I’ve lived their life, you know, anyone from an agency of one person to 250, I’ve dealt with all their issues, all their complexity. And so it’s fun to kind of pass it on and help them.
John Corcoran 18:48
Yeah, you may have just answered the next question I was going to ask, but I’ll ask it. Anyways, I’m kind of fascinated with entrepreneurs who start a company that in many ways is the reaction to the limitations or the challenges of their previous company, and structurally doesn’t have those. Were there any other ways, looking back on it now that you structured or made deliberate decisions with Ramsay that were overcoming the challenges that you had to deal with for 16 years at the helm of Rise Interactive?
Jon Morris 19:19
I would say no, but what I would say is I’ve taken the learnings from Rise, you know, and are applying those learnings to things I would have done different faster. So you know, so for example, when I was at Rise, by the time I left, I had amazing leaders in every single role within the company. And people that I could completely let go of my work across them to get their job done so that I could go do my job. And but it took me a long time to make those investments to get those people in place with this entity. You know, we are working in building that infrastructure. I would say that much faster. rate, you know, were having really solid head of client success, I have an amazing product development team, by head of sales is phenomenal. My chief operating officer, which most of the groups of the company report into is doing an incredible job. So I think I’ve built a really solid leadership that’s going to allow us to scale and grow the business up.
John Corcoran 20:20
Yeah. But in some ways, though, it can be scary starting that new thing, all of a sudden, you turn around, like, you might have asked for your system to do something, and there’s no one there.
Jon Morris 20:28
I can tell you today, I scanned a bunch of mail that, you know, I had to send to different groups that I absolutely would have had an executive assistant doing that at Riot, so yeah, so
John Corcoran 20:41
Yeah, gotta empty the trash now, right?
Jon Morris 20:44
There’s, there’s not a job I won’t do. But uh, but you know, that is a difference. You know, when you go to a startup, you’re, you’re gonna have to roll up your sleeves and be comfortable doing any and every job.
John Corcoran 20:55
Yeah. And in many ways, it is replaced with the newness, the energy, it, you getting that from it?
Jon Morris 21:02
Yep. You know, okay. I’m having fun. I like the stage of a business. Yeah.
John Corcoran 21:07
Yeah, I think it’s really cool when people realize the stage of the business that they’re most passionate about, and deliberately replace themselves. So I’ve interviewed people who talk about that, you know, they get to whatever the ceiling is, they get to some point. And for many, that would be an amazing blessing. But they’re like, No, you know, I’m hitting 50 million. I don’t like this stage anymore. I want to go back to one.
Jon Morris 21:29
Yep. And I don’t know, I like I’d like to every stage but you know, there’s something fun about the speed and the nimbleness of a startup and, you know, building infrastructure, you know, as opposed to maintaining infrastructure.
John Corcoran 21:43
Yeah, I remember an entrepreneur telling me, I love the stage of picking out the stationery, and the business cards and the logo and all that kind of stuff. That’s really cool. Well, Jon, it’s been a lot of fun. I know, we’re almost out of time, we’ll wrap it up with the question that I always like asking, which is, I’m a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to peers, contemporaries, however, you ought to find that people who have helped you along the way, who would you want to just call out publicly and thank them for helping you along your journey.
Jon Morris 22:10
So I’m gonna do two shout outs here. The first one is to Todd Smart up, Todd was the business coach that we hire for teaching us the EOS methodology to how I run our business. And it was he was the person who talked about our finances and how impressive it was. And if it wasn’t for him saying that, and sticking in my mind, I don’t know if Ramsay would exist today. The second one is my mentor Jack Kraft. And Jack is the former vice chairman and chief operating officer of Leo Burnett. And I’ve known him since I was 22 years old. And he just left Leo Burnett, and 22 years old, I have net traffic. He met with me for an hour a week, for at least a year and a half without ever charging me. And, you know, I want to ask them why. And he’s like, you know, I was on all these boards, some private, some public. And I didn’t always feel that, you know, my voice was getting heard, you know, from some of these CEOs who thought they might know how to do everything is like, you would come back every single week. And whatever we worked on, you made progress on it. So it just felt good to see the momentum and the progress. But I talked to Jack almost, you know, every day today, you know, like, he’s just been an amazing impact on my life.
John Corcoran 23:36
But a great story. Thanks for sharing that. Jon, where can people go to learn more about you and Ramsay Innovations?
Jon Morris 23:41
So you can go to ramsayinnovations.com. You can email me at [email protected]. And if you are an agency owner and you want tips on how to make your agency better, connect her follow me on LinkedIn.
John Corcoran 23:58
Awesome. Jon, thanks so much.
Jon Morris 24:00
Thank you.
Outro 24:01
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.