313: How to Break Ceilings in America with Ian Leaman

https://youtu.be/ivElg53993A Ian Leaman, Summit OS® Guide, former investment banker, senior finance executive, and investor, is driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs build, scale, and successfully exit their businesses by applying the hard-won lessons he’s learned from more than 100 exit journeys. We learn about Ian’s path from growing up around small family businesses in the UK, to training with Deloitte, advising entrepreneurs through hundreds of M&A processes, co-founding a SPAC, and ultimately relocating to the United States to embrace a more optimistic and opportunity-driven business culture. Ian explains his Can-Do Framework, a mindset blueprint inspired by the contrast between European “can’t-do” thinking and America’s bold, frontier-style optimism. He also breaks down how Summit OS® empowers owners to achieve “private equity–level growth without giving up private equity,” and why the 45-Day Execution Momentum plan creates faster change than a typical 100-day private equity program. Ian closes with a gripping case study illustrating how leadership blind spots and misaligned incentives can devastate exit outcomes. — How to Break Ceilings in America with Ian Leaman Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here, the Founder of the Summit OS® Group and host of the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today here is Ian Leaman, who is a Summit OS® Guide, a former investment banker with over 100 exits under his belt. He’s also a senior finance executive and an investor. So Ian, welcome to the show. Hi, Steve. It’s great to see you, and thank you for having me on. Absolutely. And we go way back, and one of your international board positions I think I’m sharing with you, but I’m not going to go into that because it’s long in the past. What I like to explore is what you’re doing now, why you’re doing it, and some things about why you moved to the States. I mean, both of us moved to the States since we were on this particular board for different reasons. And I’d like to explore your framework, which is very intriguing. So let’s start with your ‘Why’. So what is your personal ‘Why’, and how are you manifesting it in your business life? What I’m doing right now, Steve actually squares the circle. It brings us back together as working colleagues. You mentioned that we worked previously on an international board. Today we’re working together as Summit OS Guides. How did I get here, and how does this relate to my ‘Why’? Well, my business journey started really in my youth, where my parents had small businesses. And so the conversations over the evening dinner table were all about the trials and tribulations, the successes, failures, challenges, et cetera, of running a small business. So that got into my blood very early. That translated through a career in finance, where I qualified originally as an accountant with Deloitte in the UK, and then progressed into the transaction side of finance, helping entrepreneurs grow and exit their businesses. As you said, having come through more than a hundred successful exits, but many more which didn’t cross that finish line. I really became interested in the differences between those who succeeded and those who didn't, what they were doing in their businesses, which made them attractive prospects from an M&A point of view and made their processes successful ones.Share on X And eventually, I came to reunite with you when you’d started your Summit OS® Initiative and understand that we can bring our respective experience, whether it’s as a CEO of a previously exited business or as an advisor to many which have done that, we can bring that experience to there. And how that translates into my personal ‘Why’ is I get huge satisfaction out of being involved in and assisting the process of entrepreneurs building and exiting their business. And I find huge satisfaction in a successful outcome there. So my personal ‘Why’ is to work with entrepreneurs who are building their businesses to help them do so better, faster, more successfully, and, if relevant — which isn’t in all cases — take them across that exit finish line to a conclusion of that particular part of their business journey. Yeah. I totally relate to this, and I often felt guilty even when we sold the company, and I felt like we could have gotten more for it if the company was improved, and there were some low-hanging fruits that we could have helped fix in a short order. And then we can do it now, and that’s very fulfilling. That’s right. I mean, there are many war stories, if you like, from that phase of my working life that illustrate very well the point you just made. For example, on the positive side, I can recall a conversation with an entrepreneur. I met him for the first time at his place of work. It was a distributor of electronic components, so they bought in bulk, stocked, broke into small pieces, and sold and ...