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One of our companies recently hired a part-time HR Director to support their HR needs. She’s sharp, experienced, thoughtful, and currently leads HR for four other businesses as well. She’s seen a lot of different teams and a lot of different ways to lead. Recently, she sat in on her first quarterly meeting with us. We discussed some tough topics like who may not be a culture fit, who needs to perform better, where we lack certain skills, and what we expect to happen in the next 90 days. Afterward, she pulled me aside and said, “I’ve never seen anything like that. The openness, the honesty, the directness. People weren’t just going through the motions. They cared. They were honest. They were bought in. I want all my other companies to work like this.” It wasn’t about the content of the meeting. It was about the culture in the room—the trust, the vulnerability, the clarity. That’s the part you can’t fake. And it’s exactly what we’re trying to build across every company we own. It reminded me: the systems we use, the language we share, the bar we hold—they’re not just tools. They’re a way of creating places where people want to engage. Where people feel safe enough to speak up and strong enough to be held accountable. That’s not common. But it’s what we’re after. And when someone from the outside sees it and says, “I want more of that,” we know it’s working.
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