Shore University: Building A Scalable Learning Platform

Anderson Williams: Welcome to Bigger. Stronger. Faster. the podcast exploring how Shore Capital Partners brings billion-dollar resources to the lower middle market space. In this episode, we expand our discussion from the foundations of talent development at Shore Capital, which we covered in the previous episode. Here we focus on the emergence of Shore University Shore Capital’s learning and talent development platform.

We discuss the range of programs offered and the breadth of audiences and levels who participate. We also cover the kinds of on-demand learning resources that come with being a part of the Shore Capital portfolio. In addition to Michael Burcham, the Chief of Strategy, Research, and Talent Development, I’m joined by Ben Gilbert and Jackson Sprayberry, who round out the Talent Development team with me.

Welcome, Michael Burcham, Ben Gilbert, and Jackson Sprayberry.

Welcome guys.

Michael Burcham: Thank you, Anderson. Good to be here with you again.

Anderson Williams: Michael in the last episode we talked about Shore’s initial vision and strategy around talent development. Will you talk a little bit about how Shore University has evolved over the last four years from that initial vision?

Michael Burcham: Absolutely. Anderson, when we began, it was a conversation. Justin Ishbia and I were having just past the worst of the pandemic, and we recognized this immense need to have a more formal way we invested in the talent and the personal and professional development of our people. And we began just really talking about how we wanted to offer some courses and educational programming for individuals.

And as we began that discussion, we realized we probably needed more formal tools and infrastructure, a team. And what started as a kernal of an idea started growing into what today is known as Shore University. I think to quote Jim Collins, something we both recognize is that the only thing harder than starting something good is keeping it good, and that we knew we had started something really special at Shore, but in order for it.

To remain great, we had to keep the flywheel turning, and the biggest part of that flywheel was this need to continuously invest in our people, both inside Shore and inside our portfolio companies.

Anderson Williams: Just to add a little bit of context, a lot of that work started from the executive and traditional leadership levels down with the creation of the Leadership Academy.

And then as we developed leaders through the leadership academy, people said, this was fantastic. Do you have anything for my managers? And then we started working with our managers and they said if we got to them before we got to leaders, they said, do you have anything you can do for my leaders? And then ultimately it got down to frontline team members.

And so even as it’s evolved since I’ve been here for four years, we’ve now moved to really investing in all levels of leadership, both within the portfolio and within Shore. And that includes those traditional kind of leadership academy structured programs, as well as self-driven learning through our learning management system, coaching and mentoring, custom professional development, which we’ll talk about more next episode.

So I just wanted to give a little bit of context for how that’s also evolved programmatically. As we think about this, in the last four years, we’ve worked with over 40 of our portfolio companies and across four seemingly very different verticals. And so as we think about why that works, it works because of something that Shore speaks about often, which is pattern recognition. It’s not so much the vertical, but the stage of the company that draws the portfolio together.

Michael, is that ring true to you?

Michael Burcham: It does. Our very first program was a leadership academy for our orthodontic company, and it was a combination of orthodontists who had partnered their practice with Shore and their new associate doctors, but the collective group one pattern that stood out as they were quite good at their clinical craft, and really very few of them understood the financial business infrastructure within which that could create value.

The second leadership academy that we took on the road to our veterinary business amplified that very same issue. Expert clinicians really struggling to understand business processes. And as we identified that particular pattern and how to address it, we saw a second pattern emerge, and that is the work that gets translated to the practice administrator or those who work directly underneath the founder expert who served in some kind of operating role that whose job was to implement the dreams and passions and strategies of the founder, but really struggled to know what that meant in context of a larger organization like Shore.

As we began to grow those companies, a different pattern emerged that there were now needing to put people into management roles who had never been in management roles. The company had no formal management roles. It was trial and error. So we developed all kinds of curriculum for frontline managers, first time managers, growing managers, multi-site managers. So I think our work has been evolutionary, Anderson, in our teaching and training and development of people.

They led us to what we needed to do next, and we could see common patterns across different categories of healthcare and now across different industry types that Shore invests in. The common theme is the patterns are really similar in business services and in food and beverage and industrials, just like they were where we began in healthcare. And we’ve really taken advantage of understanding those and built curriculum around it.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, and I think a prime example of that is emerging as we record this. We’ve had probably three, four calls in the last week from different companies in different verticals who just totally coincidentally not by any prompt of our own called in. Are looking for something for their frontline team members that are often individual contributors and often are not the highest paid people on the team, they are not the most educated people on the teams, and yet they are often the people interfacing with the customer.

And so it’s just one of those things. The more we hear from our portfolio company, the more we recognize those patterns. And one of the things that comes to us quite frequently is managing performance. That’s one of the real challenges. If you’ve never been in that role to know how to have difficult conversations. How to provide effective feedback. How to hold people accountable. How to support people. How to build a team. How to build a team culture. These are not things that just happen intuitively for most people, but they are things that can be invested in and developed.

And most of the time, because we’re working with adults, they have experiences, good or bad, that they can draw on to frame how they want to do it. They just haven’t necessarily had the opportunity to step back and reflect on their own experiences. We talk about maximizing their learning from their past and preparing them for their learning in the future.

It’s not like they’re facing a blank canvas. We ask them, what’s the best manager you ever had and what did he or she do, and what’s the worst manager you ever had, and what did he or she do? And let’s start from there, right?

Ben Gilbert: Yeah. And they always have examples.

Anderson Williams: They always have examples. Right? Exactly. So one of the things that’s really foundational to what we do is that this isn’t just about showing up at a training or having a half day or an hour here or a virtual session there.

We’re trying to build a system of resources for people to learn and grow and develop. And core to that system is our learning management system. Ben, and you manage that. Will you just describe what we put in the learning management system, how we think about it as a support for this work.

Ben Gilbert: Absolutely. So if you think of Shore University as this network for our professional development programming, the LMS is essentially the backbone or the supporting structure that allows us to deliver that programming to our portfolio companies.

And so this is a really our centralized location for any of our learning content, whether it’s slide decks or videos or podcasts. Anything that helps kind of centralize that into one place that keeps it out of your email or your inbox, something that’s very easily accessible has been one of our earliest investments for a reason, and it has allowed us to scale our impact and our programming.

Anderson Williams: And make sure that everything’s there for reference. People can learn at their own speed, at their own pace and their own time, and I think it’s just that part of Shore’s commitment that this is always there, that it’s not a transaction, and you have access to our learning management system for the, as long as you’re a part of Shore.

Jackson, I want to come back to something you’re helping us innovate on. Can you talk about the scenarios and the applications as you are building them and thinking about them? So if we’ve mentioned some key principles and we can add time management and we can add leading through others, and we can add delegation, we can add the full list of things that somebody’s written an article about. Somebody’s written a book about. You could go find and theoretically learn about, but you’re helping us build scenarios and case studies that really anchor those concepts.

So will you just talk a little bit about how you think about building those scenarios and case studies and why those are becoming such a critical part of what we do?

Jackson Sprayberry: Yeah, I think when you talk about these leadership capacities or competencies that we’re looking to develop and build in the folks that we support across our portfolio. The reality is is that most people can sense into these concepts and these theories and these leadership frameworks. The ability though, to identify where inside of the business or inside of a team, these should be applied or maybe aren’t as strong as they could be that’s the place where a lot of folks need help. So I think there’s a twofold approach that at least I take when I think about these case studies, these scenarios in our training.

One, it’s at the individual level, so making sure that our managers, our leaders, our frontline employees, understand really how to position themselves inside of a concept. So when I think about customer service, for instance, or our client services for a frontline employee, it’s how do you manage that communication? How do you make sure that you’re able to regulate in these really hard conversations that you might be having with customers?

From a manager perspective, it’s how do you train and support those individuals to do that better? And then from a leader perspective, how do you manage through a layer to be really the model or the exemplar for your managers to then train the frontline employees on? So when I think about the individual level, it’s how do you create these authentic, either positional specific or industry specific situations and scenarios that they can really start to apply, um, and practice those skills.

The second thing that I think about is even with some of our companies that maybe have strong training in place. The reality is, is that the growth and scale that they’re about to experience or have experienced, they haven’t necessarily gotten out in front of just what that scale looks like and been able to identify where the break will happen in a system or in a process or in a training.

And so I really view the work that we do around scenario and case study development to help them maybe see where something has already broken or really get out in front of something that we anticipate will break as a result of the scale.

Anderson Williams: Jackson, is there a particular example of a scenario or pattern that you’re working on now that would give the listener a little bit more insight as to what we’re talking about?

Jackson Sprayberry: Yeah, I appreciate that question. We’re doing a custom build right now with one of our portfolio companies, and the content is around client interaction and stronger communication skills.

It’s one thing for us to go in and deliver content around a Shannon Weaver model of communication or some other type of communication framework, and then give them an example where it’s like, you know, imagine that you’re in a scenario with a customer.

There’s a lot of thought work that needs to go into that that prevents them from really getting into the application portion. So if we could work to build a very hyper-specific situation to place that employee in, they can sense that they know I’ve lived that experience before. And so giving that to them really lowers the barrier of entry for them to be able to apply some of these communication frameworks, uh, in their work.

Anderson Williams: So, so it’s like writing a scenario that’s not just generally around communication and customer service, it’s writing a scenario that’s specifically to their particular business and product type and customer type and so forth.

Jackson Sprayberry: Yeah. So it’s not just, Hey, imagine this client is on the phone with you and is frustrated and angry and coming at you.

Instead, it’s imagine that someone needs access to their retirement funds immediately, and due to regulations, you simply can’t.

Anderson Williams: Yeah.

Jackson Sprayberry: It’s that type of work.

Anderson Williams: Well, and I love that approach because we’ve talked about it some. It’s also a way of sort of fabricating reps so that when they feel themselves in that pattern, they’ve lived it in a safer environment, a less risky environment through doing actual scenario work.

Jackson Sprayberry: You can kind of find your way and be clunky in the scenarios in the practice with us, so that it’s more seamless when it gets in front of the customer.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, that was one of the things I loved listening to you facilitate a particular feedback scenario conversation and just letting people know like, it’s gonna be awkward this time.

The goal is that next time when it’s actually happening in your business, it’s a little less awkward because you’ve wrestled through it being awkward this time.

Jackson Sprayberry: Exactly.

Anderson Williams: Yeah.

Ben Gilbert: Yeah. It’s one thing to say, we’re gonna have a difficult conversation about this, but then it’s like, no, I want you to have this conversation for the next three minutes with your partner, and then you actually have to use your words.

Jackson Sprayberry: And you’re getting some feedback in those moments too, which you may not get in the actual moment if you haven’t been able to practice before.

Anderson Williams: You’ve hit on a really important point, and I know it’s one that Ben, from our earliest days working together, we’ve really hammered home is the high level leadership stuff people can get the concept. People can read the article, people can read the book, can say, yeah, I need to build trust, but that’s a whole lot harder to do in context and to be fully aware of those things and how they get applied.

And so just as I was listening to you talk, it reminded me that we always, in everything that we do through Shore University, talk about the refrain. What can you start tomorrow? What can you do tomorrow with what you heard today?

That this is not about learning leadership philosophy, it’s about applying it to your real world. And I think one of the real values that comes back to the scenarios. Is that we know microcap, we work for Shore. We know the investment thesis. We know Shore’s investment strategy. We know what a five year hold period looks like. We know what the growth trajectory looks like.

Maybe not for your specific company, but for the pattern. And so that enables us to design content around things that sound like run of the mill leadership concepts, but are super specific and applied to the reality of our space.

Ben Gilbert: Absolutely, and the best thing about that too is that it grows and feeds itself, right?

So the more we do this with each of our companies, even as they’re experiencing new patterns and new trends, that’s things that feed into our own learning that we can then feed to new companies that come along inside of this ecosystem.

Anderson Williams: And Ben, you help Michael manage a number of other programs that are a part of the umbrella of Shore University. Will you just describe a couple of those, just so the listener can give some context for the spectrum of things.

We’ve mentioned Leadership Academy, we’ve mentioned Management Foundations training. We’ve mentioned some frontline team member trainings, the self-driven work in the learning management system and so forth.

Will you just describe a couple of the other programs that are really more targeted?

Ben Gilbert: Yeah, absolutely Anderson. So one of the first ones that comes to mind is our CXO Fellows program. Essentially, this is where we recruit straight out of business school. Graduates that are, that are coming out, that are looking for kind of the fast track to the C-suite. So these are usually young, hungry professionals that are looking to make an impact early in their career. And so the goal of this program is to place them as one of the first five hires within a new portfolio company and allow them to get that early experience in it inside of a microcap business.

We also have our search accelerator, so this is for also folks coming outta business school, but really for folks that are really looking for more of an entrepreneurial path. And being more of a hands-on operator. And so this is an investment that we’ve made recently at Shore and it’s super exciting. We have actually done a couple of in-person development sessions specifically for these search fund entrepreneurs, and it’s allowed us to open up our curriculum and think more about the early leadership kinds of lessons and also the entrepreneurial types of topics that are super relevant to our founders in our microcap businesses.

We also have what I like to call our pathway programs, and so these are things like our military to operations and our JD to BD programs. And essentially it’s kind of non-traditional pathways for folks that wouldn’t have an opportunity to get into private equity normally, but it’s carving out some interesting talent pools for us so that we can help strengthen the overall portfolio in unique and different ways.

Anderson Williams: I think the thing to recognize for anyone listening is that when you’re growing a portfolio of companies, you have to have the people to lead those companies. And so whether you’ve got 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 companies, now think about the C-Suites. Think about the board members. Think about the VP levels.

We’ve talked about the managers. Think about the number of people we have to develop to sustain growth across that many companies, and that’s really at the root of what we’re focused on and why we exist.

Ben Gilbert: One more program, Anderson to mention, is our Peak Performer Program. This is one that we always like to say it’s reserved for the top 1% of leaders in our portfolio company.

Essentially, it’s. A program that each of our CEOs at our portfolio companies can nominate up to three people. And the program is case study driven. It’s led by a Harvard business professor, and it’s really an elevated way to do executive learning in a cohort learning model. Similar to how we’ve done with our Leadership Academies, but it’s always one of those, it makes people feel really, really special, especially at the upper level of an organization.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t allow us to miss that one ’cause I think that is a prime example of how investing in your people is part of a reward and recognition process. And for most of our companies in the microcap space, the capacity to do that kind of reward and recognition just hasn’t been there by the nature and size and scope and scale of the company.

Michael Burcham: I think what’s important for us to keep in mind is all these programs we just discussed form a virtual bench for Shore and our companies, because as they grow, we really don’t know month to month, quarter to quarter, how soon we’re gonna need someone else to step into a role but when we need them, we need them now.

So think of it as preparation for the operation so that as we are growing a

company, we’re now not trying to go scan the market and find 20 applicants for 20 companies, but instead we have a built-in bench that just keeps growing every year. And often as we exit companies, these individuals will cycle back into Shores next company to further strengthen, take their lessons learned from the previous Shore company they were with, bring them to the next Shore company, and we just keep creating better and better companies over time. That’s what excites me most about these programs.

Anderson Williams: Well, and just to layer onto that, Michael, I think it’s having the talent in the seat, but it’s also adding the talent that understands Shore and understands microcap, and understands how this works. So they are not only talented executives, they understand the context deeper and deeper with each of those reps as well.

Michael Burcham: Absolutely. That’s a winning combination when you owe both.

Anderson Williams: So Jackson, some of your background, some of the work you’ve done before, you’ve done media development as part of your curriculum building and training and professional development as well. Will you talk a little bit about the role and the importance of a multimedia approach to professional development?

Jackson Sprayberry: Yeah, I think sometimes folks think about media in ways of like explaining what they have learned or kind of showcasing the work that they do, similar to what we’re doing right now.

However, when you think about adult facilitation and the ways that different folks learn, creating some variety in the media, kind of vehicle that you use to help them learn matters a lot. You know, what might make sense for a strategic thinking session for more senior leaders in an organization might require a traditional 90-minute session with a facilitator and that type of feedback in person work that’s needed.

Conversely, when you think about maybe managers or frontline employees who are working to develop strategic thinking skills. The appropriate format might be a 10-minute video lesson. It might be that it’s a five to 10-minute audio message via podcast, something like that. And so really it’s about dosing the content in a way that is most meaningful and drives the most value for the learner.

Michael Burcham: I would add to Jackson’s eloquent description of that, that individuals learn by finding something of interest, almost a hook that drives them in.

And for many people a hook is a video or a podcast, and once they find a topic that really matters to them, they want to learn more about, then they are much more predisposed to ingest learning and all kinds of media. But people sometimes much rather go on YouTube or watch videos. Well, let’s give them video to start.

Or they like listening to a podcast when they do their morning exercise, so let’s give them a podcast from leadership to get ’em started. So often it’s just finding the hook that drops into the pattern of how they’re already ingesting media in their everyday life, and then giving them the opportunity to follow that through with all other kinds of media, particularly in self-directed learning.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, I think that underscores something that’s really important about our collective approach is that our goal is to meet our companies, our leadership teams, our managers, our frontline team members where they are. This isn’t that Shore University has set up something like you might’ve experienced at your own university that says here’s our course offerings you get to choose, but this is what we offer.

We’re constantly evolving to make sure we’re meeting people where they are, both in terms of dose, in terms of content, in terms of media, because our ultimate investment here is helping people learn because we’re all trying to build the best biggest, strongest, fastest businesses we can. And so this is definitely a different approach than, Hey, we’re offering a lesson on X, sign up for it.

Now we have some things that look like that, but that’s just one of the many offerings. And in our next episode, we’ll talk more about some of the custom professional development that we’re doing in partnership directly with our portfolios.

Anderson Williams: So just to wrap up this particular episode, I want to ask you all, as you think about the evolution of Shore University, our growing team, our deepening partnerships with our portfolio companies, and Ben, maybe I’ll start with you.

What excites you most about what’s on the horizon over the next year or so with Shore University?

Ben Gilbert: I think one of the things that I get most excited about is looking at how our work can flip back towards internal Shore and thinking in terms of our own employees development, whether that’s the SRT or some of our LIDs, but really just helping make sure that as they go into support our companies, that they’re able to do that at a super high level.

Those are some opportunities that we’ve had early on in the last couple of years, and I would love to just make that more of a thing in the future.

Anderson Williams: What about you, Jackson, what’s exciting to you on the horizon?

Jackson Sprayberry: I think what’s most exciting to me is this idea of both standardization and customization, even though that maybe seems disparate when I think about standardization.

You know, you think something like, uh, Leadership Academy, that we’ve really gotten down to what feels like a science, like watching you in action. It’s like, yeah, this is the right level of content in the right setting for the right audience. But as we’ve mentioned already, what does that look like for more senior leaders and what does that look like for frontline employees?

And so really standardizing a pathway, taking what we’ve learned through pattern recognition and what we know to be true for some of our companies, given the stage of business they’re in. And really taking that and putting it into a standardized approach.

There’s also the customization side where it really enriches the learner experience. So, you know, working to make sure that we’re not just teaching at a fundamental or theoretical level, but really giving them applicable situations that they can start to apply that learning. And I’m excited to go through the curriculum that we have and really start to build those types of scenarios in.

Anderson Williams: Michael, what about you?

Michael Burcham: So, I agree with Ben and Jackson, but what excites me is slightly different. What excites me now that we have finished four solid years in starting our fifth is watching the individuals who started one role in a company now promoted to a second, and now promotable to a third role.

Seeing individuals professional progression and growth that I know Shore University had a massive impact in their ability to make that transition is deeply gratifying to me that individual achievement is worth every penny of ROI and I look forward to the hundreds of more people that we get to experience and see make that transition as they participate in developing themselves, developing their companies, and developing Shore.

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 and recorded in the Andrew Malone Podcast Studio. 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 Michael Burcham, Jackson Sprayberry and Ben Gilbert.

 

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.