YouSaid · the spoken record

Tracy Britt Cool

lines on the record: 121
first: 2025-10-14
most recent: 2025-10-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I mean, success for me is really leaving things better off than I found them. And that is both in terms of the companies I work with, the people I engage with, my family, building my own life and building the life around me of the people around me to be something great that they care about, they're special that are impactful and that are sort of creating value for them and creating value for those around them.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there's a right answer or a wrong answer to that. I think you need leaders who are authentic and genuine. And if they are people who have views and share those views or want to share those views, and that's key to who they are and the business, I think that I can understand why they do that in the benefit of that. That being said, I think we're in a very divisive time right now. And I think sometimes people have a lot of views and they share those views and they assume their customers have the same views. And sometimes I think there's businesses where that may not be the best approach for the companies. By and large, my approach is I think that CEOs should be really thoughtful before they have views on topics publicly, especially if those are topics that their customers or their employees may have differing views. But if it's a founder or someone who has strong views, I don't think they necessarily have to cover those up either. So I think it's a little bit of a”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms, especially right now, of what they are expected to have a view on, what they're expected to manage, what the consequences of having those views and everything, I think is particularly challenging for any CEO, but especially those in the public view.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, of course. I mean, I think there's business that, like, I think there's different things that I'd say in terms of admiring. So I think if you look at Danaher, that business, Mitchell's Steve Rails, and ultimately the CEOs that have followed is remarkable. Both the performance of the business, the success of the business, how they've done it, their system incredibly. I have a lot of respect for them. If you look at Nick Howley of TransDime, like the performance, he's no longer CEO, but the performance during his CEO tenure was significant. I mean, remarkable performance. And he had his own business system in terms of how he was doing that. I think there's other people I have tremendous respect from what they've accomplished. I mean, if you look at Bezos Build at Amazon, I mean, that's incredibly remarkable in terms of the world and the impact that it's had. I learn a lot from other people who have come before us in terms of how they manage and what they do. I think the pressure is there's a lot for an ECEO, especially public CEOs.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I don't think you necessarily need investors to do that if you have the right management team and you have confidence. I think the challenge is if you don't have the right management team, are you getting visibility into that and how to navigate it? I would probably err our side of not having quarterly earnings because of all the negative aspects, but I think you've got to solve that other issue in terms of are you managing the business close enough?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quarterly reporting, especially in the public markets, is a net negative for companies, for investors. I think it's intended to provide transparency, but it ends up doing short-term thinking. What am I going to do to drive the results this quarter? And you see it all the time, right? I'm going to try to move sales into this quarter. I'll get a discount if you buy my product this quarter. I need to hit my number, or I'm going to invest in something that I can do this quarter or next quarter to achieve it. it fundamentally doesn't support what's best for the company and what's best for the investor. That being said, I think that you want someone, presumably I think the CEO can do it, managing the business more frequently than every six months or every year. Like if you're only going to look at your financials or your performance once a year or once every six months, I think you're going to miss opportunities to make adjustments where needed in the business.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Being said, I've never been a macro investor. I think it's hard to predict the macro, it's hard to invest based on that. And so I'd much rather focus on the fundamentals of find high quality businesses at reasonable valuations that have good dynamics and aspects of the business. And then you can absorb more dynamics like inflation or tariffs or things like that that are going to inevitably probably happen at some time in some space.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think that a few things. One is when we think about businesses, we try to find businesses that we think, and this goes back to like has the moat, is that typically they're a little bit more insulated from inflation because they usually can pass it on to their customers. If you have a better business that's higher quality, that has a moat, you usually can pass on inflation. And so it's less it's an issue, but it's less of an issue for the”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, there's, I think, too many to tell. I mean, I think we've talked a lot about long term. One thing that Warren always said to the CEOs is like think about this business as if it's your family's only asset and you can't sell it for 50 years. Make decisions with that in mind. And that to me embodies like true long-term thinking, how to think about your business. And that's one that I sort of come back to. Now, if maybe you not be thinking about every business for 50 years, but I think that's something I think a lot about. But I feel I learn through those types of examples and those types of stories like most of us do, I think. And so trying to remember those is really valuable. Or, you know, Warren's comment on your reputation and if you lose money, I'll be understanding if you lose a reputation. I try to reputation. I'll be ruthless. We think about that. Or if the newspaper tests like if this were on the front page and the newspaper by a fair critical reporter that your family would read, how would you feel about it? Things like that.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we love to keep a talent bench, both people we've interviewed, but also people that we just know and we think are impressive that if we have this type of role or in this geography that we can reach out to, we think it's a great way to cultivate talent and see opportunities. But we definitely like we'll get to know people and then a year or two, three years later there might be some role that's unfit that we end up working on. I always say life is long. People come back in and out of your life in different ways. And when you meet really great people, you try to keep them close because really great people just not only from a cultural or integrity perspective, but also from a competency and a capability perspective are rare to find that combination. So when you find them, you know, how do you keep them close?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'd think like I by and large think people want to do the right thing and want to do good and are trustworthy, but I think people have blind spots about themselves. They, as you're talking, they want to impress you, it's a bit like dating where you're not always covering up a little bit and putting your best foot forward. And we want to disarm people and try to get them to be as honest as possible. Because what we find sometimes is you can be a great person and really talented, but just not be the right fit for what we need in this role. And so try to get people to be as upfront and honest. And then ideally, screen out those that perhaps aren't, but our view is we want to help everyone find the right role and the right fit for them.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also just by writing down Sally's name, I know who your manager was now versus oftentimes you don't know who their manager was, so you couldn't even get to it if you wanted. And so getting people to be more, not necessarily more honest, but more direct and more forthright with what they're sharing is a way to also get some of that out. And then ideally you do verify it and have those conversations and see if what they said and what Sally said match up. It's really helpful.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it can be really helpful to see what people share. We also, in our interview process, based off of who also, when you go through the top grading exercise, you know, I go through each role you've had, what your scope was, what you did, what were your outcomes. But then I ask who your manager was. I write that person's name down. And so if you say your manager is Sally Smith, okay, okay, what years of Sally your manager? write him down and what was Sally's role in case she was the manager of this and then when I call Sally what is she going to say about you know your biggest strengths and what is she going to say about your biggest moment errors and just shifting that from when from if like if I call versus when I call yeah people shift what they say they're more auto yeah”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get at sort of motivators and drivers, and some of those things come through like integrity or others. And then we get at it through reference checks, you know, both ones they provide, but also ones that they don't provide. Our view is like the hiring process is fundamentally you're trying to learn as much as you can about a person and how they'll behave in a role. You don't actually know until they get into the role, but you can improve your odds of success by being disciplined on some of those dynamics.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We think of it as in one of those cultural competencies, and how do you assess it? So, one, you can try to get to situational questions. Tell me about a time you struggled with something you made a mistake. Tell me about a time, you did the wrong thing, whatever it may be, and see what people share. We use it through our behavioral assessment. So it's actual way to.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Driver meeting and training that we did once a year, which was what are the business drivers? Let's go through an income statement and let's understand what are all the components of an income statement. And we just did it for everybody just because it's also something that people assume they should know. And so if they don't, they oftentimes feel embarrassed or they don't feel like they should ask. And so we would go through it and explain what everything is because ultimately. Finance is just a vocabulary in a language that people have explained to can understand. But if you've never been explained to it, it can be tough to understand and you just need someone to walk you through it.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New market, we think of hiring with the same level of complexity. Like it's not a CapEx decision, but if you thought of it as a CapEx decision, if you're going to hire someone for 100 grand a year and you think you discount the value of that, it's a million dollar investment that you're making in that person. You can fire them, but you probably won't. They'll say at the organization. So do you have that same level of discipline and rigor in your decision making on all those types of topics? And CEOs who are more equipped at like fundamentally understanding capital allocation usually can make better decisions in their businesses. Now, a lot of entrepreneurs, they do that instinctively. They've had to do it and they figure it out. But sometimes just taking a step back and helping a leader, making sure a leader understands it. When I started a CEO, we took all of our leaders through a business.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it doesn't mean they can't learn it, but if you equip them with those skills, they're going to be better. If you think about a CEO, for example, oftentimes CEOs are great operators. They usually have come from sales or marketing or operations. They seldom come from finance, and it's not usually the career trajectory. And so have they actually learned those aspects and where along the way did they learn them? And do they understand? And oftentimes in a business, you're making really important operational decisions, but you're also making really important capital allocation decisions. And you can really ruin a good business with poor capital allocation decisions. And we think of big ones, acquisitions being the biggest, where we destroy value often by acquiring a business that isn't a very good business or paying the valuation for it. But there's capital allocation decisions every day in a business. Should we invest in this factory? Should we open this distribution center? Should we move into this?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, you can see a lot in a balance sheet. I mean, you can see how much inventory do you have. You can see what capital is required. You can see are your accounts receivables like are they going up? Are they going down? Like there's a lot of insights that you can see from all three financial statements. And then if you start to understand the business drivers of the business, you can understand this as well. And I think what typically you'll see is that most leaders don't always, I think we assume they understand all of that in a business. And I think some do and understand it fundamentally really well. Some understand it tactically well. Sometimes people understand it in their like in practice, but not necessarily the theoretical how it actually works. And when I think it's really valuable though for your leaders and not to assume your leaders understand all of that because some people are more financially literate or financially like have more financial acumen than others.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Management team to come up and say all the things that we've done and how smart we are and how talented we are and how you should be applauding us. And the board is doing that on the other side versus that was going to create the most value versus, hey, these are the three biggest issues we're facing right now. This is what we're struggling with. This is what we need your help with. And this is what we want your perspective and insights on. Now that's a completely different dynamic. You need to have psychological safety. You need to have trust. You need the management team to be open to receive the feedback. You need to have board members who are capable of providing valuable feedback. You need all of those dynamics to come together.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like in a bad way Yeah, I mean, many of them. And some of them good boards, but I remember there was a board me we were in and we were like assessing the packaging of the products. And in detail, which I think that's very important, the packaging of the product is very important. I don't know if the board is the best people to be assessing and commenting on the packaging of business. Like I think that's what the management team and the marketer should be doing. And I think those are conversations you have to be like thought about or you're on in a slide deck and it's slide 112 and you're being read the slides and like really like this is how we're going to use this time. Like I don't think any slide deck should be 112 for a board. I mean, usually there's 20 slides maybe that get to the heart of the most important topics you're facing at a time. And then most of the time should be discussion and not presentation. It's not a dog and pony show. But I think it's set up typically for.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes and no. I mean, absolutely like there's a public dynamic where you have a fiduciary responsibility, there's an enhanced governance and some other dynamics that are important and regulated in terms of where you spend your time. I think there's some that's less valuable earnings and quarterly reports. I think that's probably less valuable to value creation in the business. I think on the private side, people set up their boards in different ways. Sometimes it's set up more as governance and oversight and shareholder management. Other times it's set up more as advisory or insights. And I think different private boards do it differently. I think our view is that you probably want somewhere in the middle where you're having some governance, but at Cambrook, we provide most of that, but really it's the valuable insights perspective, relationships, introductions that are going to create the most value that we want our boards focused on.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And drive conversation around them and then provide insights or value to the management team. I think most management teams would come out of most board meetings and say that wasn't a good use of my time because I was just updating and telling them what I did for the last quarter or whatever it may be versus more forward thinking, this is what I'm struggling with. And most boards don't have the context in the business enough to be able to add value. So how do you make sure the board is knowledgeable enough about the business and can also ask the right questions even if they're not going to be as deep as the CEO or the management team? And I think it's a fine line of getting that right balance. But those are some of the things that I've learned as I've thought about different boards and how we think about our boards.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I'd say each board I've been on, I've learned different things, both in terms of what to do, sometimes what not to do. And some of them have been unique where it was the CEO reporting to me directly and not a formal board. And other times a more formal public board or private board. And what I find is for the most part, most boards don't add a lot of value to the businesses. And I think they oftentimes go too deep on areas that are less critical and not enough time on the areas that are most critical that they can provide the most value. So within each business, really understanding what are the three to five big levers that are going to shift and create the most value in this business? And how do you spend your time talking about those levers versus all the smaller things that might be urgent? They might be happening. They may be important, but they're not going to fundamentally change the direction of the business. And so I think the best boards figure out what those are, focus on them.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where we are playing, there's a lot of opportunity. And so there's just more there than we see or possible in insurance or some of these other sectors. And some of them are just more complex, the risk are higher. If you misprice an insurance, you don't understand your costs for a long time, but it can be.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think there's a lot of industries we don't invest in, healthcare, financials, insurance, real estate. Typically, we want to focus on what's our circle of competence. Where do we think we have value and expertise that's going to enhance what we're doing? So we focus on services, industrials, consumer, both by our background, but also where we think there's attractive opportunities. Insurance is a, you can be a really good business, but a lot of capital has come into it in the last 15 years. And so it probably is a more competitive business. There's more risk in it than there has been. And there probably will be times where it's a really good business, but there'll be times where there's more capital, so the pricing gets less disciplined, and then it ends up being less attractive of a business. There are other dynamics that are attractive, like if we ever found the perfect insurance business, it's not saying we wouldn't do it, but it's probably not a focus for us for those dynamics. And the fact that”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relationship base. And then the one person focusing on cultural, I'm like, and your interview comes in, you're not worried about what their past role is or how competent they are in terms of the outcomes. You're worried about their culture. And so having the interview set up from that. And then we augment those interviews with behavioral assessments. So we usually do behavioral and cognitive, which we think helps us better understand some of the cultural and aptitude aspects. We usually do a case study, which is a deep dive on real topics that we're facing. And then we usually do a top grading interview, which is an in-depth, usually 90 minute to three hour interview where we're going through every password that they've done, what were the outcomes or the scope of responsibility, how did they perform, what would their manager say about them, those types of conversations. So it's a pretty in-depth process been followed based on sort of who, but it significantly improves your outcome of success.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then 20 minutes later, then you've had that same conversation, or that candidates had that same conversation with three or four different people versus saying, you know, your job is to interview on outcomes. And all you're going to focus on are these outcomes, your job is to focus on functional competencies. All you're going to focus on is, are they analytical if that's what you're looking for?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unsatisfied in their job. Oftentimes your best performers are happy in their job and they're doing really well. And so you need to go find those people. And so having the hiring manager or the recruiter reaching out and taking ownership of that to actually find the people that you want to have and not just waiting for people to come to you. So really diving into more specifics of how do you go source. And then the third is around selection and how do you improve your selection process. And this is what most people think about when they think about hiring is the selection part. Our selection has a few different sort of components to it. So the first is actually like the hiring manager. We do a screen with a recruiter, but then the hiring manager going deep on different areas that we think are important in the role from the scorecard. So the outcomes, the competencies in that first interview, and then actually having an interview panel that have different people interviewing different areas. So what you find, most interviews start with like, tell me a little bit about yourself and tell me about your background.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then shares that with their counterparts. And so other stakeholders, and then you beat it up. And what you'll find is people will say, well, you think we need to grow through national accounts? I think we should be going to mom and pops. And that conversation had early in the process where you can get alignment, have disagreement, but then move forward on what you want to go do. Once you have that scorecard, then the hiring manager or the recruiter or the search firm know like, okay, this is what the person needs to go do. I can find people who can go do this. I can build a JD that's going to market to people who want to go do this and I can more clearly articulate it. And then that scorecard then flows through the interview process and now I have to know how to interview. So that's the first component is the scorecard. The second component is the sourcing. And so most sourcing and most companies is very reactive. You know, I post the job and people apply. And my view is like oftentimes the people applying aren't always the people you want. They're the people usually who don't have a job or”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Through Amazon, you probably need a different sales leader than if you're going to sell direct or if you're going to sell through large customers. And so are you clearly articulating what you need? So that mission is important. The second is the outcomes. So three to five really clear outcomes of what you're going to go drive. So that might be roll within revenue, but it also might be we need to grow margin or we need to, you know, improve from four national accounts to 10, whatever the outcomes are that you need for that role as clear and crisp as possible. And then the third are competencies and what are the competencies needed for this role. We think of competencies on two levels. One is functional. So there's some roles where you need a certain type of competency. So you might need analytical or you might need a relationship based, whatever it is for that role. And then there's company to big cultural competencies. We need everyone to be humble or open to feedback or aggressive, whatever it is for your business. And so the scorecard is putting those things together. The hiring manager puts those together.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time and money in doing that. So, how do you actually start up front and get aligned and get clarity on what you need in the role? And so a good scorecard in our mind has three sort of critical components. The first is what's the mission of the role? And so really clearly, what are you going to go drive in this role? And how do you make it specific? You want it time bound. You want as measurable as possible. So if you're hiring a VP of sales, you might say we want to double revenue over three years by improving our industrial account management and adding large industrial contracts. And we want to build a team of farmers or we want to build a team of hunters, whatever it may be. And by doing that, what do you want to achieve? What's the time you want to achieve it? In some level of the how. And the how is important because sales leaders are very different. Like if you're going to sell.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we very much subscribe to the who process, so by GH Smart, there's a book called Who, WHO. It is, I think, single-handedly the best simple book on hiring. And if you read that book, almost everyone will become a better hiring manager. And there's a few components to it. And we've augmented and added our own. But the first is building a really in-depth scorecard for the role. Most people completely skip this process. They just jump to, I'm going to write a JD. I'm going to post the role. I'm going to start interviewing, and then I'll sort of figure it out. And people usually do that because you're in pain. You're trying to fill a role and you don't have someone in the role or you don't have the right person. And so you just want to get going. And we always say by doing that, you may save your time today, but you're going to lose time down the road because you're not aligned with your counterparts on it. You don't market to the right people. You don't interview the right candidates or, you know, you hire the wrong person and then you've got to exit that person and you lose lots.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we're spending time on, you know, can we think about our productive workflows in our business and how do we be more effective? I think people are starting with the simple stuff, like how do I become more efficient or can I think about my call center? But we're thinking probably more on the revenue generating side. Can we quote you right now? We have a business that takes 48 hours to quote. Can we get that down to 48 minutes without sacrificing quality by utilizing AI more effectively? Are there other workflows like that on sort of the sales or marketing or productivity side where we can significantly improve?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About the keen management aspects where they can be more effective. So, an example would be hiring. We have a hiring process. We have a structured, you do a scorecard and you do this in terms of sourcing and then you do this in terms of selection and an interview process. And if you do this, it will improve your odds of success. But it's very hard to be disciplined to it because it takes time and it takes you requiring to step back and think about it. You need to build a case study. You need to do all of these things. And so can we build a hiring tool that takes away some of the work required that allows you to still adhere to the process with discipline, but not all the time to build the process. So can we build a scorecard for a role more effectively? Can we pull from other similar type roles and pre-populate it and make you a little bit more efficient as a hiring manager? So we're spending time on AI on topics like that that will affect everybody.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It happens in different businesses, but we're spending time thinking about that. And then the third is in our companies. And in our companies, there's two, I think, main ways we think it can be helpful. One is just structured way to help our businesses.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we think of AI in three different ways. One is at Cambrick. How do we become use it and ultimately become smarter, more efficient, more productive in our own processes and how we operate? And so that's everything from we use it for better note-taking, research on businesses, moving faster as we sort of deep dive in a space and getting smarter as we think about the businesses more holistically. We definitely are using it. The second way we're thinking about it is what are the industries and businesses where AI will affect the industry and potentially strengthen the moat, as we sort of talked about a bit earlier? And are there spaces that we think are attractive? So looking in sort of what we call sort of AI enabled services, businesses where we think it can strengthen the mode of the business that were still earlier stages on because I think there's a lot of uncertainty of what.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, typically not. Most entrepreneurs we meet at some point had some moment in their business where it was about the business type situation and oftentimes that might have been leverage or something else where they almost lost the whole business. And when you have those situations you've gone through, typically as an entrepreneur, you're like, I don't ever want to be there again. So I'm not going to ever put myself at risk. And so oftentimes I think some mid-sized companies are actually even almost debt adverse where they won't even have a mortgage on a property or use financing on an area where it might actually be prudent and they'd be more inclined to take equity or more expensive capital or not use the capital options they have because they're so afraid of something bad happening. And it typically is stemming from something bad happen at some stage and they almost lost their business and they don't want to be ever close to that again, which we can respect. And we understand. You know, if you have a great business.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we're pretty conservative. So back to that margin of safety. We believe if everything has to go well and to be successful in the business, that makes us nervous and leverage is one of those things that the more leverage you put on the business, the more everything has to go well for that to be able to service that. So maybe a traditional private equity might put four to six times the leverage on a business. We'll probably do two or three times. We might also use a turn of like a seller note where the seller is helping finance that, which is a little bit more friendly than bank debt or some other debt option. And so we're in general a little bit more conservative. Our view is that leverage amplifies returns on the upside, but also on the downside. And so we want to have a bit more margin of safety. We don't want to put the company at risk. We don't want to push ourselves to make short-term decisions because of a structural decision that maybe juice returns a little bit, but isn't actually what we think is best for the business.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my view is that mid size companies are in this middle sort of gap area on the smaller side, their startups have accelerators, they have different programs, bigger companies have more resources. They can bring in a consulting firm or someone to help them or pay for a resource on a specific topic. If you're in the middle, you're constrained by resources typically, both time, people, and dollars. And so, but you have many of the same challenges to figure out and to navigate. And so we built the camera community for what we wanted, which was resources and people to learn from that have done this and have made mistakes and learned and gotten better. And by bringing those people together, we're sharing our own resources and content and perspective and experience, but also other people in the community are sharing theirs as well. And so that sort of shared ecosystem of learning, improving, getting better has made everyone in the community participate.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than us, okay. Can we tweak this or can we utilize them? And we see it in our community too, the group of 3,000 owners, we learn from them, of how they're navigating these types of topics. And that helps us get better as well”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in doing that, what we realized was okay, organizations aren't ready for this in terms of people in year one. We need to build up to it. We need to build communication and engagement in the organization and transparency. We need to show them that we're going to do this first. We need to explain why we're doing development. It's not to exit people. It's to help them in terms of their career progression. And so by learning those things along the way, we get better at what we're doing. In the recent years, we've realized a more simple clearer, less as concise as possible. Dawson Chamblin, who leads our KBS team, is terrific at this. He's just a natural learner and working on improving the system. And after each partnership, we reflect and say, okay, what went well? What could have gone better? What do we think needs to shift and alter? And it's also great. We'll go into businesses and we learn of what they're doing really well. And we're like, oh, wow, they actually do that better.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next level, and then ultimately you go to the next level. We thought we could move faster and just roll it out because it was a small business. Related to that, when we roll out our KPIs, we're like, okay, great. If KPIs, go figure them out. And we thought was like employees will figure out how to go do it. Well, it turns out you have to help people and you have to understand problem solving and help them understand how do I go solve a KPI just because you give me a KPI doesn't mean I actually understand how do I go drive it. It doesn't mean I'm not capable or I can't figure it out, but it's going to be much more effective if I give you problem solving training to help you have some case studies and examples of what this looks like.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we actually started it when we were at Pamper Chef, right? That we were the foundational pieces where we were learning and trying things. And then we formally sort of codified it when we started Cambrike in 2020. It has changed a lot. And it gets better every year and every season and every business we work in. And we think of it as it's living and breathing. It's not a stagnant system. You go and implement and then you'll forget about it. It really is focused on continuous improvement. And each company we engage with helps us get better at it. But the mistakes that we learned from started very early on. So when we were at Pampered Chef, we first rolled out KPIs. We rolled out KPIs to the entire organization. And we said, okay, great. We're going to do KPIs. We're going to roll it out 500 employees. We'll roll it out to everybody. And that was a huge mistake. We should have started and sequenced it and started just with the executive team in year one. Once you have the executive team understanding, aligned, working towards it, then you go to the”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To business if you never actually operated a business. And so you probably don't have the same insights or the value of that or understand the value of it. And you might have an operating team who's doing it for you, but usually a lot of firms, the operating teams who are second class citizens where they're not at the same seat at the table. Investing organization”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think more people don't do it because it's really, really hard. It requires extensive discipline and structure and focus and adherence to the system for it to work. You can't just do a piece of it or one part or for six months and you actually have to have it become part of the DNA and the culture of the business. So I think in longer term like holds, people don't do it because it's discipline. I think in shorter term holds if you are private equity, you don't have the time period to get the benefits of doing it. And so why would you spend two years going and implementing something that you're not going to probably reap the full benefit in year three or year four when you need to exit the business? And so for us, having a longer-term horizon, we can invest in that and we see the value of it. And we have the team to help support the discipline and the adherence to it. I also think a lot of investors haven't actually been operators. And so it's really hard to go into a business and say, this is what you should go do to operate.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of a focus on people and culture than others do, but I think that's a function of where the world is today and compared to 20 or 30 years ago where a lot of those business systems were started. But has similar approaches in terms of continuous improvement or strategic planning or KPIs that many business systems have. And we feel like we're standing on the shoulders of those giants who've done a great job of building them and we can enhance them and tailor them for sort of our types of businesses.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By having a structured, systemized way of managing a business. And what we found is that most midsized companies, they're struggling with the same things. How do I get the right people in the right seats? How do I build the right culture and right engagement? How do I get the right strategy without paying McKinsey or Bain to help me? How do I go and execute that strategy and drive accountability and action into the businesses? And so what we're trying to do is say, rather than you have to go figure that out, we've done the work to say, hey, here are the structured ways to go do it. And this is the sequencing that works for where you are in your business that we can help you with. And so that very much has been our approach to how we think about it with our business system. And what we did is we went and learned from some of those best out there, from Dana Hurr, from Marmon, from Constellation and others. And so took parts of each that we liked where we thought that they were the most successful and sort of took those and distilled them into our own business system. Ours probably has more.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was CEO. I wanted to go out and learn from others, and what I found was some of the best companies out there have a scalable, repeatable business system. Danaher, Marmon, Toyota. It is an integrated way of how they manage the business so that it's not piecemeal, but really it's a holistic approach where the components of the approach reinforce each other. And if you do one in isolation, you get less value than if you do them together and they're complementary in nature. And so you could have a strategy process, but if you don't have the right people and the right skills, you're going to be less effective at implementing that strategic process. If you have amazing people and a great culture and great environment, but you don't have KPIs and alignment, you're not going to be able to achieve as much with those people. So by adding these different components and focusing on what matters most in a business, you create more value overall. And I think there's amazing examples. Danaher being one that created tremendous.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was like co creation. So they have a view they're going to be smarter about the industry than we ever will. They'll have the depth and knowledge, experience what's worked, what hasn't worked. What we'll bring is outside perspective and a lot of questions. And so we'll say, have you thought about this? Or what about that? Or, hey, there's an industry that's like this that we've seen that 10 years ago, this”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source