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

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Do together, and what does that look like? We say from our perspective, you know, I've been CEO, my partner's been CFO. We don't want to be the CEO and CFO again. We're not trying to do your job. We're trying to be the resource that we wanted. And so we're being helpful on the biggest strategic decisions you're making in a business and really partnering with them and then giving them feedback and help along the way in those critical areas.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the initial partnership that we do. Usually it's a part of a strategic planning process. Our KBS team will come in and work with the management team to sort of really think about what's the future direction of the business and what are the opportunities. What are we doing well today? Where are there opportunities? We're not doing as well today. Where can we sort of grow? Where are the challenges facing the business? So having those types of conversations. And that really is a collaborative hands-on experience that we're partnering with them to assess as we're doing that. simultaneously saying, okay, do we have the right capabilities? Do we have the right roles? Do we have the right people to help support that growth? If we say we want to go expand in a new market, do we have that capability? If we want to go to acquisitions, do we have that capability? If not, how do we build that capability or add that talent internally that allows us to have that reflexibility? And then we're really building a roadmap out for the first 12 to 18 months of, okay, what are we going to go?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, before even day one, like when we close during the process where we're getting to know each other, we're doing diligence, we're sort of spending time with them really understanding what are their views on the industry, what are their views on the business, what does management think the biggest opportunities are. We're oftentimes doing interviews, so our Cambridge business system team will spend time meeting with 70, 75 people in the business and understanding where they think the opportunities are as well. So we're doing that during that sort of diligence process going up to the close. Once we close with a business, we're really trying to understand where they are on their own journey. And so we have a diagnostic to assess on all these frameworks people, attracting talent, developing talent, engaging talent, strategy, KPIs budgets, what's their self-diagnostic on their sophistication in these areas. And so they'll do that and then we'll do that. And then we'll come in and say, okay, given this, what do we want to go build together? What does it look like? There's a few sort of critical components.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if we think of this as like a growth potential, but it may contribute to margins of safety if we said if this business will work at this valuation, even if we don't do anything, and then we're able to go drive this growth, then that gives us more comfort and the margin of safety and where we are. But they can be interconnected, but that's not necessarily have to be.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or growth opportunities left. Where, what are you going to go do? Like it's growing at GDP probably. Like it's going to be hard to really go accelerate growth and coke. Whereas for us, my plane in the midsized market, there's a lot more opportunity. Or JM tests, I was a 40-year-old business that we partnered with, family business started by the Morrison family, grew 20% a year over the last 20 years in sort of 10 branches and regions today, but an opportunity to move in geographically into new regions, increase penetration in our existing markets, and then three, look at potential acquisitions for other family businesses that want a long-term partner. And so for us, that was the more potential in that business. So each business is a bit different, but really understanding what's not being sort of fully optimized today, we always start with sort of our purpose, which is helping organizations and people reach their full potential. And so as we think about a new partnership, how do we think about what that full potential may be? And then what's the opportunity for us to help them get there?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's less than a lottery ticket, but really like where's the opportunity to sort of grow this business and what does it look like? So for example, we partnered with a company Marine Concepts, Sales Boat Covers. Now, when we partnered with the company and was started by drum and Randy Kent, based at a lake of the Ozarks, he had a facility and a market in Lake of the Ozarks. He had great market share there, great NPS. The product was incredibly strong. He had moved a little bit and sold some in Florida, but really he hadn't expanded beyond that. So the more potential there was, can we take this company that has a great product, has a great reputation, great NPS, great margins, and expand it. And in this case, we wanted to build out a dealer network. So can we expand that through a dealer network and growth? So that was the more potential in that business was how do we expand it and doing something that they're not doing today versus a business where you may come in and it's already at full potential, right? The business is operating super well. Not as many growth drivers.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And where do we think we would play in that market, and what do we think the path forward would be? But we're first starting with sort of growth rate and dynamics.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when we look at market, we're looking for a few things. One is what's it growing? What's the growth rate in it? Is it growing at GDP? Is it growing above GDP? Do we think that that's sustaining? You know, there might be a situation where the business is growing, the industry or the market's growing very fast right now, but it's going to decline over the next five years, or no, we think it's going to continue to grow at 20% plus a year for 10 plus a years. So trying to understand what the growth rate is, how does it relate to GDP? Second, we're trying to understand what are the dynamics of the market. Is it a situation where there's a lot of fragmented players? Is there a couple behemoths? Is it one where there's opportunity for consolidation or not? We're trying to just understand what the dynamics are and sort of how it works. Are the other players in the market rational if it's more concentrated? How do we think about the path forward and what that might look like?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The level of earnings that you have in this business. Your best businesses usually don't require a lot of capital. There are caveats to that too. I mean, you can get a higher return on capital, but also potentially someone can enter the business more quickly if you don't have capital in the business. If you have capital in your business, that's usually harder for someone to enter. But you can get other types of modes or impacts. And I think you're seeing a shift in this. If you look at”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In capital we're looking at a few different things. What's the capital actually required in the business? So what you're putting into it, your PP&E, if you need like lots of AR to support your business, really trying to fundamentally understand what capital is required to support this business, what inventories require to support the business. Every business was a little bit different, but there might be a business where the earnings look really great, but then they have a huge inventory on their balance sheet to support that level of earnings and then that business is probably a little less good business because you have to have this inventory to support it. And that sometimes maybe you have a lot of locations, so you need to have facilities with all the inventory. And maybe your customers require you to have a lot of inventory to support the business. There's a lot of different dynamics that you play into that, but we're really trying to understand what capital is required to support.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We usually look at EVIT, our earnings before interest and taxes. Our view on sort of EBITDA is there's some industries where it makes sense, but in most industries depreciation amortization is real. And so if you focus on that, I think you sometimes give yourself false confidence in terms of what the business really looks like and what it really generates because in essence you're trying to get a proxy for cash flow and cash generation. So when we look at it, we'll usually look at eBit as sort of an earnings approach and then we'll focus in terms of what's the capital in the business. But earnings, we usually define as EBIT. In some cases, we'll look at EBITDA. We try to be pretty selective of how we do that in the industries where depreciation and amortization are real.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us, it's really looking at what's the earnings in the business and then what's the capital required in the business to support those earnings. And so you can do the calculation and get a ratio. We typically say like an okay business is maybe 20% return on capital. A great business is probably looking at 50% plus in terms of return on capital”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In essence, we're looking at like a return on invested capital. And as we think about that, is it going up? Is it going down? Is it staying the same? Do we think that that is reasonable for the space? What we find is that's one part of it. Like you need to understand the quantitative. And typically if you have a moat, you can see it. You can see it in your returns in the business on what you're doing and your return on capital. But beyond the quantitative is then the qualitative. Can you define it? Can you explain why? Do you understand it? That, I think, becomes more important because if you looked at the newspapers, I would say once remote started to erode quantitatively, it still looked good for quite a period of time, even though qualitatively it was starting to erode at that stage. The financials lagged and then it caught up. But I think that's typically what we're trying to do is look at both the quantitative and the qualitative side.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what does that look like? But I think that disruption is coming. I think it's going to happen pretty widely in terms of different businesses and industries. So if you have a great business today, are you thinking about that and can you reinforce your mode and make it stronger?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And I think probably the biggest question in my mind is how temporary is it and how quick is it? Will just, it'll be a race to the bottom where now prices will just go down and then other entrants will come into the market and the customers will capture the value versus the companies. Or do you already have a moat or can you build a moat in a time where it actually allows you to sustain it? And then you ultimately get a stronger business. And that's, I think, is interesting. We're spending some time thinking about that as well, and especially in the service businesses. And I think there are some that it's just harder for new entrant to come in. If it's a regulated space where you have to get credentialed and there's limited number of credentials, that's harder for someone to come in. If it's, you have a huge sales force and service force that's going out and implementing and supporting your customers. That's harder for someone else to come and replicate. Not impossible, but harder. And so do you have that aspect of your mode already that you can reinforce?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To keeping more customers more effectively. I think it probably is a little early in the context of AI to see, okay, who's going to be the biggest winner? Who's going to be the biggest loser? Because it's a little bit more of a crapshoot at this stage, I'd say.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard, you know, in the moment to look and say, this mood is getting stronger because typically it's easier to look back over the course of ten years. The mood has gotten better or gotten worse. I think AI is a good example that probably will erode a lot of moods and a lot of industries and businesses because it reduces the friction or the cost for a new entrant to come in. And they can navigate the space more effectively. I do think there probably will be a subset of businesses where AI actually makes their moat stronger. And because they already have some sort of structured system that is allowing them to have a competitive advantage. And so it might be, you know, maybe they build out a salesforce with a technician base that is hard to replicate. And for someone else to come into that, and now AI allows them to quote more effectively or reduce their costs or improve their productivity so that then their costs go down. And if their costs go down, then they can pass that on to the customer and sort of cycle that.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us moat is what we consider a competitive advantage. In this simple example of why a moat is it's a castle, right? Do you have a castle that is a strong business and then the moat you want to have around is what defends the castle and what is going to protect the castle. Like newspapers now have eroded quite considerably, and there's other businesses where the modes are getting stronger. So trying to find those businesses where we think we can expand the mode.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perfectly right in order for us to be successful. We want to have a little bit of flex so that if there is something like COVID or a downturn or tariffs that we can navigate that well with the management team and we don't put undue pressure on the business to make sure term decisions because of something that's happening that may be outside of our control.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We call the five M's that we look at versus moat, what is the moat, what's the competitive advantage? Second is the market. You may have a moat, but it's the market growing. And do we think it's an attractive market? What is the growth rate? What are the likely dynamics of that? Third, we look at management. Does it have a strong management team today or is it something where we think we can help build the management team if there's opportunities? Sometimes there'll be a great business. It's got three strong leaders, but they need to build out a sales leader or a talent leader or a finance leader. Can we help them do that? The fourth is what we call more potential. And there's some opportunity that's not being fully leveraged today that we think we can help them with. It might be expanding into new markets. It might be a more structured approach to how they manage the business today. There are a variety of different avenues in terms of more potential, but absolutely a focus. And then for us, the fifth is margin of safety. And what we mean by margin of safety is we don't want to have to have everything go.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interested in my business, which we appreciate. And we always have the same assessment of what's the mode of the business, quantitative qualitative assess it. And then how do we think about those areas? What we've also done is we have built a community of 3,000 CEOs, owners, and founders that we bring together to provide content and resources and support. And through that, we learn about new businesses. We learn new spaces which help us also be better in terms of finding businesses that might be a fit for us. We only invest in one or two companies here. We'll look at 500, so we're really selective at finding the highest quality businesses that have a long runway.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We find areas that we like. So we say if we want to go fishing, we want to find a pond with a lot of great fish. And so we want to understand what is an industry that we think has a strong mode or competitive advantage. And we usually look at that by saying, okay, what are the returns on capital in the space? So quantitatively can we see if there is a moat? And then qualitatively can we understand the moat more effectively? How wide is the moat? Is it getting wider or more narrow over time? Is it durable? Is it going to withstand the test of time? So we're trying to sort of find those spaces. Once we find industries that we think are a fit there, we spend a fair amount of time reaching out to businesses, finding businesses, getting introduced to businesses. We have operating advisors who help us understand as well. And then we really try to get smart and find how do we add value in these companies. And then another group of businesses we have are just people who come to us, people who hear about what we're doing, who are excited. And so they'll come to us and say, are you?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me and my role, it's understanding where are we in that conversation and who am I talking to? How do we get to that level and what's the right level? And I find that people who are on the front line may not have the 30,000 view on where we're going in the business, but they're going to be really good at that 10 foot view and understanding the problem that they're trying to solve or what's limiting them or holding them back. So really sort of figuring out what's the right level to have that conversation.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or they'll have views on things even outside of their area. One of the questions I'll oftentimes ask is like, what are we not doing that we should be? And people oftentimes will say stuff in the area, but oftentimes they'll have stuff in other areas too that, hey, I really thought if we could focus more on selling to our customers digitally, that would allow us to transform the business. And we're not doing that today, things like that help me sort of see, do they have just that innate engagement or excitement about the business and curiosity?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say the biggest tell I say is called hand waving, where you're talking to someone about something you ask a question, and rather than answering the question, they sort of go all over. They're sort of hand waving around, or you start to drill in more and the hand waving begins where they can't really understand or explain it. Typically people who really know their craft and know their business and know the fundamentals can really explain why we do certain things, why we don't. They may not have all the skills to go fix it, but they understand what the issues are and what the problems are. And then our goal is to help them understand, okay, this is how we can go address that or solve it. But that usually is the biggest tell for me is can they get clear? Can they get crisp? Do they really understand what's going on in their space? And it doesn't mean they need to understand everything in the business. They need to understand the area that they're responsible for. I find oftentimes the best people just have a natural interest, curiosity to solve the issues.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of KPIs of what are we going to go achieve? And they need to give people the flexibility to go achieve those. You don't tell them how to achieve them. You say, okay, you have the autonomy to go achieve these. But you give them the skills. So we do problem solving trading. We help support them so that they're more equipped to actually go achieve those goals and they have visibility. And then they have the alignment. We're all going in this direction. These are the most important KPIs. And then we incorporate conversations or feedback where we're actually giving real-time feedback on, hey, you did this really well. This is what we could do better. And then through that, you were implementing a talent management process. And then alongside of that, you're doing a leadership development process where you're identifying your leaders. You're helping them understand the vision, the expectations, the strategy, ultimately they're helping shape that strategy. So it's a very sort of structured way of say, oh, how do we bring in people at the right stages at the right time to really help them enhance their own development, their own learning, their own contribution?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are they rock stars? Are there people who have a lot of opportunity in terms of? I find the best ways you go in and with someone, and I can usually send, I usually send a list of questions that are, I usually have a few different frameworks, but industry questions, company questions, department questions, you questions. And I ask those different questions. And what I find is you can usually get someone sort of assessment and understanding and their view of a world pretty effectively by just talking to them about what they're seeing. And then that helps us learn and get better about the business as well. So that's typically when we go into business and what we do. Once we're in a business, then we really focus, okay, how do we develop our talent? And so we're using different conversations and different processes along the way to really make sure that we're aligned in doing that. For us, it starts with do we goal set at the beginning of the year? Do we have clear KPIs? Because how do you assess people if you don't have clear KPIs?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we do a few things within our businesses as we think about talent. When we go into a new business, first of all, we really try to understand what are the mission critical roles in this business. We find most mid-sized companies have between fifteen and thirty roles that are the most critical roles to get right. And these are the ones that are creating the most value. Each business, it may be slightly different. It may be sales in one business. It may be product development in another. It may be finance in another depending on what they're doing and how they approach. But do we really have clarity on what those are? Do we have the right capabilities? Sometimes you might have a mission-critical role that you don't have today, that you need the capabilities. So my example earlier of Pampered Chef, like when I started a mission critical role for us with technology, we did not have those capabilities in terms of what we needed to go do. And so we had to build it, but really assessing what are the mission critical roles that we have. And then once we do that, we assess, okay, who do we have in those roles today?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking about communication, and how are we doing that most effectively to support the whole organization? The whole people framework is so significant in terms of what you can do in an organization, but it usually is an afterthought. If you look at executive teams, usually a mid-sized companies, there may not even be an HR leader. If they are, it's a more junior level generalist type person versus a true talent partner. And so that weight all falls on usually the CEO to navigate it, but that's a lot when you're trying to navigate everything. And as you're scaling, it becomes more and more important because when you're small, everyone is close to the CEO. They see it. They feel the culture. They see the work ethic and discipline as you get bigger. You need to sort of step away and have more of a system and a structure that allows for that to continue because not everyone's going to be sitting shoulder to shoulder with the CEO.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's taking a disciplined approach to how we think about people. So it's not just how do I reward people more or how do we have more holiday parties or whatever it may. It's actually taking a structured discipline approach. We always say with our companies typically businesses have a structured view to thinking about strategy or KPIs or budgeting. They have a calendar. They have discipline and an approach to that. We also say, where's your people calendar? What is your same level of discipline approach that you have on people? because you should have the same. And we put it in three buckets, you know, how do we attract the right talent? So that's everything from hiring to employer value proposition to what are the most critical roles to get the right people in. So on the attract bucket, how do we develop talent? Are we thinking about where people are going in their careers? Are we helping them get there? How are we thinking about that? And then engagement. Are we engaging our talent? Are we thinking about the culture? Are we thinking once?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And talent management is we think about businesses, you can really enhance a business by focusing on the people in the foundation. We focus there first. We focus on purpose second. What's the purpose of the business? What's the difference we make in the world? Are we aligned around that? What's the strategy to go execute that purpose and impact? And then we think about performance third. And so then we say, okay, how do we actually achieve those goals? How do we drive alignment and accountability and how do we think if you start by focusing on performance, then I think you miss out on really these foundation settings, which are so critical to get alignment and to drive ultimately the most value in businesses.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that we all have incentives in life. And so recognizing what the incentives are oftentimes show us what behaviors you will have or what decisions we'll make. And I think you mentioned culture. I think culture and people is the most foundational and fundamental aspect of any business, any size. I think a mid-sized companies in particular, it's incredibly valuable because you have oftentimes more limited resources, your team's smaller, and so people are doing more in terms of their scope of responsibilities or capabilities. They oftentimes are very passionate and committed, but we don't always invest in that culture. And so how do we continue? And I think the best businesses figure that out, but I think as company scale and you get bigger, there's more complexity in terms of the people side of things. So we always start with people, you know, do we have the right people in the right seats? Do we have the right culture? Do we have the right engagement? Do we have the right talent developed?”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've been in a number of businesses where people will say, oh, if we can just get the margins from 10% to 12% or 12, and I'm like, well, that's really hard to do. Like that's hard to do. But I remember when I took the role at Pamperick Chef, I had advised the business for about a year. So I had a pretty good sense of, I think, what needed to be done. Then I just needed to go do it. And I thought it would take me a year or two to go drive the change that was needed to get the business back on track. And it took almost three or four because everything took longer and was harder, getting the right team, getting the right culture, investing in the right systems in the business. We wanted to update the marketing and update the product. All of that took a fair amount of time. And I think that if my task was to go sell that business in three or four years, I don't know if I would have done all the same things. I probably would have made some shorter-term decisions that ultimately probably would have created less value in the business.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years or three years, it's hard versus okay, we're going to move into a new market. That might take us a few years to get that set up, or we're going to invest in building a new crop of talent in our organization so that they're ready to lead in five years. Those are things that are long-term in nature, but if your structure or you're incentivized on a shorter term duration, it's just hard to make those decisions.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Your time horizon is you three to five years in a business. You know, I'm going to sell the business in three to five years. Everything you're going to do is going to be short-term in nature just because of human nature and how you're incentivized. So you're going to come in and say, okay, should I invest in growing into new markets or should I take price right now? Should I, you know, really build a strong people system and culture and engagement that may not pay back for three, four, five years? Or should I take costs out right now, which are going to increase my short-term value? Every decision you're probably going to come up to, it's going to be really, really hard to make a longer-term decision because the pressures are so skewed to making a shorter-term action. And so I think that the nature of the structure just creates the wrong incentives. Any leader in a business will say you don't usually get payback and things as quickly as you think. And so to get payback in a year or two.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of how do we actually accomplish that through the culture we are creating, both in terms of opportunities, promotions, incentives, growth, but also in terms of engagement, giving feedback, helping people grow and develop. And we ended up attracting a lot of people who wouldn't normally go to a kitchenware products business. I wouldn't normally go to a kitchenware products business, but saw this opportunity to build something unique and special and really focus on how could we do that here in the company as well.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was something we really focused a lot on early on, understanding what was our employee value problem. Why would someone want to come to Pamper Chef? And what we found was people weren't coming to Pampered Chef because they necessarily always loved the product or our location or some other factor. They were coming because they wanted to learn and grow. And we could give them opportunities through meritocracy that they could learn and grow more quickly and get rewarded for that and be excited by what we were doing. And in essence, we really focused on storytelling and saying, what are we going to go do? And we're transforming a business. We're going to reinvent mealtime. We're going to focus on our purpose, which was one meal and one memory at a time. That's what we're going to focus on. And that really started to resonate with sort of employees who were passionate about learning, growing, and then doing something that was unique and special. And then we focused on our culture.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From back office and support to a true revenue generator. And so we needed a new leader in technology and then ultimately much of a new technology team and marketing and sales to really complement that. We brought in a new leader who really transformed how he thought about technology and then how we serve the customer. We took the business from 10% sort of digital to 75%. Now we still did that through the channel. So through the sales consultants, we didn't go on Amazon or use sell direct, but we actually really focused on how do we utilize our competitive advantage, which was the channel, but help them be a more effective digitally. But I think it's a good example of sometimes you need a different skill set or different experience to go where you need to go in a business. And sometimes the legacy team doesn't always have that.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this situation at Pamper Chef, we did change much to the team. The business had been in decline for about 10 years, and during that period we saw a lot of probably great people in the organization leave or they had the skill sets that we needed for the transformation weren't there or had atrophied. And so we needed an infusion of talent. So as an example, when I started at Pamford Chef, 10% of the business was digital, 90% was sold in person through in-person parties. Employees didn't even have laptops. And what we saw was while the customers shifting dramatically, they're shopping more online. They're shopping more mobile, and we're selling through an in-person party model. So we needed to shift our mindset to say, okay, how do we actually meet customers where they are and what's important to them in that process? And what we found in doing that was we needed to be more digitally focused and we needed to shift our own thinking about technology.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that oftentimes we think of the big things we could go do. What should the strategy look like or what's the future vision of this or what's it going to mean versus how do we do the fundamentals and do the fundamentals well? And I think some of the best CEOs out there focused on the fundamentals. I mean Sam Walton at Walmart. It was all about the fundamentals. And he was in a store every week and multiple stores every week focused on how do we deliver for our customers more effectively. That is a really important skill set that is oftentimes undervalued or underappreciated. And I think that's really important, especially in mid-sized companies where there's a lot of blocking and tackling to be done every single day. And oftentimes that rises all the way up to the management team and the CEO. It's not something where just your front line can handle the blocking and tackling. Really everyone needs to be focused on it.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Term. And I think for us, we had to refocus, really work on the sales today, the challenges we are facing in the moment in order to give us a space to think about the long term as well.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. We always say that there's a balance of short-term and long term. You can't only think about the long term. If you only think about the long term, you probably won't get out of the short term because you're going to miss the situations of today, the short term sort of dynamics. When we were at Pampered Chef, we were turning around the business. Brian was the CFO. I was the CEO and we had a management team that was helping us drive this transformation. And we were a couple years into the turnaround. And the business was actually doing quite well. And then in year three, we had this sort of setback. And what we saw was we were focusing too much on the long term. Our long-term strategic initiatives, our investments in international growth and new categories, we had lost sight of the fundamentals blocking and tackling of today. And what we had thought was, hey, we had focused on those for two years. We had improved them. Now we could go set our sights on longer-term thinking. But the reality is you have to manage the short term and you have to manage the long term.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In essence, if you're focused on selling a business in three to five years, you're going to make sure your structure is going to require you or incentivize you to do that. And then the third is I think there's differing degrees of long term. There is the 50-year long term, which I think is really, really long term. And then there's differing gradients of that that can be utilized and be thought about. And I don't think all long term is equal. And I don't think you need to do 50 years to be sort of long-term. I think there are some in the middle that allows you to take advantage of that horizon, take advantage of that structure, but give you some flexibility where you're not locking yourself up forever.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think of it in three different ways. One is do you think long term? Do you have a long term horizon in perspective? A lot of people can say I think long term, and they may, but that's only one component. The second is you have a structure.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Port, people would come before me who could help me in that seat. And I kept thinking like it would be so nice if there was someone who could tell me how to do a great strategic planning process or how to improve my hiring skills or how to build the right culture or what is great look like in these different aspects of managing a business. And so when Brian Humphrey and I started Cambric, we really wanted to focus on how do we build a system that we can help these mid-sized companies and be the resource that we wanted when we were operators. We built the Camberg business system really focused on that.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to say what's similar in the sense because Berkshire's so unique and special. It's one of a kind. And I don't think we think that we're going to replicate that by any means. What we're trying to do is really focus on long-term creating a long-term structure with a long-term horizon to buy and build businesses with the right approach that we think is valuable to the companies, valuable to employees, customers, and ultimately investors. Second is finding high quality businesses that have some sort of moat or competitive advantage. Great businesses are hard to find. And when you find a great business with a motor competitive advantage and you have a long runway, you can really invest behind that. And then I think for us in terms of one thing that we do distinctly different than Berkshire is we're much more hands-on operationally. And that came from when I was CEO. When I was CEO, what I felt like was it was very lonely. It was challenging. It was hard. And I was out navigating and trying to find resources.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Berkshire's a phenomenal place. I mean, it's unique. It's one of a kind. I don't think there'll be another one by any means. But Berkshire is very large in terms of capital. It's hard to deploy capital. It's hard to find really great investments, but it's also especially hard when you're very large. I saw this opportunity to help mid-sized companies with a long-term approach with creating value as much as I love my time at Berkshire and would have been happy there forever, felt like there was this opportunity to create something new and special that was serving a market that really wasn't, I didn't think being surfed well today.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of that. And then lastly, just the value of continuous learning improvement. Warren reads every single day, gets smart, gets better, those in the Berkshire ecosystem do the same. And I think that was something that resonated with me from when I was a kid on the farm. You know, my dad also focused on getting better in continuous improvement in a different field, but it was something that I saw reinforced at Berkshire.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Warren is very gracious with his learning and his knowledge and he shares it widely. He shares it at Annual Meetings, he shares it at Thaniel Letters. And I feel like I got a front row seat to really understanding that and seeing it in action. But I think the lessons are timeless and they're what he espouses relatively consistently through those maxims, which I think is great because everyone can learn from him. But really, the value of long-term thinking and long-term compounding, the eighth wonder of the world is compounding and the value of that. And if you think long term and are set up structurally to think long-term, there's a lot of value in that. Second, the value of people and finding the right people with high integrity, people who care about what they're doing, and then giving them the right incentives and the right encouragement. Warren gave those people around him, his CEOs or others, really great autonomy and high expectations, but really let people have flexibility. And I saw the value.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had been an intern and then come back full time at a company when I met Warren over the student group visits. I decided to write him a letter. And so that's how I ultimately ended up at Berkshire.”
2025-10-14 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Building Great Businesses | Tracy Britt Cool · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source