The 4 Differentiators Behind A Quietly Dominant Consulting Firm

A lot of consulting firms say they care about culture and client experience. Very few actually build their business around it. In this episode, Eddie Monroe pulls back the curtain on how he walked away from an executive role at Avanade and Accenture to build CCE — Culture and Customer Experience — into a 17-person consulting firm growing 50-100% year over year with zero marketing spend.

You will learn how Eddie replaced his executive salary inside one year, the stack-rank spreadsheet he kept for 15 years that became his hiring engine, why “healthy paranoia” is the most underrated trait for a consulting founder, and how he engineered a delivery team so sticky that clients refuse to let them go. If you want to grow a consulting firm sustainably without becoming just another interchangeable shop, this is the operator-to-operator playbook.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why the firms that talk the loudest about culture are often the ones not delivering it behind the scenes — and how to spot the gap before it costs you a client.

• The “take the next contract that comes” decision rule Eddie used to escape executive comfort, and how a single Houston SD-WAN phone call replaced his Accenture salary inside 12 months.

• How a simple Excel stack-rank of every person Eddie worked with over 15 years became the foundation of a 17-person team with zero recruiters, zero agencies, and zero random hires.

• The four differentiators that make CCE consultants so sticky clients refuse to release them — and which two actually drive the buying decision.

• Why Eddie refuses to bench consultants and only hires once a contract is signed — the cash discipline that lets a relationship-only firm scale without overhead drag.

• The “healthy paranoia” mindset Eddie adopted after losing his ideal client overnight — and the early warning signals every consulting founder should monitor.

• How Eddie uses AI to compress 7 hours of white-label rework into 17 minutes, plus the Monday.com and Smartsheet dashboards running his forecast pipeline.

• The single hindsight lesson Eddie would tell his younger self about relationships, geography, and getting comfortable in uncomfortable rooms.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.
Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business.
So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.

Eddie Monroe is the Founder of CCE — Culture and Customer Experience — a management consulting firm focused on delivery, leadership, and strategic advisory. After more than a decade inside Avanade and Accenture, Eddie left his executive role to build CCE from a solo operation into a 17-person team in just four years, posting 50-100% year-over-year growth with no marketing engine — only relationships, referrals, and a relentless focus on consultant quality.
Connect with Eddie Monroe: LinkedIn
Discover more about CCE: ccebusiness.com

Narrator: A lot of consulting firms say they care about client experience. Very few actually build their business around it. In this episode, Eddie Monroe breaks down why most consulting companies lose momentum as they grow. And how staying obsessed with relationships, delivery, quality, and culture became the foundation of his firm’s success. After spending more than a decade inside large consulting organizations, Eddie realized something important. The firms talking the most about culture weren’t always delivering it behind the scenes. You’ll discover how he grew his consulting business from a solo operation into a 17 person team, the hiring framework he uses to find consultants that clients trust immediately, and why healthy paranoia may be one of the most important traits for any consulting founder. Trying to scale sustainably. If you want to grow without becoming just another interchangeable consulting firm, this conversation is packed with lessons that you can apply immediately.

Michael Zipursky: Enjoy.

[01:02] – Defining CCE: Delivery, Leadership, Strategic Advisory

Eddie Monroe: Welcome, Eddie, welcome. Good to meet you, man.

Michael Zipursky: Yeah, great to have you on. So what I thought was, just to kick it off, how would you describe what your company does in one sentence?

Eddie Monroe: A management consulting company that focuses on delivery, leadership and strategic advisory.

Michael Zipursky: There we go. I’m gonna break that apart and we’re gonna kind of explore that from all different angles. But before we, we get into that, I’d love to know, how did you get clients in the early days? And just to maybe back up a little bit more, you’ve been at this now for four years. You have a team of, I think, said, 17 people. You’re doing well and we’ll make it into more of those specifics, whatever you’re comfortable sharing. But I want to hit that rewind button. Tell us how you really got started. How did you get into this business? How do you get your first few clients?

[01:51] – The Phone Call That Pulled Him Out of Accenture

Eddie Monroe: I had been Into Consulting for 10 plus years working with major consulting firms. And towards the end of that, I was thinking that the passion is not there. I need to get something to jumpstart. And I thought about having my own company and what that would look like. And out of the blue, one day after, and I can give you the background on how I even got about thinking about the organization because it was something that actually triggered it. But after having the organization established and not doing anything on it, I was working at the biggest professional services organization around. I was there for about a year and six months into it, I was like, man, they got great people here. But I’m not, I’m not satisfied. And I got a phone call.

Michael Zipursky: Why weren’t you satisfied? Like, what was missing for you?

Eddie Monroe: Their goals and what, how they work with customers just wasn’t the right fit for Me, right. And when I say that, you hear a lot of people talk about culture and talk about how the client journey is going to be, and that really wasn’t their focus. They would say it, but behind the scenes it was about the financials, right? Quite a bit. It’s one of those things to where you know how you, you live somewhere for 20 something years, but you were born and raised somewhere else. Where you were born and raised is where your heart is. And I came up in this business on the client side, so I have a, a special place for the client experience because that’s where it started. So during the midst of being at that organization, at one point I decided if I get an opportunity, if somebody offers me a contract, I’m just going to take it. I’m going to take it and take a chance. And probably two months after I said it, I got a random phone call from a pretty large company out in Houston. They had worked with me probably eight years before and they remembered and they say, hey, we have a massive project. I remember you worked on our project some years ago. Do you know of anyone? And I said, what’s the project? And they said, it’s the SD WAN engagement, but it’s more program management. And I said I could do it. And he was like, no, no, we didn’t call because I know you’re doing executive roles now and I already asked some people.

Michael Zipursky: So were you still working at this larger consulting firm at that time?

Eddie Monroe: Yes, I was at. And I’ll be open and honest, I was at Avanade and Accenture. Right. Accenture has a Microsoft group called Avanade. And when you’re working with Avanade, you’re doing Accenture projects and all payroll and everything through Accenture. So you’re pretty much an Accenture employee. So I was working with that organization at the time. I decided once I get a phone call, I said, if somebody offers me six months to do it, a contract, I’ll take it. And I felt like at the time that if it didn’t work out, I’ll just go back and find another job. But if it do work out, we’ll just take you from there. I got the phone call and when I said that, hey, I’ll take it, he said, hey, I’m not trying to ask you because you’re an executive today. I don’t want you to take a step back. I was like, no, trust me, there’s some things I want to do. And it was about their relationship and what’s crazy about that when he asked me about it, he said, well, the rest of the executives already picked somebody, but I don’t think it’s the right person. So I need you to meet with them tomorrow morning at 8:30. Can you do that? Get on a call with them? Met with them that morning. And I got a phone call that afternoon and asked me if I can start in two weeks. And when that happened, probably two weeks later, I got a second contract that was on a much smaller scale, but I had two contracts out the gate.

Michael Zipursky: And the second one also come from a relationship that you had prior, or why they pick up the phone and call you?

Eddie Monroe: They had heard that I had left Accenture and it was based on relationships. They were a former essential employee as well.

[05:30] – Navigating the Executive-to-Entrepreneur Leap at Accenture

Michael Zipursky: Right. So that, that first large contract, how do you navigate that situation where you’re still in an organization, you’re an executive, and now you’re going to be stepping out of that organization to take on your own business and your own client? What did that look like in terms of anything you kind of share of, like how you navigated and manage that?

Eddie Monroe: I took the same mentality. You take that same mentality as you have as an executive and as an entrepreneur, and anytime you’re leading an engagement, you take that same mentality. So that same mentality was taken to that organization. So I looked at the financials the same way. I was comfortable speaking to executives, the same way I was comfortable talking to the people at the front desk and just having that governance in place, having that comfort. I kept that same mentality.

Michael Zipursky: What about the Accenture piece because you’re leaving that company, was that a hard thing to leave? Was it pretty straightforward for you at that time, how that kind of go over?

Eddie Monroe: It was straightforward for me to do at that time. What’s crazy about that is when I told them that I was leaving several of them, the leaders doubted that I would have what it takes to be successful in those role because how, how dare I leave a big company like that and just take us a contract somewhere and be successful? What am I thinking? Right. That kind of motivated me to even want to be more successful. So that was my mentality.

[06:51] – Replacing an Executive Salary Inside One Year

Michael Zipursky: What did that look like financially for you? I mean, I would imagine as an executive in Accenture, you’re earning a nice salary. How did that compare what you had at Accenture to now taking on that first contract and second contract? Like, how far away were you in those first, call it six months or so from what you had been making as an executive?

Eddie Monroe: My key was when I Looked at the numbers, and, you know, insurance can be pretty heavy with the family. So I was like, can I offset the insurance and can I get a good enough rate that could supersede what I was making as a leader at this other organization? And through negotiations and relationships and all those things, it blew that number out the water. Michael.

Michael Zipursky: So how long did it take you to get back up to where you were when you were at Accenture as an executive?

Eddie Monroe: Within the first year. Okay, and let me also clarify when it was. It was just me for the first nine months. Nine, ten months. Right. I didn’t get my first person to come on and do a contract outside of me until about 10 months later. Yeah.

Michael Zipursky: So I often kind of talk to consultants about this. Like, at that stage, it might feel like you have a business, but really when you have just that one client, maybe two, where you essentially replace your job with a job that you’re now in full control of.

Eddie Monroe: Right.

Michael Zipursky: As you work to actually build a business that is bigger than just you. So you hit on that financial piece, which is great, because for a lot of people, you know, they have that belief or the concern, I should say, that it’s going to take a long time to get back to where they are. And we’ve seen with so many clients over the years that when you’re doing the right things or sometimes just the right circumstance, right relationships, it doesn’t have to take that long to get back up to, you know, to where you were before. So you’ve proven that here. One thing I’d like to kind of get your perspective on is you went from being part of a very large organization, right, that has a lot of resources at your disposal, to now it’s the Eddie show for at least the first nine months. What was that adjustment like for you? Were there certain things you felt like, why is this not happening? Or, I’d like to do that, but I can’t, or like, was there anything missing in that adjustment from working at a large established company to now running your own thing?

Eddie Monroe: I learned something new daily, sometimes and weekly that I was unaware of in doing that. For one thing, you miss the camaraderie when you go into an organization. No matter what you say you’re an entrepreneur and all those things, you’re still working for somebody. So where you are an executive, somewhere else, you kind of can snap your fingers and it will happen. When you go and have to build yourself back up at these organizations and they have one way of doing things, you gotta be patient and you gotta have relationships, build relationships to get things done within those organizations. So that was the biggest thing that I did out the gate, is get relationships with the right people at this organization. Where before as all I can do is send a simple email and it will just happen here it was about gaining relationships with the right people at these organizations are to make things happen. That was a huge adjustment.

[09:45] – Relationships, Referrals, and the Word-of-Mouth Engine

Michael Zipursky: So first, one or two clients just come from the relationships, and people hearing that, you know, you’re quote, unquote, kind of open for business. What’s working today? When you think about building that pipeline, attracting ideal clients, what is most effective for you today?

Eddie Monroe: The relationship is still the biggest factor, and it’s about the word of mouth, the referrals. When I went into that first contract, my mindset was, this is what I was thinking. I had already contacted probably 19 or 20 people. I kind of foresaw that if things go well, this company here, they’ll see what I can do and they’ll come in and they’ll say, hey, Eddie, we got a hundred more projects. Can you get somebody else just like you to come in and help out? It did not work that way. They did not text me one time to do that. So what happened is when I got the contract, because another relationship that came about, and they said, hey, do you have somebody that can do some project coordination work? Went in, did some really small work for this person that I had a relationship with, and she came on as a subcontractor, and she just said, hey, I’m retiring now, but let me give it a shot. She liked it. And a third company called and was like, hey, Eddie, I heard you’re doing your thing now. I got a couple of projects. Can you send me somebody to help with these projects? What I wanted to happen at that first company that I went to, that didn’t happen. When I put this person on that one contract, she did so well. They came back and said, okay, I need another one of her. I need another one of her. And then six months later, we had four people out there doing contracts. So everything has been about relationships.

Michael Zipursky: I love that. I’m a big believer in relationships. So much so that two of my previous companies had the word relationship inside of it. A lot of people say that in terms of relationships are important referrals, word of mouth. What do you feel you’re doing around that or related to that, that maybe others aren’t? Like, what do you think you’re doing so well when it comes to relationships and being able to spread word of mouth and getting inbound that maybe others aren’t doing as well as you are doing and you think they could benefit from.

Eddie Monroe: So one of the things you mentioned earlier when we were talking, you was like, hey, what makes a great conversation is being vulnerable. So I’m about to have a vulnerable moment with you right now. When it comes to marketing, I suck if sometimes I sit and I check the email and I waited for the phone ring and if it rung cool, we will make something happen. If email came through, we’ll make it happen. What was the differentiator was we built these differentiators. One big differentiator was everybody that’s on a team I’ve been working with or somebody within the team have worked with for years. So you’re not getting somebody random. We don’t do any staffing, any recruiting, no agencies. These are all people that I trust to be adults in the room when I’m not around. And their mindset is like an entrepreneur. So they’re very empathetic. And I put together this DNA, trade all these traits. So I went through over hundreds of PMs and management consultants that I worked with before, and I chose these 19 or 20 folks. And that has been the real stickler. Because one thing that I recognized, and I didn’t realize this till probably two, three years later, is that in the industry that I’m in, and because another stickler is that we are exclusively focused in this area. We don’t have any engineers, architects, DevOps. We are all about project leadership is what we do. What was interesting was that when these clients got wind of these people, they didn’t want to let them go. So the repeat business, it just kept coming and it got me a little bit spoiled, honestly, going into 2025. By mid-2025, I think I got spoiled by just getting in and getting a repeat business. 20. So because of those relationships and because of them getting sticky with clients, that’s been the biggest beneficiary.

[13:37] – The 15-Year Stack-Rank Spreadsheet That Builds the Team

Michael Zipursky: Right. I know you said the business has grown, you know, 50 to 100% per year, give or take. The people is, you’re saying what has really made the difference? Right. So finding, right. Selecting, obviously identifying, so forth. How have you done that? Like, is there a certain platform that you use, a process like, what does that look like for you to actually go through hundreds of different people and find people of this quality or at that level of. Of excellence and expertise?

Eddie Monroe: So one, I had this, you know, I have a few hundred LinkedIn followers, so I would go back some of the previous People that I work with, number one. Number two is out of all the years I worked at Presidio, Insight Networking, Cognizant, you know, Avanon slash Accenture. Through all these companies, I always kept headcount and people that worked on my team. I had a stack rank that I would always keep and I just kept it. I have it from going from 15 years back. I would have their positives and their negatives and I never knew that I would look at it one day and say, these are folks that I want to work with one day. So I ended up going back to that list from each one of those teams. I had hundreds of people that I work with.

Michael Zipursky: What format was that in?

Eddie Monroe: Was just in an Excel spreadsheet. Person name, role pros, cons. I know it doesn’t sound fancy and AI generated, but it is something that worked. That simple is how I found the individuals.

[15:04] – Building a Forecast Pipeline Without a Marketing Engine

Michael Zipursky: Got you. Is there anything that you’re doing today when it comes to systems structure, even people on your team to better manage the pipeline? And I say pipeline. I know that you said you’re not big into marketing. The business comes from word of mouth, you know, doing great work, referrals and all that. But to manage that on an ongoing basis or to be more intentional, more proactive as opposed to reactive, are there any tools, technology, you know, systems, processes that you’re. You’re using to actually manage that?

Eddie Monroe: Yeah. So now to your point, I honestly think that relationship only base can only last for so long. This fractional marketing person that we brought on is really changing how things are being done now. So they put in some ideas that helps out that way. So one of the things we wanted to do on how we can forecast his business and get more marketing is doing more speaking engagements, which has been pretty helpful for us. Another one is we’re doing some PMO workshops and you can get 90 minutes for free. PMO workshop. And it can lead to PMO strength and conditioning to do more business around those folks as well. So we’re trying to market those areas when it comes to getting more business and more clients. And when we talk about forecasting, I have a dashboard that I keep in this dashboard, I have it in Monday.com. it has all of our current projects. It has what we have forecasted, it has. If we did not win it or we did win it, what’s the ETA around it? And I already have individuals assigned to those projects if we get it. Everything is around timing because in consulting with clients, you never know when they’re going to Generate a po. There’s this one contract I’ve been waiting on for two years, Mike, and they still haven’t said it yet, Right. And I was told two weeks ago, hey, we’re going to be ready at the beginning of May. And I just sit there calmly and say, okay, we’ll be ready. And guess what? We will be. If not, we’ll wait. It’s just kind of the game we have to play. Right. And that’s what we do today.

[16:53] – The Founder’s Time Allocation: Delivery vs. Building the Business

Michael Zipursky: Got you. How do you currently allocate your time, Eddie, between delivery and, you know, actually working on growing the business?

Eddie Monroe: So I do delivery probably now, I would say, and probably 60% of the time. The other times are business development, and the other times are trying to come up with ways in the back end to make sure that the consultants that’s on the team are in a good space. Because what happens is you focus a lot on customer satisfaction. We hear that all the time. But if you have employee satisfaction, it kind of bleeds over into the customer. So I spend a lot of time making sure I have those conversations. And if there’s anything that they feel is not right or if there’s anything they want to escalate, I make sure that they’re in a good space. And now I want to leave. And ever since we started, I’ve never had anybody. Well, I’ve had one person call and say, all right, I think I’m going to go ahead and take this one of the job, and it’s been great, but I’m going to do that. But I try to make sure I stay ahead of the game with those guys.

Michael Zipursky: How do you think about that balance? Is your goal? Do you want to be at 60% into the future, or do you have a desire to go from 60% to, let’s say, 25% delivery? Like what. What’s your vision of how you want your role to evolve as the founder and leader of this company?

Eddie Monroe: I’m going to always want to do some type of delivery, but I would rather go from 60% to about 25%. Yeah. If I can do that and spend the rest of the time speaking business development, coming up with no framework methodologies, building more relationships, that would be fantastic.

[18:27] – Tools, Smartsheet, and Using AI to Compress Hours into Minutes

Michael Zipursky: Okay, you mentioned Monday.com, you mentioned your powerful Excel spreadsheet of people. Are there any other tools, technology systems in any area of the business that you’ve brought on or you currently use that you feel are incredibly helpful, or are those the ones you already mentioned?

Eddie Monroe: So Monday.com has been helpful and Smartsheet has been helpful as well because there’s so many things that you can do and create dashboards and it’s flexible. One of the things that we try to do a lot, every client is different, so you have to adapt each time. There’s some clients who don’t want anything to do with any type of Gantt chart or tool. Just send me an email. Right. And that’ll work for me. So you have to be adaptable. But there’s this one client that’s a pretty big client of ours. They’re advocates of smartsheets. So guess what? We went, got a smartsheet license and now we have several licenses of people using smartsheet and we’re doing things with this. So, yeah, those are the soups that we typically stick with.

Michael Zipursky: How, if at all, are you using AI right now? Like what roles I play inside of the business?

Eddie Monroe: A lot of people today are using AI to they take the information, they tell something to Claude, and Claude to give them the information they automatically send to the customer, we’ll use it. For instance, I had usages. Now I had one customer, I was using a subcontractor or working for this company that was using a subcontractor. They came on and they didn’t white label anything. So they put everything inside their company instead of the company that the client knows. So we were able to take AI and say, hey, let’s transfer this from this company. And we wanted to put in this template. Otherwise it would have taken me probably six or seven hours to do it. AI did in 17 minutes, if that. So we’re using AI to speed things up when it comes to tracking meetings, tracking notes, putting calendars and putting plans together. We’re using it to condense the time so we can focus on the customer and strategy more than anything. And that’s the way we’re going to keep using it. And anything that we get from the air side of it, we’re always tweaking it and putting our touch on it.

[20:28] – Team Structure, Pillars, and Where CCE Is Expanding Next

Michael Zipursky: So the team today, about 17 people, give or take. What does that look like? Can you just maybe talk about what the team looks like and how you’ve actually thought about building that team in terms of roles and when you decide to kind of hire people.

Eddie Monroe: Yeah. So right now you have me, you have a fraction of cfo, fraction of marketing, back office, operations coordinator, and then you have three management consultants that only focus on strategic advisory. And then everybody else is delivery leaders and business analysts, and that’s project management as well. So that’s kind of how it focuses right now. Our pillars of business is we do the project management as a service and we only lead technical engagements as well. We do projects managers, we do PMO consulting, we do strategic advisory. But the next two things we want to get in is trying to get into some government contracts to see if we can get into that as well. And another one we’re trying to do is manage services from a project management standpoint. You hear a lot about managed services when it comes to technology. After the project is done, operational support, they come in and they provide staff org or have somebody monitor it. But you don’t hear about it from the project management standpoint. So we’re building up that practice right now to add another pillar to our organization.

[21:45] – Hiring Only When the Contract Is Signed

Michael Zipursky: And have you historically hired before projects are in so that you’re in a position to place somebody right away? Do you tend to wait until the PO is there? What’s been your approach to the resource allocation of people? I know that a majority of your team are contractors and some spend, you know, almost all their time working with your company. But how do you kind of navigate that chicken and egg situation that for a lot of people, should I hire first before the, you know, the projects come in, or should I hire, you know, only once the business is actually booked?

Eddie Monroe: I have the conversation with them very early on. Had it yesterday. I reached out to this young lady who I think would be ideal for this contract that we’re expected to get around mid May time point. And I have been in conversation with her over the past several months. So what happens is by having conversations where I won’t bring her on until the contract is there. But it won’t be a surprise surprise because we’ve had conversation and she may even get the scope of work before we sign the contract. But once we sign the contract, I’ll have an independent agreement or bring her on as an employee and then they will start once we get the contract. It’s very rare, and I think that’s been one of the winning formulas for us as well. We don’t have a lot of overhead and a lot of expense without getting return on that expense, you know what I’m saying? So once they start and they start billing, we start getting revenue at the same time instead of somebody sitting on a bench. You know, in consulting, they have what’s called utilization and chargeability. And if you’re on the bench, it’s like the curse of death. You know, you get on that bench, people get worried about it. They’re Going to. And I kind of got away from that. That dependency there. So typically, people don’t come on until the work is actually there.

[23:31] – The Four Differentiators That Make CCE Sticky

Michael Zipursky: When you described that first sentence of, like, what you do, quite a few other firms could say something similar. And I know that, you know, I challenge you. It’s like I said, one sentence. You didn’t have the opportunity to kind of provide the secret sauce and the differentiation. So I’d like to get a little bit deeper into that. Right now. Most consultants are working a market where they’re not the only option. There are other alternatives. What do you feel separates the work that you do, the approach that you take? Essentially, what is the differentiation? Why would somebody choose to work with your firm as opposed to other firms that might say that they do similar types of things or offer similar services?

Eddie Monroe: Yeah. So we got three differentiators. Right. One of them is. I mentioned that everybody we know, we’re not finding any. Any person that we have to check the new resume or go through agency. These are all people with proven credibility. Second thing, everybody on the team, regardless of the role, has been leading engagements for at least 10 years. Even if somebody wants to come in as a project coordinator, they’re getting somebody that’s been in the industry for 10 years. They’re just in a place when their career. They don’t want to work on the long hours or anything like that. I have right now who. She does a lot with her kids. She does a lot in the community. So, hey, just give me something. Give me projects where I can only work 15 hours a week and you’re good. She’s been doing this for 15 years, but she is a gamer, and it changes when you have somebody like that. The third thing is we don’t have, as I mentioned before, any other business that we’re trying to get into from an engineering standpoint. Right. So we are exclusively focused on leadership. You get into a lot of organizations, it’s almost like a big menu because they can do so many different things. This is all we do is lead engagements. Right. The fourth thing that is really around personality, and it’s something that’s hard to put on paper, is that everybody that we have on the team, they think like entrepreneurs. They look at it from a lens of if this was my business, how would I run it? How do the financials look and all those things. So those are our four differentiators. And I really think two of those four have really been what customers gravitate to. And those two being that 10 years and me knowing the People. That has been the two biggest things for sure.

[25:45] – Mentors, Mindset, and the Calm in the Chaos

Michael Zipursky: What do you feel has contributed most to your personal success or what you bring to the company in terms of giving you that competitive edge? Like, you talk right now about the team, what people are bringing, but I’m thinking more about is there something that, when you look at it, it’s your mindset or your upbringing or specific characteristics, like what for you stands out as something like, in my case, from a young age, I would never give up when I wanted to get something done. I would just keep going until I got it. Doesn’t matter if it was at school and somebody said, like, you know, the program that you’re in, you can’t take these courses. No, I want to take those courses. So I’ll just keep going, talking to whoever I need to talk to to get that done. Or sports similar. For me, that’s probably one thing I feel has served me well. What would it be for you?

Eddie Monroe: So there’s three or four. One is similar to you. Growing up, I was heavy into sports. When I stopped playing sports, I needed something to feed that competitive edge. And in consulting, you’re always competing with the next person to try to win the deal and make sure other consultants come in. So I take that mentality with me everywhere I go. So that’s one. The second one is the mentors I’ve had. I can’t downplay enough. I can name mentors at every company I’ve been, and some of them I still talk to today. And things that they’ve taught me, I do not take that for granted. The mentors have been huge. The third thing is coming from humble beginnings and knowing that everything is going to be okay. And watching how my mom was around and how she stayed calm, I am the calm and chaos. I don’t freak out or if something goes crazy, I don’t. I just stay calm and stay the course. Because typically, Michael, it typically works out. If you just stay the course, it’s going to work out. And when I started the company, and because you come from humble beginnings, I never had a vision of what the finance would look like with this organization. I always like, if you just do the right thing, good things are going to happen. Right? And that’s just kind of how it was when. When I grew up. If you just do the right thing, just having those eth and morals and integrity, it just goes a long way. And that calmness added to that. So that upbringing that I had there, those are probably the three things. The team atmosphere, the mentors and just staying calm makes sense.

[28:03] – Healthy Paranoia: The Day the Ideal Client Disappeared

Michael Zipursky: What do you feel is maybe one of the biggest mistakes, lessons learned, you know, experience that you’ve had in the business might be recent, might be in the earlier days. I often find that the things that in that moment feel so challenging can be very acutely painful. We can learn from them as long as we’re open to learn from them. I’m wondering for you, Eddie, if there’s something that kind of stands out when

Eddie Monroe: things are going really well, thinking that they’re going to stay that way forever. Yeah, there were some times and some jobs where I wasn’t thinking forward. I got comfortable and almost complacent and all it took was a switch. And even with this company, we had one client, it was like the ideal client. We had relationships. We had four people working there. We were building their PMO for them. They were easy to work with. They kept the contracts coming. Well out of the blue, the main champion decides he’s going to retire. The second champion that was to follow him for us, he said, if I have to interview for this role, I’m going to retire. Thirty days later they told him he had to interview. He turned in his retirement papers. So we lost those connections. They brought in new people. Those new people wanted to bring in their new regime. It was a whole different culture there. And I think I got complacent. I thought we would be there forever. One of the biggest things I remember now as you ask this question is never take your foot off the gas pedal because anything can change in a matter of minutes. Right. So even though I told you the company is growing or all those things, I have what’s called healthy paranoia. It’s not a freak out paranoia or anything there, but it’s just never being complacent. I told myself years ago when it happened that I would never do it again, but then it happened again about 18 months ago. Now I know I’ll never do it again, but yeah, just not being complacent.

Michael Zipursky: Yeah. One of our long term clients, I wrote about this in the book the Elite Consulting Mind. He kind of shared with me this concept of worry. Well, the idea being almost all good entrepreneurs, similar to what you were just saying, Eddie, are always worried. If you hear worry, it sounds like a negative thing, like, no, no, I don’t want to be worried. His idea was that if you’re not always thinking about what could potentially go wrong, you become complacent. If you become complacent, at some point you’re going to see the negative effects of that as others around you are, you know, are continuing to put their foot on the gas pedal. So I think that’s. That’s a great one. Okay, so final question for you. If you were to go back in time and change one thing to achieve growth more sustainably or faster, what would it be? Just the benefit of hindsight, what do you think you would do differently?

[30:51] – Hindsight: Relationships, Geography, and Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Eddie Monroe: I think that if I had known how massive relationships were a long time ago, I probably could have started doing what I’m doing today way before I started it. I think I took for granted those relationships and taking advantage of those. Right. I think if I look at hindsight, I would have done that. Second thing is, and this goes way back, I think when I went to college, I probably would have went outside of the Texas area because I think it would have made me more diverse because Texas has a way of kind of being, you know, everybody’s kind of has a niceness to them and speaking and. And very helpful. But the world is not that way. Right. So the adjustment to other areas and how people do business, that was something I wish a long time ago. I was talking to this guy yesterday at a function and he was telling him about his kid and he said, yeah, my kid is out in Philadelphia going to Penn and doing very well. I say, is your wife worried about him going so far? He was kind of what we do. He said, when you graduate and you decide that this is what you want to do, like, we just let you go figure it out. It’ll help you so much. He said, that’s what I did, that’s what my wife did, and it helped us so much. It’s the same way if you just go out and just challenge yourself to get to know, it’ll make you more diverse. The reason why I suck in marketing, Michael, is because I’m really an introvert. It’s one of those things where I told you I do these speaking engagements and I actually, I wrote a book and all these things and I do these speaking engagements. If you tell me right now, if Michael, you call me right now and say, hey, Eddie, listen, It is. It’s 3:30. At 4:30, I need you to go speak to a thousand people. I would do it and I would do it calmly in a heartbeat. But if you say, hey, after we speak, we’re going to go hang out at this restaurant and just mingle with people, I’ll be like, not quite sure I want to. Yeah. So if I could, I think if I had gotten out a little bit more at a younger age. I think it wouldn’t be such a complex or a deal for me to be able to engage with other individuals like in a small setting like that.

[33:12] – Where to Find Eddie and What CCE Really Stands For

Michael Zipursky: Well, I think you’ve done a great job on, on this and we’re just having a conversation so, you know, having that one to one conversation that maybe you would shy away from, I think you can lean a lot more into if it’s anything like the conversation we’re having today.

Eddie Monroe: Eddie.

Michael Zipursky: So thank you for coming on. I want to make sure that people can learn more about you, about your company, everything you guys have going on, where’s the best place for them to, to go and learn more.

Eddie Monroe: So LinkedIn always looked at LinkedIn and the website www.ccebusiness.com got a new website, just came out recently, did some upgrades, got some cool offerings there. So yeah, check it out. And I’m very responsive and just looking to help and spread what we’re doing. One other thing is you’re the first person when I do this because the company is called cce. I was shocked you didn’t ask what CCE stands for. I want to kind of say CCE stands for culture and customer experience. We’re big on culture, big on the customer experience. That devoutness to that has been tremendous as well.

Michael Zipursky: Fantastic. We’re going to get all that linked up in the show notes [email protected] Eddie, thank you so much for coming on.

Eddie Monroe: Absolutely appreciate it. Sam.