Episode 413: Mastering the People Side of Deal-Driven Growth

Corey Kupfer00:00:02Victoria Pelletier is a keynote speaker, published author, board director, and transformational executive with more than 20 years of leadership experience. She's known for her no excuses philosophy, and she helps organizations and professionals develop stronger leadership skills, build personal brands, embrace diversity and inclusion, and create lasting professional success. She's had roles at major companies, such as IBM and American Express. I also know that she's got extensive deal experience, being involved in over forty M&A transactions, some JVs, working with a public company, her own company, all of this great background. I'm Corey Kupfer, and I'm glad to have you here. Victoria, welcome to the DealQuest Podcast. We work hard to make this one of the best M&A podcasts out there, a mergers and acquisitions podcast and dealmaking podcast that goes beyond the numbers, and your background fits that perfectly.

Victoria Pelletier00:00:42Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Corey Kupfer00:00:44Well listen, I'm excited to talk about all of your experience with leadership and with deals and the books you published and the exciting things you have going on. But before we do any of that, I want to take you back to when you were a little kid growing up, maybe eight, ten, twelve years old. What did you want to be? 'Cause I'm guessing a top executive and entrepreneur and deal maker and author and all this stuff, speaker, I'm guessing that wasn't it back then, but you tell me.

Victoria Pelletier00:01:09It wasn't. You'll get a chuckle given your line of work. I wanted to be a lawyer. I remember my mom having me watch a lot of shows with her, and the one that contributed to this particular career aspiration was LA Law. I think I had a crush on Corbin Bernsen back then. So that was the goal, truly from the time I was 10 or 11. I'm like, this is what I'm gonna do. But then I went to university, got an undergrad that I thought would be helpful, but I lived on my own and worked at a bank and got promoted through the ranks and ended up in the business world instead. Although I do think, Corey, I read as many contracts as I might have if I'd gone down the legal path.

Corey Kupfer00:01:53Yeah, it's funny. We have a running joke in my house here with my wife. She has her own business, whatever. And between the number of contracts that she does in her own company and what she absorbs from me, she's definitely an unlicensed lawyer herself. I love it. One other question looking back. What was your first deal of any type? Could be something early in your career, when you were younger, just anything that comes to mind as your first deal.

Victoria Pelletier00:02:26First, age twenty. I bought my first company at age twenty. And it's interesting. I was an actor when I was a teenager through my early twenties, on the side. I was very pragmatic. This is not gonna pay my mortgage. The agency, the casting agency that represented me, the two guys who had founded it wanted to move back out west. And I'm like, rather than shuttering the doors on everything that they'd built, I bought it. This is a long time ago. I just turned fifty, right? So we're talking thirty years ago. I think I paid like ten thousand dollars or something back then for it.

Corey Kupfer00:03:06Wow. For a business acquisition podcast, that's a great origin story. So what was that first company, and what had you think to acquire a company at age twenty?

Victoria Pelletier00:03:12Yeah, so as I said, it was the casting agency that represented me. I had done some work with them in terms of readying some of the newer actors. They did a lot of background actors, so people who had no experience and just needed to get ready to be on set. So I helped them with that, and I saw it was a bit of a cash cow. And so I was like, I can almost do this with my eyes closed. I've always been an entrepreneur at heart, even when I work for large global companies, and I'm more of an intrapreneur within those. And so I just saw incredible opportunity. So although I was wrapping up university, thinking I was going to law school and working beyond that, I brought in someone to run the business. I educated them on it. And then ultimately sold her all of it about 18 months later.

Corey Kupfer00:04:04Wow. It's interesting, because somebody walking into an M&A firm wouldn't expect a buyer that young. Just the idea of being willing to buy a business. Even though I do M&A for a living and have been doing it for forty years, I've spent my whole career in the M&A space, when I was younger I didn't even know what that was. I only got to understand it as a lawyer. My parents worked for somebody. I didn't have many entrepreneurial models at all and certainly no deal making models. And in fact, I've told this story a lot, so I won't go into detail, but I built this business when I was fifteen, hiring my friends, delivering flyers, and I was making a few hundred bucks a week, which in the seventies as a fifteen-year-old was a huge amount of money. And then when I went to college, I didn't sell it. I didn't even understand that that was a thing, that I had clients, that it had an enterprise value, right? Which is funny because now for 40 years I've been doing deals. So you were much more advanced than I was at that young age. I just left for college and left it. In hindsight, I was like, why did I do that? It's crazy. All right, so you buy and sell this business over an eighteen-month period. Talk to us about your journey from there, because like you said, you've worked at some big companies, you were an entrepreneur, and you were involved in a lot of deals over those various roles, right?

Victoria Pelletier00:05:19Yeah. I continued the entrepreneurial spirit. So I think the next transaction was I built a business that I then sold, versus having bought one. But I've been working for mostly publicly traded companies, some private companies, over the years. I remember one of the most intense, and the one that gave me such significant learning. I worked for a publicly traded corporate travel company. We ended a joint venture with a competing partner. We rebranded, we went public, and then we subsequently acquired six companies in 18 months. So that taught me a lot. And I was involved in all parts of it from the due diligence to, and a big part of my career has been on the integration side afterwards, so owning the outcomes once we've acquired the company. And in that one in particular, like I said, six times in 18 months. I spent 220 days on the road that year, and my children were only six and two. That would tell you I took no vacation. It was an intense time. But again, I learned so much. I really learned the importance of the people aspect of things, particularly when we start to think about how do we achieve value. And a lot of my career's been in professional services, where people are buying people in many cases. So that was probably one of the most intense times. And then since then I've sat in a variety of different places. Over the last couple of years, I've very much been looking at target identification, starting some due diligence. Also, in the professional services capacity that I'm in, I do work for clients, and so I have the opportunity to help them with building. A lot of times I often own a transformation practice for the companies I work for. And so helping build business cases, the governance and ongoing reporting back to the board on whether there is an achievement around the value case, but a lot of the integration activities and change management, adoption, those kinds of things.

Corey Kupfer00:07:26Yeah. That's strategic advisory work at its core. So let's talk about that intense experience, right? 'Cause you said there was a JV that ended, right? That was the first thing you said. So obviously no confidential information, no names, but listen, that raises the conversation of deals that work and deals that don't work, or maybe they work for a while and then they're no longer working, 'cause sometimes things just run their course. It may not be that it was a bad deal, and sometimes it is a bad deal. Was it the M&A deal structure, or did things just run their course? We don't often get to go this deep on a JV, so for a few minutes this is a joint venture podcast. Let's take that piece of it. The understanding of why something like a JV could work or not work or run its course. Any lessons on that piece of it?

Victoria Pelletier00:08:03Yeah, that one was, when the JV first came together, it was before I had actually joined the company, but it was two companies that were doing the same thing with strong presence in different parts of the world. So coming together as a JV gave them the opportunity to provide global delivery to clients that they were limited by in the past. But I think when that JV ended, it was really more around aspirations of growth and expansion by each of them independently. So the company that I was with was heavy in Europe and less so in North America. And so that's why the buying spree. Their JV partner had heavy, heavy presence in North America, and the US in particular. And so sometimes it's just that. It's not that it went sour or bad. Just the goals and objectives and shareholders and stakeholders changed in terms of what growth and direction they want to go in, what technologies they want to use, those kinds of things.

Corey Kupfer00:09:08So then they ended up doing acquisitions to get a US presence. Was that a big focus of the acquisitions?

Victoria Pelletier00:09:14Yeah, so your listeners might hear the slightest bit of an accent. I am originally from Canada.

Corey Kupfer00:09:20It's funny, there was one of the words you said earlier, and I said in my mind, Canadian.

Victoria Pelletier00:09:27Yes, yes. Out and about will always give me away. Most people say I don't really sound Canadian except for those two words. So yeah, I worked for the Canadian company, which was part of the UK-headquartered company. And so yes, when that JV ended, the acquisition spree was six companies in the US. And so that was when I first got relocated to the US, back in two thousand six, for that. And so that was how they immediately responded to the end of that JV, building up the presence that they lost through the partnership they'd had previously.

Corey Kupfer00:10:03It's so fascinating for me, 'cause one of the things I love talking about is that there are all types of structures and deals, right? That's what deal structuring is about. And a lot of people, first of all, there are many entrepreneurial growing companies that just focus only on organic growth, and they're missing this opportunity for deal driven growth, for growth through acquisitions and other kinds of deals. And then second of all, some of them get to know one type, and they only do M&A, right? Which is fine. But there are times when a joint venture or a strategic alliance or a licensing deal or a distribution deal or whatever it is makes sense. All of those are strategic deals. And in fact, sometimes JVs can lead to acquisitions or mergers, right? In this case, obviously, it didn't. But then they went in. So yeah, talk to us about the order. Did they go public and then do the company acquisitions, or vice versa, or was it in the middle?

Victoria Pelletier00:10:47I think the first of the six acquisitions was before they went public. And then very quick succession. Like I said, the six in total were done within eighteen months.

Corey Kupfer00:11:00Wow. Yeah, and listen, one of the things is there are various clients of ours in certain industries where the IPO market's starting to develop. We see firms in wealth management M&A, for example. Anyone who listens to a private equity podcast has heard about these serial acquirers, PE-backed serial acquirers, who are building models that are attractive to the public market. That's private equity M&A at work. And that means single brand, integrated, the ability to scale quickly. That's what public markets want, so it's not surprising that a company that goes public does a bunch more acquisitions like that. But one of the things you talked about is the due diligence and integration side. That's where a lot of companies go wrong, right? Especially when they have this speed or pressure to grow. Managing acquisitions after the close is a different discipline. The first question is, do they have deal discipline, are they doing good deals financially or whatever? But let's say even if they have that, a lot of times what they don't take into account is, hey, you actually have to integrate these, whether it's technology, whether it's culture, whether it's keeping key people, whatever it is. So yeah, talk about that piece of it, especially doing six deals in eighteen months. That's real deal volume.

Victoria Pelletier00:12:07Oh yeah. So in that case, again, it was a services-based business, and people do business with people. So what I learned very early on was around understanding some of those dynamics around those key people. And in this case, clients. I ran North American service and operations. So I don't know, 80% of the employees reported up through me. And it was really important. So we're buying a book of business, but the people that supported that. And the greatest test of my patience ever was probably this example. It would have been very easy. The CEO wanted to gain significant synergy savings. And so he kept making me go through restructure, restructure, not just because of the acquisition. And at some point I needed to tell him, Tom, we need to stop the death by a thousand cuts. It does not work. So let's be a little bit more mindful around this. There was one where he was eager for me to really take some of the people costs out. So here I was, this twenty-something-year-old Canadian who was newer to this particular industry, getting moved to New York. And so I had this native, tough New York woman who was 30 years my senior, who I very easily could have just restructured out of the entire deal. She ran a $250 million portfolio, client portfolio, for us. If I had not spent time with that client and understood the dynamic and the relationship between those two, I could have made a huge mistake in exiting this woman. So I knew I needed to keep her. But the exercise in patience was, it took me almost a year to get her fully onside and supporting my leadership. She's like, who's this Canadian young thing who's gonna come and tell me what to do? And so it was a lot of work in building trust with her. But this is one of my greatest success stories, because I remember at the end of that, I think it was the sixth of those acquisitions, I think she came from the first, we were bringing some of the team members in, but because I built that with her, she became one of my biggest cheerleaders, and she helped me get some of those others onside. But like I said, I could have made a very hasty decision had I not understood and spent some time calibrating with clients, and understood the risk of some of the quick changes I could have made.

Corey Kupfer00:14:40Yeah, and listen, you definitely see plenty of examples out there where people make that mistake, right? You see it even in recent M&A transactions. They don't understand who's really important, and what the implications are of some sort of reduction in force, or saying, we have somebody who does that, or whatever it is, where they make personnel decisions. That's where deal value walks out the door, and it's something every M&A team needs to hear. What are some of the places where people go wrong on the integration, in addition to maybe making a bad termination or whatever? What are the other areas where things can go wrong in integration?

Victoria Pelletier00:15:12There's not enough time, I've found, spent on the people aspect of things. I read a research paper from BCG, and they were talking about AI, the value that can be derived through AI. But when I read it, I remember thinking, this is so applicable to just business transformations, deals, etc. They said only 10% of the value of AI comes from the algorithms itself, 20% through the data and the supporting technology, 70% is people and process. And I see that all the time in large-scale transformations, and particularly through deals. So there's not enough time spent up front, not just on the example I gave of understanding more around some of the risk and key institutional knowledge that needs to stay, but how do you bring these teams together? So culture, and culture for me, that word, it's an outcome of a lot of different things. But having a fancy vision, mission, value statement on the wall, that becomes aspiration versus reality if we're not building the leadership, the language, the actions, the behaviors that align to that. And so understanding where they come from. And I'm not breaking confidence as I share this, but I worked for IBM when IBM acquired Red Hat. Red Hatters, the cultures are so much in opposition. So Red Hatters were worried about what does it mean joining Big Blue? They were smart to somewhat keep them separate within the organization, but let them run. I've worked for others where one clearly is purpose-driven, their why is to serve or to sell whatever that product or service is, and it sits with them personally, versus the other that they're coming together with is much more focused on shareholder value and cares a little bit less around that. So understand that, and then you need to build a plan towards that and build in some contingency, because there is going to be some risk and some loss.

Corey Kupfer00:17:17Yeah, totally. This is a business exit podcast as much as anything, so I want to go back. You talked about how, after this first small purchase and sale, you built a company and then you sold it, prior to working at some of these bigger companies. So talk to me about that company a little bit, and the conversation of when you exit, right? And why you exit and how you exit and who you exit to, right? Those are all decisions. Exit strategy advisors talk about this all the time. And there is this sort of default in the entrepreneur world, at least in the funded entrepreneurial world certainly, but even generally. I'm a member of EO, Entrepreneurs' Organization, and there's this thing, I wanna build this business, and then, if you read Gerber and all this other stuff, you wanna build it where it's not relied upon you, and you wanna create enterprise value, and then you wanna be able to sell it. But not all businesses achieve that. And listen, frankly, many exits are not life-changing exits. There are other reasons why. So what was your journey a little bit there, and why did you decide to sell and then move into other things?

Victoria Pelletier00:18:22Yeah, so it's so opposite of where I've spent my career, but it was a passion project that turned into a business. I built a natural bath and body works company. It was because I had a personal interest in natural soaps and creams and lotions. So it started by me just doing it for personal use and pleasure and joy. But by the way, you don't make a single bar of soap. You make a loaf that you cut into ten or twelve or whatever, right? So I ended up with so much product that I built Christmas baskets and gave them away to friends and family and neighbors. And it was so popular. I'm like, huh, maybe I have something here. So here I am, corporate executive by day, and in the kitchen building this by night. So it was a passion project, but it scaled so quickly. And it was in the early days of online retail, and so it exploded. I remember having my ex, my stepdaughter, my nanny at the time, all working on the business. And it continued to scale and grow. And I exited at a time when it wasn't so massive, but I could no longer manage it, and it had grown to a size and scale that the ability to manage it with the resources I had around was too much. And so I ended up keeping the name. I sold all the assets and inventory and a lot of the proprietary recipes that came with it, and made money there. But that was a choice, and a time in my life where, like I said, I was on the road pretty significantly, scaling this and managing it, mom to two young children and a stepdaughter as well. I feel like at some point you make the decisions that are right for you in balancing all that is life. 'Cause otherwise I could have continued with it, and I'm sure it would have continued to grow and be much more successful.

Corey Kupfer00:20:13Yeah, just priorities. On a succession planning podcast, the question of who you sell to comes up a lot. A lot of owners bring in a sell side M&A advisor and run a process, so I'm curious how sell side M&A worked for you. Not in terms of names, but what type of buyer was that? Was it some external company? Was it a customer? Was it employees who ended up buying it?

Victoria Pelletier00:20:27Yeah, it was an external customer. So a retailer who bought a lot of the products ended up buying it.

Corey Kupfer00:20:34Yeah, awesome. Awesome. So listen, you've seen so much. A lot of people don't have what you have. You have all sides of it, right? You're an entrepreneur yourself, you bought a company, you sold two companies, you've seen M&A deals from the inside at much larger companies, private companies, public companies, right? So in terms of your perspective on business growth, and we'll keep it in the deals category for now, but then I definitely want to start talking more about your writing and your leadership stuff and whatever. It's a broad question, what you learned, but having seen all of those different aspects, what are some of the key things that you've seen in terms of what makes people and a company successful with deal driven growth, and what makes an M&A strategy work? And where are some of the mistakes made?

Victoria Pelletier00:21:29Hmm. I guess the good consultant answer is it depends. I've seen it go wrong for a whole host of reasons. The third company that I bought and sold went poorly. And it's 'cause the woman I bought it from misrepresented some things through due diligence, and so I had to sue her and whatever. And so I came out of it, but I reflected on that. What could I have done? And so I often see a lot go wrong because of due diligence. And so I'd learned a lot going into that. So again, she misrepresented, so there was legal action, but there's far, far too much, I think, missed in a lot of that. So I think it's that component. We've already talked about a lot of the integration pieces that I see go incredibly poorly. Interestingly, I also see that there's a value case built for a deal, and on my end a lot of it's been acquisitions, and the CEO or the board or whoever's orchestrated it, corp dev, who's doing it, then just sort of leads it and lets someone else go behind it. And they're like, well, why aren't we seeing the value being derived from this? And, well, who is accountable for it? Do you have, centrally, call it a transformation office? I rebranded, actually, in my last company. I built a value realization office, which included a combination of strategic PMO and where are we reporting on all of the pieces that contribute to value. And some of those are less tangible. We're not just talking top and bottom line growth. There's all the pieces that contribute to that in the middle. And so understanding that, making sure of that, that's one where I actually see a lot of things, even not just on the deal making. I'm just thinking of transformational deals. We're bringing in new technology, we're doing a reorganization and restructure, we're going to have a new go-to-market plan, whatever. But seeing that through end to end, that's where I see a lot of it go wrong.

Corey Kupfer00:23:39Love that. That's great M&A advice, and the diligence piece is the kind of thing good buy side M&A advisory should catch. So tell us a little, listen, you've got what is it, three or four books now? I know you have one coming out in the fall. I don't know if that is book four or book five. And I know you have one recently.

Victoria Pelletier00:23:46That'll be book five. I just had book four come out earlier this year. Book five comes out later this year.

Corey Kupfer00:23:52So tell us about these books.

Victoria Pelletier00:23:56Yeah, so there's a few things that are really, really close to my heart in terms of what I contribute a lot of my career success to, leadership success. So book number two and five, it's around personal branding. So again, being in professional services, B2B business, I say people do business with people. I just realize how important it is to build. So as much as, when I lead marketing teams, we've got a corporate brand, people buy the people within the organization. So that was the what around brand. The book coming out in the fall is the how around the brand. And the others in between are around leadership and culture. I got it wrong. I was all business all the time, got a nickname as the Iron Maiden in my mid-20s. And I was like, that's not actually who I am. So how do I show up with the empathy? My nickname is the turtle. I'm extremely resilient and tough on the outside, but I cry at Humane Society commercials. I'm a marshmallow, right? So I've written on some of those lessons as well. And then a more recent one around transitions. So as people are thinking about pivoting or making transitions, how do you do that with a lens on not just the right what in terms of the work you do, but the people you're gonna choose to do it with.

Corey Kupfer00:25:14Love that. On that last point, I know we're on a recorded podcast, but I need to connect you with my wife, because she's got a book that looked at people re-examining, it's called Intentional Ambition. It came out this past year. And it was all around people examining their relationship to work, the way they work, where they work, coming out of the pandemic and various of these things that have made people reevaluate their lives and what success means to them, and the discussion of ambition and what are the healthy drivers of ambition and what she calls the wounded drivers of ambition. So it just feels like there's synergy in terms of part of what you do as well. Going back to, I appreciate you sharing. I love this turtle concept. It's funny, 'cause it's a little different, but sometimes people assume something, especially when I was living in New York, this New York corporate deal lawyer, what that means and who that is. And certainly there are times when that side of me is present, right? But then they get to know me, and yeah, I cry at commercials as well. So it's funny. I know your bio mentioned D&I and things like that as well. I'm curious, and this is not particularly deal related, but I'm curious. I remember when I was coming up, and we're going back, I've been doing this for forty years, right? But when I was coming up, I was blessed to work at a first law firm that had shocking diversity for the time. We're talking about the eighties. There were several female partners, which, back in the eighties in law firms, was very rare. There was a Black male partner, there was a Black female partner. These things were not heard of back then. And it was one of the reasons I liked the firm. One of the things I noticed, though, was the young female associates used to tell me, in terms of this tough conversation, they didn't like working with the female partners, because I think it was the journey that they had. It was so tough for them to come up at the time they did, right? And they'd take on this persona to deal with the male-dominated society. And I've been hoping that has changed a lot over the years. And I've heard mixed things, frankly, from women that I know as to whether that has evolved a lot or has not. And some of them have had very great experiences. So I don't know if you're open to talking about that, but this conversation of the persona we need to show up with in certain situations, and how it aligns or doesn't align with who we really are.

Victoria Pelletier00:28:06Yeah, I have seen an evolution, Corey, over the years, but the pendulum hasn't swung to the place I think it should. I entered the workplace in a very command and control, top-down, thou shalt, as a leader. And also very few women. When I stepped into my first executive role at 24, I was the only woman. I was the youngest by two decades probably. And so I'm used to it. But then I think of, now this is technology, when I worked for IBM, I remember being the most senior woman in the room. So that's great, that had changed. But I was leading a strategy session in our largest boardroom in the office I was working in, and it was myself, 40 men, and only one other woman. This is just a matter of years ago. And so I'm saddened that in the US in particular, we've seen the pendulum swing back. I know that post George Floyd, the diversity issues really swung it, but I think the reality is the data is the data when you look at the number of women that hold CEO positions, right? It's gone backwards over the last number of years. Let's not even get started about African Americans in those positions. So we're nowhere near where we need to be. But then the other thing that you touch on, Corey, is how I think we need to show up. So I've always been very confident, or showed up confidently, even when I didn't feel it truly inside. But in many cases, that, coupled with a position of power, quote unquote, or being higher in that hierarchy, has gotten me nicknames that my male counterparts wouldn't get. Right. So I'm considered aggressive versus assertive, right? There's so very different vernacular used to describe women in the workplace that have the same characteristics or traits as their male counterparts. And one last thing is, I made a choice. So I tell my team all the time, do as I say, not as I do. I chose to take little to no maternity leave when I gave birth to my two children. That was my choice, but people made me feel guilty for that. Yet my ex was at home with the kids at that time, right? So we traded places, and so I still haven't seen some of that evolve necessarily.

Corey Kupfer00:30:35Yeah. It's interesting, 'cause I had the pleasure and the honor to speak at, so Entrepreneurs' Organization has several communities. I ran the Deal Exchange community for a couple of years, right, which was the global EO members who were interested in deals. And then there's an under thirty-five community, and there's an EO Women community. And I got invited and had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the EO Women Summit last year, the one before this most recent one. And I was talking about deals, and I lead these almost deal speed networking things, almost like speed dating, but you talk about your needs and deals. There's one where you go down the table, and then there's one we do round table. So we did this one round table. And one of the contexts that I created, which was powerful for a lot of the women there, was that people have a perception of what a deal maker is, right? And frankly, some of those perceptions are not necessarily accurate. Some of it has accuracy in it, some of it's not. But there's almost a masculine-dominated energy that is associated with deal making, like I'm gonna negotiate a deal, whatever. It's the image you get from almost any negotiation podcast, M&A negotiation as a contest. And what I said to them, and a number of them came up to me afterwards, because I said, listen, the best deals are about relationships, right? It's about starting or continuing, right? And the deals that work out are the ones that are the start or continuation of a great relationship. And as a lawyer, I know that, because I can draft the greatest contract in the world. The deal's not gonna work out or not work out based upon the contract, right? It'll work out or not work out based upon the relationship, or the working relationship. Now, the contract will hopefully create some clarity on everybody's roles and then give you legal rights if it doesn't work out, right? But that's not where it's built. And I said, again, with all the asterisks around gender stereotypes, I said, listen, if anything, women are better relationally than us men, right? So if you look at deals as relationships, you all should be doing more of these and be better at it than we are, right? A relationship-first M&A approach plays to that. And really that shifting of the context around it was a breakthrough for a number of the women. I really believe that, 'cause I see more male-dominated businesses growing through deal driven growth, and a lot more women-owned businesses, and again, there's a million exceptions, but looking to always grow organically. And I think it's not like you have to do it, but at least you should have that tool in the toolbox as another way to do it. And so I don't know if that aligns, that was just my observation, and it was great to see them see, yeah, I can do deals.

Victoria Pelletier00:33:21Yeah, no, I think you're right. But I also think that, for me, that's how I lead in business. I've said it, I'll repeat it again, but people do business with people. And so for me, even in terms of growing business organically, I do that from a place of both strategy, but also intention with who I choose to build a relationship with. But then for me, it is not transactional. There's a great book on networking called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. And he's a shameless self-promoting consultant. He's got a new book that's come out, which is great. There were some amazing nuggets in that book, and one of them has always sat with me. I build relationships from a place of generosity and not greed. I don't know if I'm a big believer in karma, but the universe, energy, whatever. But I'm gonna come at it from, let's build a real authentic connection here. And yes, am I hopeful that we're gonna do business together and it's gonna have a great outcome for both of us? Yes. But I'd rather get to know you, build a real relationship, and then there's trust and there's a foundation for us doing something together.

Corey Kupfer00:34:42Yeah, I love that. You're right. It applies in deals, but it applies in any kind of business. I recorded another podcast interview earlier today, and it was with somebody who, right out of college, went to China and lived in China for over a decade in business there. And he was talking about the cultural differences. In China, it's true in Japan, it's true in a lot of places, you can't be transactional. You have to build a relationship first, or else there's no chance. In the US, there are people who do deals transactionally and there's no relationship. I agree with you. I'm the same way. That is not the best way to do it, but you can do it. Whereas in other cultures, you can't do that. They will not do a transaction with you without a relationship. It's just not culturally acceptable.

Victoria Pelletier00:35:32Yeah, one hundred percent.

Corey Kupfer00:35:33Yeah. So all right. Listen, you've got such extensive M&A experience and background. Talk to us a little bit more about what you are doing now. What are you focusing on? I know you've got a book that came out, I know you've got another one coming, I know you do some speaking. Yeah, what are you up to?

Victoria Pelletier00:35:51Yeah. So I made a decision to leave the tech company that I'd been working at for the last couple of years, to explore the next bigger and better things. So maybe I'll get connected to some of your deal people, Corey, 'cause I'm looking to go in as a CEO or a number two into one of these firms. I don't know if I'll acquire again. I am doing some work with some AI companies and some advisory on the people side, a little bit of executive coaching, and yes, I do a ton of public speaking as well. So that will keep me busy with lots of travel. That's my plan for the summer, and then until I land the next thing. My definition of success and how I choose to spend my time has evolved over the years. I do not do things personally or professionally that don't bring me joy or value. So whatever those things are in front of me, they're gonna bring some joy and value.

Corey Kupfer00:36:46Love that. Love that. And that's super important to me as well. It's funny, because in my world, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people who grow businesses, and some of them are early stage, some of them have grown very big companies. And there is this sort of default view that, great, I'm an entrepreneur now, so nobody tells me what to do. And then I see some people build businesses that actually don't bring them joy and don't make them happy. And some of it is because, listen, you mentioned karma and the universe and whatever and energy. I'm so aligned with all of that stuff. And I'm also a big believer that the real game in life is the internal body of work, right? If you do the internal body of work, then the external is gonna manifest. And I feel like a lot of folks, even entrepreneurs who seemingly have more control of our destiny, there are forces that, like even this idea you have to scale. Well, you know what? You don't have to scale, right? Or you have to raise capital. Tune in to any capital raising podcast and you'd think that's mandatory. No, you don't. Maybe if you want certain objectives, right? If you're trying to create a tech unicorn, yes, you probably gotta scale, and you probably gotta raise capital. But is that what you really want? And I've seen a lot of people build businesses, and they get bigger and bigger, and they don't necessarily make more money, or if they do, they don't have time to spend it and whatever. So I love that you're saying this conversation of bringing joy. And some people might say, sure, she has the luxury to do that, she's had success already and whatever. But I think it does go the other way. I think it's not as simple as follow your passion and you'll be successful. There's a lot else you need to do. But why are you doing it if you're gonna be miserable, right?

Victoria Pelletier00:38:31Yeah, 100%. I sign the majority of my social media posts with two hashtags. One of them is unstoppable. That's my philosophy, that's my motto. But the other is no excuses. And by that I mean you have choice. Why be miserable? Change. Make a choice to change. And like I said, even when I sold that bath and body works company, that was a choice I made. It was successful. But how I was gonna choose to spend my time, and the limited resources and hours in the day. So I made that decision. So I would tell your listeners that, very much so. I agree, it's not just follow your passion, although I think that helps, but at the end of the day, you need to ask yourself why.

Corey Kupfer00:39:21Yeah, I love that. And the willingness to evolve and whatever. And you've obviously done that, because you've done so many different things in different roles. Before I ask you my final two questions, is there anything you're seeing, whether it's on your personal journey, whether it's trends, whether it's on the deal side, the M&A business side, or the entrepreneurial side, anything that's particularly piquing your interest right now?

Victoria Pelletier00:39:50I'm spending a lot of time in and around AI. Again, I've been working in the technology space, professional services tech space, for a while. I lead all of the pieces that make it successful. And so I'm seeing a lot of failure for those who are either implementing AI, or even AI startups right now, because of product-market fit and speed to market. But where I'm seeing failure, again, is to understand. Let me go back to that BCG stat, the 10-20-70. And so I'm having a lot of conversations with companies, even in terms of how are they gonna fund AI. They're thinking they're gonna take costs out of the business, but they don't have large-scale adoption yet. So I'm actually working to re-architect whole org structures and the jobs themselves, in part to fund the AI that they want to do to drive different outcomes in their business. So it's kind of chicken or egg for some. No one is doing AI at scale truly. Even if they say that they are, I haven't seen anyone truly move well past proof of concept stage to enterprise-level AI.

Corey Kupfer00:41:00Yeah, it's gonna be fascinating how that evolves. And obviously, listen, like any other new technology, there's always gonna be an evolution of winners and losers, and some of the early players don't end up being the ultimate winners, right? There's a million examples of that in the past. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that evolves. And it's funny, because all you hear about is AI, and I think some folks are, it's a rabbit hole, and some folks are confused. Some people are already tired of hearing about it. But listen, every EO entrepreneurs lawyers meeting, we spend a chunk of time on what people are doing with AI. Lawyers doing M&A work are paying attention, and so is the rest of the M&A industry. I just had a demo from an AI product for law firms. You have to pay attention to this stuff. One of the things I always say, if you look at any kind of evolution, often technology, but it could be social or regulatory, whatever, there's always companies that are on the cutting edge. There are companies that come along, right? They may not be the early adopters, but they come along in time. And then there are often the majority of companies that get left behind. And you don't have to necessarily be on the cutting edge. In fact, there's the most upside there, but also a lot of those people go out too early or don't make it. But you certainly gotta be in that second group, where you come along in time.

Victoria Pelletier00:42:29Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Corey Kupfer00:42:31Love it. So Victoria, if people want to find out more about your books, your speaking, anything else you have going on, where do they go?

Victoria Pelletier00:42:39I have a website, which is victoria-pelletier.com. I'm sure that will be in your show notes, so they don't need to figure out the spelling. And then if they want to connect with me on the various social platforms, LinkedIn or wherever, they can do that from there.

Corey Kupfer00:42:52Awesome. Victoria, my final question on the podcast is always about my highest value in life, which is freedom. And for me that means everything from freedom for people around the world from oppression, to why I've been an entrepreneur for decades and haven't had a boss. What does freedom mean to you, and how does it impact your life and business?

Victoria Pelletier00:43:08Freedom for me is actually choice. Choice in how I spend my time, my money, confidence to say no to the things that, again, don't bring me joy or value. And jokingly, when I met my husband, I said a big part of that too is, life is too short to drink crappy wine. So, freedom.

Corey Kupfer00:43:35You and I are aligned on that. It's funny, I usually end here, but it just reminded me. People ask me, even great socks, there's small things you could do, mini luxuries you can do in life, just everyday things that make your life better. And if you have the freedom to do that, that's amazing. And to everyone listening, if you've wondered how to be a guest on a podcast like this one, or how to get on a podcast as a guest, we're a business podcast looking for guests with real deal stories. You can be a guest on a dealmaking podcast by filling out our podcast guest application at beaguestondealquest.com. We'd love to hear from you as a future M&A podcast guest. Victoria, thanks for being such a great guest on the DealQuest Podcast.

Victoria Pelletier00:44:03Thanks for having me.