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Pam Wasley Show Notes Co-founder & CEO of Cerius Executives and Cerius Advisors, Pam Wasley is a serial entrepreneur with multiple decades of knowledge and experience. She has personally sold companies, led a management buyout, and advised hundreds of companies on strategies for growth and higher shareholder value. Pam has served on several private boards and is a highly sought after speaker. She has been featured in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fortune, and Bloomberg Business-week on the topics of mergers and acquisitions, the workforce of the future, and global contingent workforces. Most passionate about I’m the CEO of Cerius Executives, which is a firm that places part time and interim executives around the world. I started this company in 2005 and my passion is to get as many executives out into these companies around the world. These companies don’t have to hire full time executives; there are a lot of complications, it’s very expensive, and there are a lot of labor laws, however you can have these executives on a part time, interim basis and I get the most experienced executives for a reasonable price. I was one of 7 co-founders. We started it as a consulting firm, but consulting wasn’t appreciated back then and there was a lot of competition. I started looking around for different models and I found this model of interim executives in one company in Europe, and I have to admit, I stole it… and there was only one company in the US that used this model, and they only provided executives in the financial space. The idea is that the company gets a very experienced executive that actually has done the things the company is looking for, like acquisitions and mergers, selling companies, raising funds, marketing, sales, operations, etc. and they are capable […] of fast results.  The executives love this type of work; they get to choose the company they work with, the kind of work, and when they work, so for many executives that decided to go on their own, it’s a perfect match. In the past, executives that worked this way were considered to be those who probably can’t find serious full time jobs. Today, there is a huge demand for these people, they have the skill sets that companies usually can’t find and definitely not within a reasonable budget. Pam’s Career It’s funny because I don’t have an industry… I started a retail store in women’s fashion right after collage, and then I switched to medical software, then to telecommunications, and this fourth company is a services company. Being an entrepreneur, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t have anyone to guide me, my mentor was my dad, and he died in an early stage. I made some terrible mistakes and had to backup and start again. I managed to find my way, and had some very successful companies, but what I love about this current company and what I’m passionate about is helping entrepreneurs so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did. Pam’s customers Actually, we have two types of clients. The first are the companies that hire us; they are usually small to medium sized companies privately or family owned, it can vary from a startup to a well established company selling 600 million dollars a year. 20% of our companies are the $1 billion companies that find us through Google. The second type of clients are the executives, these talents are hard to find, so once we get them, we don’t want to lose them again. We want them to be available to us so we treat them very well. We make sure they get paid right away; we try to be very available and responsive to them and to keep tight connections with them. Pam’s best advice about approaching the customers Focus on the customers you already have. It’s easy to retain and get more money from existing clients, because if you know how to keep them as customers; they will stay and buy over and over again. But of course you must keep them, otherwise you have to sell...