JOHNSTON COMPANY

Why Johnston Co Events?

jjadmin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:56:04 +0000

About Johnston Company Invitation-only CEO Gatherings

Johnston Company offers peer-to-peer gatherings with dinner. Only presidents and CEOs attend. Jim Johnston sets the tone with relevant discussion questions. Some of the events have kick-off speakers. Some are led by Jim himself. Read more about Jim.

Our event format is comfortable and inviting for CEOs

As a CEO, everyone who comes at you wants something. Not at these events. Nobody is pitching you, working a pet topic, protecting turf, complaining, or putting pressure on you. Everyone around the table is a peer who knows what it is to be in the lonely CEO role.

At Johnston Company CEO gatherings, you can:

speak candidly while networking with peer CEOs
enjoy a low risk investment: you attend only for the topics that interest you
have flexibility combined with a low time commitment

View Comparison Chart: How Johnston Company Events Stack Up to Others in the Industry

Here are a dozen quotes and highlights from participants of a Johnston Co. CEO gathering:

“Clients seldom know their own costs to do something, yet they “know” what I’m charging is expensive. We try to help them see the reality, including the cost of delay.”
“50% of our revenue is from repeat customers. Do a good job, call them a couple of times, they buy again.”
“It’s a fine line between great clients who need help and know it, and lousy clients who are clueless. With clueless clients we have to be very clear about who is going to do what.”
“We use 20-page proposals, with price on the first page instead of the last. We give a low, medium, and high price, and explain the implications.”
“Glengarry Glen Ross is the ultimate sales movie-true to life and painful to watch.”
“Some channels and partners screen the work so as to send you the good stuff-others reliably send you the junk.”
“We started using Hubspot for search engine optimization and had immediate results.”
“Our best partner cut off the flow of leads when they perceived us as competing with them. We scrambled and got them back.”
“The experience we give the client is as important as the quality of our deliverable.”
“We do fixed price if we really know what we’re doing. Otherwise, we do time & materials.”
One CEO: “Our best relationships are time and materials.” Another CEO: “Our best relationships are fixed price.”
“It’s a good thing that it’s so hard to estimate right, stay in scope, match the right people to the work, develop re-usable solutions, and finish on time. If these things were easy, my clients wouldn’t need me.”

For more information about our Invitation-only CEO gatherings: ClaireS@JohnstonCompany.com

Building and Selling Your Company

jjadmin — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:54:55 +0000

Join us for peer-to-peer discussions designed for CEOs running small to medium sized companies in New England. We have invited speakers with compelling stories. Each gathering includes dinner, speakers, and discussion.

New Date – January 11, 2012: Building and then Selling a New England Food Company

Register

Time: 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Place: Aloft Hotel, Lexington, MA

Kick-off Speaker: Jerry Shafir, founder and CEO of Kettle Cuisine (Chelsea, MA). After 25 years of doing every job and building the business, last month Jerry achieved a brilliant culmination, in a deal with Arlon Capital Partners, the investment arm of Continental Grain.

Discussion Points:

Should I build my company with the explicit goal of selling it?
Impact of a board of directors with outside members
M&A intermediary’s role
Preparing for a sale—five years, two years, one year, and six months beforehand
Choosing when to sell
Fielding unsolicited inquiries from acquirers and intermediaries
Navigating the intense phase of buyer vetting and deal negotiation.

Register

jjadmin — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:16:58 +0000

Interested in a CEO gathering? Click on the title/date below and follow to the registration page:

Building and selling a company in New England: January 11, 2012

____________________________________________________________________

Questions? ClaireS@JohntonCompany.com

Recent CEO Events

jjadmin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:38:21 +0000

Food CEOs: Building Branded Sales through Retail Chains (September 2011)

Kick-off Speaker: Brad Sterl, founder and CEO of Rustic Crust (Pittsfield, NH). Brad’s Rustic Crust brand par-baked pizza crusts are now available in 5,900 retail locations. His American Flatbread brand frozen pizzas are available in 2,700 retail locations. He also has significant private label business.

Discussion Points:

Pros and cons of branded vs. private label. Can I do both?
Slotting, coupons, manufacturer charge-backs, sampling, consumer events, and advertising pros and cons. How much should I spend? Any keys to tracking all this spending?
Gross margin targets
Managing brokers
Expanding beyond the first region or type of retailer
Identifying the influential retailers for my product
Trading horror stories.

Selling Your Company (June 2011)

Our kick-off speaker for the event was Salvatore Lanuto:

Sal joined JJWild, a small manufacturing rep firm with revenues of under $1M, in 1991. He became President in 1996 and CEO in 2000. Upon joining the company he directed major strategy shift to leverage its long standing relationship with Meditech Information Technology, one of the top Hospital Information Systems in the country. Refocusing the company on healthcare IT integration, the company became Meditech’s largest integrator, growing top line revenue to over $90M at the time of its acquisition by Perot Systems in 2007. Perot has since been acquired by DELL. Just one year before, he orchestrated a company recapitalization, partnering with private equity firm Advent International, and GE Capital. Prior to joining JJWild, Sal was Vice President of Marketing for Esprit Systems Inc., a leading manufacturer, seller, and distributor of computer terminals. Sal also worked at Hazeltine Corporation, a defense contractor and developer of high tech systems for the government. Sal earned his B.S. from Columbia University.

Sal has recently come out of retirement to direct start up company Service Heartbeat. Heartbeat provides software that enhances the use of mobile technology to improve communications among healthcare providers in order to drive better healthcare delivery.

The roundtable focused on these discussion topics:

Systematically find buyers
How to get the best deal
Managing stress and risk of a transaction
Life after the sale
Pros and cons of building a business with the explicit, constant goal of selling it
How far ahead should you plan a sale?
What makes an owner ready, personally, to sell?
What makes a business ready to sell?
Should you try to predict who will buy and why?
How can you deal with an offer you didn’t seek, or expect?

Running Your Project-Oriented Business (March / April 2011)

How important is career path to people I recruit and retain? Should I think about it more?
How can we get delivery people to care about the quality of delivery, client satisfaction, profitability and the follow-on sale?
What makes for a good hand-off from sales to delivery, and a good kick-off of work?
How can I create a 40-, 50-, 60- or 70-hour “culture”, how do I select among these, and what do I do about people who work a lot more or fewer hours?
How do project managers learn to be “revenue-aware”?
Should I think of intellectual property as an important asset, or a sideshow?
What are the keys to identifying follow-on work and selling it?

Johnston Company offers CEO events throughout the year. Only presidents and CEOs attend. Everyone sits at the same table. We begin with mingling and dinner, then have two hours of candid discussion. Events are held on selected weeknights from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.