Don't Buy This Business - Ann Curry

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hey, everybody, and welcome to the worst advice ever got. I'm your host, Sean Taylor, joined by my producer, JB. And today our guest is Ann Curry. Ann is the chief client, strategist and former owner of Cox Curry. Today, Ann consults with her longtime clients, the Atlanta History center and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. She also leads the teams for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia, and the YWCA of metro Atlanta and its Phyllis Wheatley project. Ann's impact to the community is without limits. If I attempted to list out all of the organizations that she has made a major impact for, we'd be here all day, and we want to get to her worst advice she's ever got. So without further ado, Ann, thanks so much for being here today. [00:00:51] Speaker B: It's my pleasure. [00:00:52] Speaker C: Anne, why don't we jump right into you telling us what was the worst advice you ever got? [00:00:58] Speaker B: The worst advice I ever got was, don't buy this business. Your life is fine the way it is. Don't rock the boat. [00:01:06] Speaker C: Can you expand a little bit on where that advice was coming from and maybe what the context of their point of view was, if you can? [00:01:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it was coming from two places, some people in the community who saw that I had been a star volunteer. I was chairing all these boards and doing all these good things in the nonprofit community, and they were like, why would you stop that? Why would you stop doing good for the community? And then some of my friends who said, you know, you don't need the money, as though the only reason a woman would go back to work would be that you needed to earn more money. So why don't you just keep having fun with us and doing what we're doing? [00:01:49] Speaker D: So did you stop volunteering? [00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I did stop the volunteering for a while because I bought a pretty small firm. There were 15 people. It's a fundraising consulting firm, and it took a lot of work to build it into a 45 to 50 person bigger firm. And so sort of, essentially, I worked all the time. [00:02:10] Speaker C: Let me ask you this. Where did the desire or the impetus to acquire this business come from? [00:02:19] Speaker B: I think it comes from an inner drive that I've probably always had. And I also tend to when somebody tells me that maybe this isn't a good idea, then that's motivational to me, and I think maybe it is a great idea, and that is exactly what I want to do. I have a history of that. When I was 17, in a senior in high school, I was applying for a scholarship to Duke, and the principal of the high school said, you know, people from communities like this. I lived in a very small rural community in South Carolina. Don't go to schools like that. And so that made Duke my number one choice, and I was determined that's exactly where I was going to go, and that's exactly what I did. But having somebody say, oh, I don't know, that may be too ambitious, always motivates me. [00:03:09] Speaker C: Let's go back for a minute. You said you're in your forties. You're looking to acquire this business. Are you seeking this advice, or are people just. [00:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I did seek this advice. I went to talk to people. Now, some people said, absolutely, you should do this. I don't want to not say that part, but I got some restrained advice that just said, are you sure you want to do this? [00:03:31] Speaker C: So things were going good. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Things were going great. [00:03:35] Speaker C: And that's in the context of your volunteerism, but I'm assuming it was beyond just your volunteerism and your family, right? [00:03:42] Speaker B: I was married to our partner at Deloitte. We were doing fine. I had two successful children. Everything was great. But I always knew deep in my heart that I could do more. And I needed to test myself to see, is there more you could do? Is there more you could achieve? Can you go beyond chairing the board of the public library or being vice chair of United Way, doing the kinds of things I was doing? Could you be successful running a business? And I needed that test. [00:04:13] Speaker D: Besides the fact that it worked out, what makes this the worst advice you ever got? [00:04:19] Speaker B: Because I think that, as a woman, I continue to worry that people sometimes downplay women's ambitions and sort of pat them on the head to say, it's okay. You don't need to be so ambitious. You don't need to be. You don't need to worry about that. What you're doing is fine. And, you know, that was a long time ago. I'm not sure that that's completely gone away. [00:04:47] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, Hala Monamag was a guest of ours, and she had somewhat similar experience, and she expressed in our episode a very similar feeling that things are different, but maybe not completely, you know. [00:05:04] Speaker B: That'S how I feel. I used to think they would be completely fixed by now. That's not necessarily true. [00:05:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Did you? [00:05:12] Speaker B: And what I do right now is to talk to a lot of other women. I mean, I've had a great life. I had a great career. I had good success building Cox curry. And so I see a lot of men and women who are looking at this, you know, they're 45 or 50. They're thinking about what they want to do with the rest of their lives. But particularly for the women, I sense that same. Not quite sure it's all right to be as ambitious as I am. [00:05:40] Speaker C: Had you been male and been looking to acquire this business, the question wouldn't have been asked. It wouldn't have been asked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally understand. Now, between Duke and this period of time when you make the acquisition, was there a gap in there where you weren't doing those things that were filling that ambition? Or was some of the volunteerism feeling that ambition for you? [00:06:06] Speaker B: Definitely the volunteerism was filling that ambition. But I had a career pretty much like a lot of women my age. You know, I worked until my first child was born. I worked at the predecessor to Bell south and did that until my first child came and then stayed home and did the carpools and all the stuff that one does and started doing volunteer things. And I loved those volunteer things. And I particularly, I confess, loved the leadership. And I wound up chairing a number of boards in the community and providing leadership. And at one point, I was president of the local league of women Voters and my entire board signed up for a second term. And I knew then that if I could get these women to do what they were doing for free, that if I actually had money and could pay them, there's no limit to what I could help people do on their own. [00:07:02] Speaker C: Talk a little bit about this drive that you had and how you thought acquiring this business was going to fulfill that. What was going through your mind about how this could be that avenue for me? [00:07:18] Speaker B: Well, it really was a great combination of a business that would test me but also doing good in the community. So I wasn't leaving that part behind in any way, shape or form. And I am very positive that I've done more good with Cox Currie than I could possibly have done all by myself, leading as many boards as I might have led all those years. So I saw it as a really great way to move my life forward and to sort of figure out, did I like the business side? Could I run the business side? I didn't have an MBA and I was married to a CPA, a partner at Deloitte. So I knew I would have some advice back home and that I could get the, the numbers side would be okay. The people side is the part I loved. Assembling a team. Early on, I figured out that I could get women who had little kids to come and work part time for me. And I built a really good cadre of incredibly smart women who could work 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week. I had somebody who worked 35 hours a week and just took off to drive her carpools. And if you can accommodate that kind of schedule for women, you can get amazing talent to come and be part of your shop. And that's really how I built it. [00:08:37] Speaker D: I got a question just about how you buy a business. Did you just show up one day and say, I would like to buy you? How does that. [00:08:43] Speaker B: No, no. It worked out really nicely. I was the chair of the board of a public library system, and we were building an african american research library, the upper Avenue African American Research Library. And I wound up chairing that campaign, and we hired a firm called Cox and Associates to be consultants for that campaign. And at the end of the campaign, I'll tell you the story. I said to my husband one morning, I'm going to lunch with Frankie Cox, and she's going to offer me a job. He said, how do you know? I said, I can just tell everything. She says I can tell she's going to do it. And he said, what are you going to say? And I say, I'm going to say, no, I'm not working for somebody else. I've been sharing these boards and hiring and firing executive directors, and I'm not going to work for somebody and be their staff. So I go to lunch, and she does offer me a job, and I say a very nice version of what I just said to you. And she said, that's why I want to talk to you. I want to sell the firm. And so I came home that night and said lunch didn't go exactly like I thought it was going to. [00:09:48] Speaker C: You had anticipated exactly what she was. [00:09:51] Speaker B: Going to do, but not the reason. [00:09:53] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, I'm not getting a job, but we are buying a business. [00:09:58] Speaker B: And so the person who was the counter to the other advice was always my husband, who said, that is a fabulous idea. So I borrowed the down payment from him and took off. [00:10:09] Speaker C: Oh, wow. Wow. [00:10:11] Speaker D: Did you know then that it was bad advice or the first couple of years when you started a business, and obviously, there's a lot of things that go into that. Were you like, nope. Still bad advice? [00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think I ever lost my feeling that I was doing the right thing. And, you know, there were some tough times. There was a recession. There was a time that I went on vacation and said to my finance person, do I need to make a loan to the firm before I leave, you know, in case we have to do it while I'm gone. And so it did work out really well. [00:10:42] Speaker C: When you were seeking the advice, were these people who knew you pretty well? [00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I went to people who both had standing in the community, who understood the nonprofit community, who knew the firm, and who knew me. [00:10:58] Speaker C: So, knowing you, what do you think was the impetus for them to say, don't do this, just the contentment, that everything's good. Don't rock the boat? [00:11:07] Speaker B: Well, once again, some of them did say, do it. The person I bought the firm from was a little bit of a challenging individual, and I think some people were like, this is going to be hard to do. It was also maybe the number two or number three firm in town, and there was a. Another dominant firm. And what I did there was pretty immediately to start hiring from the number three firm to make sure that they were sort of out of the competition. And so I hired their best two people, and that worked out pretty well also. [00:11:43] Speaker C: Yes. So there was some genuine concern about your ability to make this a successful venture because of the challenges ahead, maybe. [00:11:50] Speaker B: But I still think the greater impetus for the people who said that was, you're doing a good job for the community, you're doing hard things like chairing the library board. We all know that. That's tough. It doesn't sound tough, but it is tough. Keep doing those things. Don't stop doing that. Don't turn pro. [00:12:11] Speaker C: Don't turn pro. [00:12:13] Speaker D: How did you get so good at it so quickly that it's such a good move to take the, you know, people from the third competition, take their best person, do that. Like, so you go from, I'm on these chairs, I'm doing these boards and volunteering to being an incredible business woman. How'd you get there so fast? [00:12:28] Speaker B: I told you about my competitive instinct. [00:12:31] Speaker C: I mean, you just weren't taking no for an answer, were you? [00:12:33] Speaker B: Correct. Correct. [00:12:34] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:12:35] Speaker B: And, alyssa, I have the good fortune to have owned a business that I truly, really believed in. I knew that we could make things better for the clients. I knew that the outcome was going to be better if we were on the team. And so that's a pretty easy thing to sell. And when I sell my business, I sold it to wonderful David Edson, and here's how I did it. I said to him, you could have $10 million, David, and you could give away money from that every year. You could give away the whole $10 million, but you're not going to come close to making as much difference for the community as you can. If you run Cox Curry and you help, I think the year before, we'd had 130 clients, and you help these clients achieve their goals, it's going to be so much more impactful than anything you could possibly do as an individual. And that proved to be true. [00:13:38] Speaker C: That's an interesting point. So you don't really need to strive for more. That's what I'm hearing, and I think that can be limiting to a lot of people. [00:13:46] Speaker B: Yes, I think that's exactly right. And so what I would say in response to that is one should never bet against themselves. If you've got that inner voice telling you that you can do this or that, you're pretty sure that you can do this and you want to give it a try, you need to listen to that voice more than you listen to the people who tell you everything is fine. Just leave it like it is. [00:14:10] Speaker C: Yeah. I think a number of people who have this drive are also, at the same time conflicted with this inability to see it being successful. Right. They have this pull to do it, but also this fear of doing it. How do we talk to those folks? [00:14:27] Speaker B: I tell you that if your inner drive, your inner voice says that you really want to do it, I think you owe it to yourself and to the universe to give it a go. [00:14:36] Speaker C: You said you were doing this in your forties. Do you think if you had tried to do it in your twenties that you would have been as prepared and ready to go or did some of that time was that important? [00:14:48] Speaker B: Some of that time that was really important time. I learned to lead. I wound up as chair of a lot of the boards that I've talked about, and those leadership lessons were terrific. I also learned how nonprofits work. And so I came to Cox Curry or what was then, and associates knowing a great deal about how nonprofits behaved and how boards behaved. I'd been a board member. I understood the point of view of the board member. I knew what the board member could do and what they didn't have time to do. And so I tried to be to build a firm that would fill in all the holes around that and make all the things happen that a volunteer needed to have happen, because I had been one of those people. [00:15:30] Speaker D: I'm pulling a lot of it is like, where to put your ambition? So you have a lot of drive to lead and doing this, and you're getting a lot of that through the volunteerism, but where do you put that energy? And it's like, okay, well, I can do even more for the community in this other place. So it's not even when I asked you earlier, did you give up volunteering? It's like, not really. Maybe I gave up the quote unquote volunteering but not serving the community. [00:15:51] Speaker B: That's absolutely right. For a long time, I focused on those big needs in the community, on how to get there. [00:15:57] Speaker C: Certainly, I believe that our universe is better because of the success of the business, because of the success of Cox Curry. So talk a little bit about our responsibility beyond ourselves. [00:16:10] Speaker B: I'll tell you a personal story. I grew up in the home with my grandmother, and whenever I did well in school, she would say, the fact that you are smart just doubles your need to do something for the world. It just means you've got to do more for others. And so if you won a prize or you were a valedictorian of your class, she just said, that just means God expects more of you. And so I think that was burned in my brain at a pretty early age. But I truly believe that if you've got these capabilities, if there are these things you can do, and I've had a very, very lucky life. So I have a pretty big debt to that universe that I keep working on paying off. [00:16:58] Speaker C: I like that. It's almost, in a sense, with great gifts comes great responsibility. [00:17:03] Speaker B: Exactly. So anything that you're good at doing, it just means you've got to share that with somebody else. [00:17:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Do you think if you didn't have your grandmother sowing that seed in you that you would have looked at this opportunity in the same fashion? [00:17:17] Speaker B: Maybe not. And maybe I wouldn't have been as competitive as I am because that was also part of her personality. But I was extraordinarily lucky to have that woman, Sally Height Simms, whispering in my ear all the time. And I can, you know, I still, I'm still doing things that most people my age wouldn't be doing. I'm still working about half time, and I'm doing that because there's some things I can still do that are going to make a difference for this community and for others. And so if I can do it, I think my grandmother would say, go do it. [00:17:51] Speaker C: You're still impacting the universe is what you mean. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. [00:17:54] Speaker C: For sure. For sure. What can a young person who wants to make more of an impact in their universe, what advice would you give them? [00:18:03] Speaker B: I'm a big believer in volunteering. There are just so many wonderful places that you can volunteer. If you start out volunteering and you care about and you're passionate about what's going on, you're going to get all these opportunities to do other things. It just grew from that. But nonprofits need excellent volunteers. They need volunteers who bring their business hats into the room and who will think with them and give them advice that they would give as though it were a business. And I've always understood that, that you needed people who would be really serious about these nonprofit boards and do their best business thinking for those boards. And so there's a giant need for that. There are so many causes in this city that people that need volunteers. [00:18:54] Speaker C: We work very closely with nonprofits, and the successful ones are the ones that have a very engaged volunteer base. [00:19:03] Speaker B: Absolutely the core of that success. And I could always tell by the people who came into my office, the chair of the board, the board member that might come along, the executive director, if they were all really good. And those board members represented substantial organizations in town, that this was going to be a success. And it's the difference between really excellent boards and really excellent projects and really excellent capital campaigns and run of the mill. [00:19:31] Speaker C: I suspect that had you not pursued this, maybe you would have had a bit of personal unhappiness or a lack of fulfillment. [00:19:40] Speaker B: I think it would have been more difficult to live with. Yes. [00:19:44] Speaker D: Not to have your husband on the podcast. Ask him what he thinks. [00:19:47] Speaker C: I like that. Yeah. I think many times people think if I work too hard, I'm not going to be happy. I tend to take the other side of the coin. I work very hard, and I get a lot of fulfillment out of that hard work, and I get a lot of happiness out of that hard work and amen. Yeah. Okay. Well, it felt like we were on the same page. There we are. Well, and I think this has been fabulous. And I'm so glad that when people were giving you the advice not to pursue acquiring Cox and associates that you did not listen to it, because I, for one, know a lot about Cox Curry and its impact in the community, and as does most of our listeners in Atlanta. And we're just all thankful for your volunteerism, for your work ethic, for your impact on the community, for really just taking these nonprofits and helping them all do more, impact the community more. It's really, if you hadn't pursued that, I'm not sure Atlanta would have the philanthropic community that it does. So thank you for what you've done. [00:20:51] Speaker B: That's a very nice thing to say. And there's a lot of room for continuing talent. So people need to keep on volunteering. [00:20:59] Speaker C: Well, thank you, Ann, so much for being with us today. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Thank you, Sean. [00:21:03] Speaker C: JB. [00:21:04] Speaker A: We've known Ann and Cox Curry for decades at our firm, and she's always been an incredible leader and created unbelievable impact for the community. So having her share her worst advice she ever got was such a benefit for our listeners today. [00:21:20] Speaker D: We have a, such a wide range of guests, you know, young and old and storied and at the end of their career, the beginning of their career, so many pieces of wisdom. If you don't follow us on instagram, you should, because she's probably got five or six reels just on her own. Pearls you can have. [00:21:36] Speaker A: Oh, there's so many pearls in that episode. I loved her comment about one should never bet against themselves. If they've got that inner voice telling them that you can do this and you want to give it a try, just listen to that voice more than you listen to others. [00:21:52] Speaker D: And you, you owe it to the universe. That's so interesting. [00:21:56] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, are you kidding me? You owe it not only to yourself but to the universe to strive to do more. And I don't know many people that think that way, that they have an obligation. I mean, many people think, all right, I'm obliged to my coworkers or to my family, but to the universe, sure. [00:22:15] Speaker D: All the positive impact you can have and having such an understanding of how wide a positive impact can be is such a great outlook on the world. [00:22:23] Speaker A: Well, the lasting legacy of her grandmother, Sally Height sims, and the impact that had not only on Ann but on the entire communities and is impacted just can't be measured. So what a delight. And I hope that you all were delighted in Anne's episode. If you enjoyed that and haven't listened to some of our other episodes, you should go back and listen to some because many of those episodes, like Anne's, really delivered some great takeaways. We also hope you turn in next week when we drop another episode of the worst advice I ever got.