Creating Problems for Growth. The Power of Disruption with Ted Santos

Right. So either you are going to be disrupted or you disrupt your organization in your industry. So to drive innovation, asking your people to do things they don't, they've never done, there's no blueprint that's a way to gain a competitive advantage.

Today we sit down with Ted Santos, an executive coach and the founder of Turnaround Investment Partners, where He spent over 20 years helping CEOs and organizations reinvent themselves for growth and success. Ted's career reads like a masterclass in leadership. He's run transportation, logistics and translation companies, worked in leadership development, and now he advises high performing executives on innovation and culture change.

In this episode, Ted shares how his entrepreneurial journey was shaped by personal challenges and global adventures. From leading his family through adversity to living with Mayan Indians in the jungle, we dive deep into why he believes CEOs shouldn't just solve problems, but create them to fuel innovation and competitive advantage. Ted also unpacks how to truly transform company culture and the surprising lesson that every leader needs to hear.

Get ready for inspiring stories, actionable insights, and a fresh perspective on what it really takes to succeed. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe. All right, Ted Santos, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Look forward to the conversation. Yes, I look forward to it as well. So, Ted, you've been running Turnaround Investment Partners for 22 years now.

Can you just share with our listeners what was the aha moment where you were like, I've got to build this. Okay, so just for integrity, Turnaround Investment Partners is 20 years. But two years before I started it, I was doing this kind of work. So that's how I get to the number 22. But before turnaround Investment Partners, years ago, I ran a transportation company, transportation logistics.

And I was a guy who was, I was a chief operating officer and I was, I was the guy who was always looking for new opportunities. What are the things we're not selling to clients? And you know, I read a lot and I think I was reading a book about innovation and it told me it laid out the story of American Express. And do you know what American Express started as? And they started in 1850. Do you know what their service was in 1850? I don't. Pony Express. Pony Express.

So they were a transportation company. Essentially, they were delivering your gold or your money. They started New York to Boston and then it was New York to D.C. and Boston to D.C. and then Atlanta and Chicago. And then they were all the way out into California. They were the largest pony express company in the country. And then the revenues were cut in half like almost overnight from a back then technology. It was about 1863 I think. Do you know what? Technology almost wiped them off the map.

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No, the money order. The money order. Okay, so now instead of sending your gold through American Express, you just write a money order, put it in the mail and your money is now transferred just like that. It didn't exist before that. So that's why American Express was so successful. But what American Express also did, and it's, it's part of what drove me, it's like they already had this pony express delivering money and then they started selling seats in their stagecoach.

So imagine they're sending guys with guns to protect your money and now they sell a new service which is if you want to take a ride to with us, from D.C. to Boston or Chicago, you just hop on. So they were making money delivering your money and then delivering passengers on their stagecoach, which was well protected. So that's part of what kept them alive.

And you know, American Express is still a travel company and, and you see that instead of them being wiped out by their competitors from the money order, they had a business already from selling seats. And they, they also created their own money order and travelers checks. So it. What I was seeing was innovation was really important and disruption was happening outside of the Pony Express. It wasn't a Pony Express competitor that created the money order. It was.

And I guess the post office could be almost like a Pony Express, right? They're delivering things. So. But they were disrupted by someone outside their industry.

So that, that kind of gave me this catalyst for really looking at how do you drive innovation in organizations and understanding disruption and how you have to create culture, the kind of culture that will allow that disruption to be executed successfully. So most people don't know American Express didn't get into the credit card business until 1959. So fast forward, I'm, you know, I leave the country and I go exploring the world on my own dime.

I go through several countries and in Latin America, living in jungles, no electricity or running water with mine Indians and living in Costa Rica in the jungle. Come back and run a translation company. Translations of foreign languages. And that was not something I knew about. I spoke other languages, but I didn't know anything about the translation industry. Industry.

But that same mindset that I took from American Express was looking for what are the other services that we can provide to customers. And I did find that. And then from there I went to work for a consulting firm that was very much into leadership development and transforming culture and working there a number of years, and then started Turnaround Investment Partners. Where when I started that. In marketing yourself as an executive coach.

Back then, an executive coach was really for the problem child in the corporation. So it didn't have the best reputation. You know, now people get hired as an executive and they get an executive coach with that. It's kind of an honor. It's. It's a sign of your success in an organization. So one of the challenges starting out with Turnaround Investment Partners was sort of breaking through that stereotype of what executive coaches meant.

It meant that I'm a problem in the company and you're here to fix me. So now it's more about high performance. So what I've done is created this methodology and I really call it a technology that takes my experience of running a transportation and a translation company and creating services that were. Could be seen as disruptive to the marketplace, which surely they were disruptive to my organization. And it required retraining. It requires a very different mindset.

And so those are the kinds of things that I train my clients. So, you know, you were reading that I said CEOs, it's not their job to solve problems. It's Their job to create problems. And so that's a huge part, you could say that's the sort of overriding philosophy of my work. Okay, yeah, and we'll certainly get into that here in a minute. So just want to recap.

So you were running a logistics company and you know, you were inspired by the story of American Express and the innovation you saw there. And then you took off to kind of travel the world and you were in some very different places like you said, in the jungle and various various other environments. Were you just kind of yearning to find what you're meant to do? It's kind of what it sounds like, where like you had this, this quest for your purpose.

And was that part of the travels to take off to find that? Yeah, part of it. So when I was, when I graduated high school where I lived, there were thousands of acres of corn fields and, and I'd go out and walk through the cornfields and the woods and I would think, wow, I'm graduating. So for 18 years I've been under my parents guidance. Now I'm going out into the world as myself. So what do I really want to do? I'm accepted at a college, I'm going to major in marketing.

That's all great, but ultimately this is my life in front of me. So what do I really want to do with my life? And, and after several days of going out in the woods and just hashing these thoughts over, like what do I really want to do? I came up with an idea. Hey, what if I just travel the world for one year and see who I am to the world? I want to sort of interact, engage the world and see what it's like to engage the world without my parents there to, you know, to guide me.

They've given me what they've given me and they've done a great job. But now I want to engage the world as my own person. And so I run out the woods and say, dad, dad, before I go to college, let me do one year, just travel. And he said no, no, I want you to go now. And I said no. But dad just, you know, he's like, no. So I go off to college and a few years later I lost both parents. And that was probably the greatest leadership training I've ever had in my life because I'm the oldest of four.

I was 21, my sister, my brother was 19 and my sisters were 12 and 16. So now I'm learning to lead in chaos and I have to coach people up. My 12 and 16 year old sisters to do things they didn't know how to do, which means I had to delegate. So all of these things that I'm learning and at the time I would have never told you I'm training to be a leader. I couldn't have told you that.

But life handed me a situation and shaped me in a way that when I did find myself as an executive or an advisor, I can directly trace back how that development happened. Okay, all right. So you start turnaround investment partners.

And like you said 20 years ago, the coaching industry was not what it is today. And like you said, it was kind of viewed in a different way in terms of being an executive coach. So you have this, this decision that this is what I want to do and your purpose, you start the company and what happens next? You know, I get clients. I had one client that was very interesting. Wharton MBA in finance.

Really smart guy, had worked in one of the big brokerage houses in M and A and then decided one day he was going to do a roll up for his for a specific industry. And he just started buying a few smaller companies. And when he hired me, he'd come to me with problems. And I'll tell you, this has been a problem with a few clients.

They come to me with a problem and instead of me solving it, I would ask them questions and at some point they would get frustrated and say, I hired you to solve my problems and you don't do that. You ask me questions and make me solve it myself. And so that, that can be frustrating. And I remember one client saying, you know, every two weeks he was coming to see me, he was wondering, why am I giving this guy a check? Like he doesn't do anything, he doesn't solve my problems. He makes me do it.

So if I go back to my parents death, the way I was able to get my sisters to do things they didn't know how to do is I would ask them to do something and I knew they didn't know how. I knew they would fail. And when they'd come back with a failure, I would ask questions and they'd go fail again. And they come back and until they worked it out. So I saw how effective that was with them. When I ran the transportation company, I did the same thing.

So now here I am with clients and some clients are getting pretty upset with me. But what they're developing is a new way to solve problems so that I can ultimately get them out the seat of solving problems in their company so that they can then create problems for their People to solve. So one of the biggest challenges is getting people to operate in a way that sometimes can seem so counterintuitive that they're wondering why they even hired me in the first place.

Okay. Wow. And then that's, that's very interesting. True. Especially that you. Sounds like you just developed that and you figured that out innately based on your life experience and, and how things develop. But why. I mean, let's talk about that further. Why is it so important for a CEO to create problems rather than solving them? Well, that's, You're. That's driving growth and innovation. So that gets me back to the American Express story. Right.

So either you are going to be disrupted or you disrupt your organization in your industry. So to drive innovation, asking your people to do things they don't, They've never done, there's no blueprint. That's a way to gain a competitive advantage that even your, the competition or people outside your industry will. They will have to play catch up with you. Okay. All right. And so what sounds like when you said your, Your strategy almost is to, to get people to have.

Be questioning why they even hired you. Because. Because the advice. I mean, give me that check back. No, it's very interesting too, and it's clearly right. You've been in business for 20 years, so you, you, you're. You're doing something right. But I mean, that's. Is that always the blueprint, where it's always this, even with the relationship of the people you're coaching, where it's like you're disrupting them to such a level that they're like, why. Why am I even doing this?

But yet that's the key to their, to their growth and, and ultimately the breakthrough that they want. Yes. So if we, if we look at, at this in purely scientific terms, there's something called neuroplasticity. Are you familiar with that? Sure. Okay. So ultimately, you could say I'm a neuroplasticity practitioner, and I. I've been doing it before I even knew the word existed. So disruption. Disruption can help people in so many different ways. You know?

You know, with neuroplasticity, whatever we know is it travels through our current neural pathways, but when we grow a new neural pathway, it gives us completely new perspectives that we didn't have in the past. And so getting people to that is often uncomfortable because it's. You're dealing with uncertainty. You can be dealing with chaos, at least chaos from where you are today. Your level of permission, preparedness for something you haven't engaged in the past.

So being able to engage people in such a way that you intentionally help them grow new neural pathways and new perspectives so that they can take on things that perhaps seemed impossible in the past. Okay, and so you said naturally a part of that is very uncomfortable in terms of the, the disruption and, and people, like when people sign up with you, do they know really what they're getting into? Be, you know, because there, there's, there's many, many executive coaches out there. Right.

The industry has grown, you know, exponentially. Right. So when people come to you, do they, do they know what they're in for? Technically? No. They think I'm there to solve problems and they don't know I'm there to create problems. But, but, and at the same time, their ability to create problems does solve problems for them. It, it solves the problem of, of being able to grow exponentially and do it effectively. And it solves the problem of creating a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Okay, so how is, so like you said when you started the business, right, you have this life experience that led you here and the, you know, experience when your parents passed and how you had to really help coach your younger siblings and then, you know, getting the business off the ground.

How did the business evolve thereafter over the next 20 years when the industry itself evolved and really gained credibility? And like you said, when you started, it was kind of like you didn't want to have to have an executive coach to present day. Now like you said, executive coaches is like a, like an honor. Like, how has your company evolved over that time? So the reputation of having a coach being positive, that has definitely positively impacted me.

It makes it easier for people to engage me or to hire me. So my primary focus has been middle market companies. And Quite often the CEOs are very open or receptive. They are, if they hit a plateau, they are often open to hiring an executive coach. And it's not seen as a weakness. It's seen more as I'm like a high performing Olympic athlete who wants to take my performance to the next level. So I've ridden with that and I've seen that whole evolution of how it's happened, okay.

I've seen it go from I don't need a coach and I don't, I learned everything that I needed to know in college and there's nothing left to, I'm open to, to having new perspectives and being, having my existing people will say biases. I don't necessarily subscribe to that language, but I understand what they're saying, okay.

And inevitably with any business, there's going to be challenges, there's going to be obstacles, and I mean, what was the biggest obstacle you encountered in scaling your coaching practice? Well, I created a tangential business that provided lead generation for me. And what I did is. So with one of my clients, he asked me at the end of the year, I asked him, how can he get double the value from me with the same structure that we're using? And he made a great suggestion.

He said, if you could go once a month to lunch with the CEO of a significant company, middle mid size or more, and interview that CEO. He said, I don't have time to do that. If you could do that and then bring that intelligence back to me, it would be so valuable. So I did that for a while. And then he asked me if I could help him build a board of directors. And I did that. I placed five people.

Two of them were former CEOs of significant companies, and then the others were just really heavy hitters in their industry because I was meeting this intentional networking gave me access to a great network of people. So watching how his board helped him, I decided to create that for CEOs in general. Middle market. Middle market for me was 100 million to 1 billion. And I created these CEO roundtables for them. And then I invited former CEOs of Fortune 500s who would lead those discussions.

And I did that during the financial crisis. And it was, it was very good. But as the financial crisis turned around, that's where I saw such a huge challenge. Because when the economy was not doing well, it was easy to get these guys in a room. And once the economy started turning around, that business, I ended up losing that, that business because it started becoming very difficult. So it served as a lead generation for me. And, and I lost, I lost that.

So that, that was a very, for me, a very smart way to, to have strong touch points with CEOs of middle market companies. And not having that really hurt me. So then I had to find other ways to do that. Okay. And that's interesting too. So you, like, people were much more apt to participate in roundtables when times were bad. Right. And you say when things turn around, then they were like, I don't have. Time for this, I'm busy.

Well, what I know happened is that the middle market is what pulled the economy out of a recession. So the, I think about 40%, some insane amount, more than 20% of small businesses disappeared during that financial crisis. And the large companies laid off like 3 point, some 3.3 million people. The large corporations in the middle hired 2 million people during that same time period. So they pulled us out of there. So it became so busy for them that it was difficult to get them all in a room.

And I would only have like 10 people at the table, maybe eight sitting CEOs and two former CEOs. And when I say former CEOs I had former CEOs of Chase Bank, Dun and Bradstreet, Xerox, Harris Hotel and Casinos, New York Stock Exchange. I mean I had some real heavy hitting companies. Okay. And throughout this whole process, right, of starting the business and being a first time coach and then growing it to be in 20 plus years in, what would you say is the most important lesson that you've learned?

I would say that this conversation, that culture is difficult to change, that conversation needs to be transformed. Because transforming corporate culture is so important that perhaps it's time for us to look at creating the culture we want as being almost like a business model itself. Because anything that I've done that's extraordinary in an organization, the foundation of that has been the creation of the culture and what you wanted that organization to do.

So how do you train and develop your people to do things that they normally don't do so that when you do create another disruption and you are right. So you know, if we go back and Steve Jobs says, hey, put 1,000 songs on a device and it turns out to be an ipod. And then he says, now make it a cell phone. You know, that's disruption, disruption. And so if you want people who are going to constantly push back and say it doesn't make sense, don't think about your corporate culture.

But if you want people who will be more nimble and able to embrace the changes that you present that are disruptive either to the company or the marketplace, then you need a culture that will be able to move the way you need it to move. So it sounds like you're saying that it's really, it's a non negotiable, right.

Like if you really want a company that's going to grow and thrive, you have to treat your corporate culture as a foundational piece of the company and treat it as such rather than just the standard, ah, that's just the way it is or it can't be changed. Right, right, exactly, exactly. So when you speak to social anthropologists, they tell you that a culture of a nation, a family, a business, doesn't matter.

The culture of anything is a network of conversations and so this is a second part to your question. Like, what did I learn that was important once I understood that culture? It's not what you do. It's. It's not the payment packages. It's. It's none of that. It's what people say. It's what they say at work. It's what they say at the water cooler. It's what they say to their friends and family about the. The organization. It's what your vendors say about your comp. Your organization.

And those conversations are your culture. And they shape. They shape the actions that you take. And they. They tell you what your limits are. And, like, you buy into them like, you know, the Wright Brothers building a flying machine? Well, the culture of the world was, if man were meant to fly, fly, he would have wings. You guys are wasting your time. Go back to building bicycles like, they were ridiculed for that. That was the culture. The culture didn't support.

Let's commit to creating something that doesn't exist, like a flying machine. Okay, and follow up question, because I know many of our listeners are probably struggling with this very issue. So let's say the. The. An entrepreneur out there that. That's running a company, and they hear you loud and clear and. Yes. Right. I. They want to change their culture. Right. But like, it. It's. It's nowhere close to where it needs to be. How. Right. What are the steps someone can take to.

To change their culture and truly transform it into something that's going to support disruption and growth? Do. Do you mind if I answer that with a story from a CEO of a Fortune 500? Sure. Okay. I won't name the company, but smart guy, He. He was brought into a company and told, this company needs to transform its culture. And he. It was pretty apparent when he saw it.

So he got rid of some people, brought in people that he knew because already he had been CEO elsewhere, and he was pretty good at turning companies around and driving growth. So now he has some of his own people in, and the culture's still not transforming. So then he hires someone like me. And it's like, it's your job to transform these people, man. They need to be fixed. Please do it. And it's still not working.

And then the company he hired suggested, hey, if you really want to transform the culture, instead of you telling us to go fix them, what if we start with you? He's like, oh, I'm smart. You know, I'm already. You know, I'm already good, man. But if we start with you, the rest of the organization will follow. So he tried it, and he transformed. And he said the transformation of the culture became extremely easy after. After that.

So for a lot of CEOs that think my people need to change, even I've even seen boards of directors are the microcosm for the entire company. Like, so whatever culture is happening at the board level, it's happening at the C level, and then it's happening. It trickles down to the rest of the organization. So wanting to fix your people or thinking your people are broken, I mean, the first thing is, understand no one's broken. People just have what they have. Right.

So. I don't know what you just said. I just asked you if I speak to you in another language, can you understand me? No. Right. And there's nothing wrong with you. I spoke to you in Portuguese. I didn't do Spanish because I said, what if he knows Spanish? So I did Portuguese. So I did Portuguese. And it's in. It's to illustrate you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. You have English, and that's what you were given.

So when you hire people, people come to your organization with what was given to them. They were trained somewhere, whether it was home, school, the last place that employed them, and you're looking to create a culture that does something that they've never done. So if you're.

If you expect people to magically just do things without any kind of training, I mean, I. When I ran that transportation company, that was one of the big things that allowed that company to grow exponentially was I said, hey, here are things that we have said to the customers. These are the things that we've done, and this is what's going to happen next. And they laughed at me and said, we're going to be out of business if we do that. But what I did is I trained them. I role played.

I used to be a sales trainer some time ago, so I had a lot of experience in role playing with people, especially in conflict. And so they would give me conflict. Oh, your idea is not going to work. So what it did is it created a new conversation in the organization and better prepared my people for the things that they had to deal with on a daily or hourly basis.

And if you're unwilling to do that for your people and you think they just magically change, like, you're not going to magically speak Portuguese just because I hire you as a interpreter at the un it's not going to magically happen. It requires training. Okay, so it Sounds like your message to these entrepreneurs is be the change that you wish to see in your people. That's the first step, is be that change. And that CEO of the Fortune 500, that was the lesson he learned.

He said, from there on, whenever I went into another company, I knew it was me who had to transform first. Okay.

All right. And Ted, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about your, your executive coaching, how you operate, or see some of your other work, what's the best way people can, can find you online? Sure. Well, I'm on LinkedIn, and you'll find quite a bit of I post articles and many of the other interviews I've done talking about various topics on leadership. Or you can go to my website and you'll find turnaround IP.com and that's IP, like intellectual property.

And there you'll find my blog and you'll find a lot of articles or videos where you can learn more about me and the way I think and, and some of the successes I've had with clients. Okay. And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone. All right. Well, Ted, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing these, these really unique and, and inspiring stories with our audience. We greatly appreciate it. Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

All right, that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.