The Toolkit

Tools for building the future

The Toolkit with Richard Mejia: Scaling a Professional Services Firm in a Growing Industry

Top Takeaways

  • Think about building relationships and networking at the onset of your startup venture.
  • Nurture lasting relationships with other people and businesses that can grow into a whole product solution for your customer.
  • Involvement with your customer base is integral in any startup.
  • Identify risks and research them. Always do research and calculation.
  • Involve people who know exactly what they are doing for your company.
  • Be fair at all times, whether that is concerning compensation or merely providing an opportunity to someone.
  • Focus on the industry and grow with it.

Guest Profile

Richard Mejia Jr. became a partner in the accounting firm EY in 1983. A new opening at the San Diego office in 1988 catalyzed his transition into working primarily in Life Sciences and Technology.

From 2001 to 2008, he headed up the entire Pacific Southwest Life Sciences Practice. Under his leadership, the San Diego office grew from a single partner to a well-structured practice with ~$14 million a year in annual revenue.

His extensive experience in securities, debt offerings and M&A transactions earned him board seats in several publicly traded technology companies and with Sharp Healthcare, a large hospital system in San Diego.

Episode Highlights

  • Starting with accountancy

Richard took accountancy in USC as it was part of the top 5 programs in the country during his time.

Being part of a top-ranking undergraduate program has allowed him to be part of a community that opened up interactions with major accounting firms.

“I was the first major mergers between large accounting firms and we became known as Ernst and Young.”

  • His early work

Life science and health technology began their roots in the mid-’80s where one venture and transaction into a capital fund paved the to create a lot of wealthy people.

“Most of my experience was really in software and technology. And I did [relevant work with] a lot of medical device companies.”

He came in as one full-time partner in life sciences, and in his retirement, he left 5 full-time partners in the organization.

The best strategy for growth is to take in what you have and try to enhance it.

  • Establishing relationships

“The legal law firms are especially good referral sources. Also, [there] are the insurance companies, the commercial insurers, commercial insurance brokers, as well as bankers, commercial bankers that do business with those companies.”

Biotechnology was difficult to finance since it was fairly new then.

Everybody is looking to understand how to build relationships within the network of professionals.

  • Risks in finances

“The first early rounds of financing are always preferred stock. People work with venture capitalists, so they get certain preferences.”

“Big Pharma [pharmaceutical companies] look at biotech [companies] as being a much more efficient entity for performing research and development than they can do.”

Bigger companies watch smaller companies that are developing a specific type of product.

  • Missteps of starting companies

“Companies are not successful because they get too greedy.”

“You always need to raise more than you think you need.”

Have a CEO or a leader who knows what they’re doing in the company.

  • Understand people and the market

“Research is an important part to understand what the local market is and what other companies are doing in your space.”

“I think it’s all part of the review process that goes hand in hand with the compensation. Now everybody likes to feel appreciated.”

  • Assessing opportunities to move forward

As a young life science company, it is important to schedule periodic meetings in the office with your people.

Sharing best practices should be encouraged. Ensure that everyone is getting the right exposure, especially for relevant projects.

“Think of it as a club… [wherein you are] having meetings, having education, having social gatherings with other life science firms… then make it fun.”

Other companies, like banks, are more complex than biotech companies.

  • Growing talent and building a team

“I think where you want it [your growth] to be [is] pretty much industry-focused as much as possible.”

About the Host:

Justin Fortier lives in Brooklyn, NY, and works for a consulting company serving industrial companies.

How to Connect with Justin Fortier

Share The Show

Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!

  • Click this link
  • Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
  • Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
  • Click on ‘Write a Review’

Transcript

Justin Fortier: Thanks for opening up the toolkit. I’m your host, Justin Fortier, today’s guest ran one of the largest Life Sciences accounting practices of the 2000s. Rich ma he is a 38 year career. He why through its evolutions culminated with him leading the Pacific Life Sciences practice out of their San Diego office. After he why he served on the board of directors for several publicly traded technology companies, and a large hospital system. Since I currently work at a consulting company, I found riches lessons from running a successful professional services firm directly applicable his advice on networking, building and coordinating a team and becoming a market leader. By stewarding a community could be put to use across a number of organizations, I hope you take away some specific tools for your career from our conversation. If you have feedback, suggestions, or guests ideas for future episodes, send them my way, at justin@toolkit.fm, or reach me on my website toolkit.fm. Now please enjoy the episode. To start off, as a background for the listeners, it’d be great if you could talk a bit about being head of us Pacific Southwest Life Sciences group and what type of work you did there. And then if you have if you’d like maybe just start out how you got into EY too.

Richard Mejia: Okay. I went to USC and it was in the accounting program as an undergraduate, it was a good program as one of the top five programs in the country at the time. So school that recruiters, you know, visited constantly, and we had good relationships with all the major accounting firms, which at that time, there were eight. Then on top of that, within the accounting program, there was an accounting fraternity, which was really based on scholastic achievement and interest in working for a major accounting firm called Beta Alpha Psi. I believe it still exists today. And so I was also in Beta Alpha Psi. And so we had a number of events that we had events monthly, and a number of them involve interacting with the major firms. So the firm’s got a number of years to look at us get to know us and it facilitated their recruiting process. And because the program from USA without a sought after, you know, was easy. It’s the opportunities working easily from and I have choices from the different terms. The reason I got involved in accounting was at the time the Vietnam War was going and go to college and have a deferment. But you needed to get out in four years. So you needed to have a, you need to have to make a decision. And then like today, you didn’t have the opportunity to maybe, you know, dapper Devlin into a couple of other majors that you might want to pursue. But you ended up having to make choices early. So I took an aptitude test out of high school, and I wanted to be a PEO PE coach, and my dad said they only pay for doctors, lawyers and accountants. So which is going to be so I took a aptitude test and it came out accountant. And I also happen to be what he was funded the majoring accounting went to bid alpha. So I got recruited and chose that time the firm’s called Arthur young. So eventually we ended up merging with Ernst and really, this is one of the one of the major firms. I was the first major mergers between a large accounting firms and we became known as Ernst and Young.

Justin Fortier: Eventually, you ended up as the head of the life sciences group down in San Diego. And what did that type of work consist of what types of companies were you working with and what were I guess some of the more common types of work you would do for those companies?

Richard Mejia: Okay. So, there are major life sciences centers will slowly call you where there are number of life science companies Originally, the the industry started with biotech company. And here in San Diego, there was a actually a medical device, that medical diagnostic company called hybrid tech, which is acquired by Eli Lilly. And a lot of the executives out of Eli Lilly, there’s profits that they made from that acquisition from being acquired, and started venture capital funds started new companies that took her. So he took the one transaction, we created a lot of wealthy people. And those people because of their familiarity with what happened in health technology. And at that time, biotechnology was starting decided they would, you know, start to help grow that industry here in San Diego. So what that entail, so that really started to happen in the mid 80s. Here in San Diego, maybe, maybe you’ve got a ta 345, somewhere in there. I can’t remember when hybrid tech was acquired by King San Diego in 1988. And most of my experience was really in software and technology. And I did do a lot of medical device companies. So in 2001, our life science leader in San Diego, who was also one of the early life science leaders in the firm, so if any goes the third largest area in life sciences in the country, first being the Bay Area, the second being Boston area, and the third being San Diego. Okay, so San Diego was an area of prominence, because we were the auditors of hypertech. We got to know those executives and all those fixes went out and started new entities and new venture capital funding took care of we were already well acquainted with them and had built relationships with them. And that was one of our for our senior partners. So he ultimately retires in 2001, we had groomed a very young partner, to take his place to deliver whatever reason something, something occurred. And he was able to do that. And I asked me to step into that position. So we knew that the the we already had a foothold in the, in the life science market in San Diego we had about at that time, around 60% market share. We had a very strong trade group organization called bio calm. So he had been a member of outcome when he retired, he just said, here’s the keys to the business, you know, go run it, it’s yours. So I knew that we had to do is one, we only had one partner with two partners that were well known in the area, one of which had basically taken himself out of the business, but by something that happened. So that really left one name in the area, he was retiring. So I was coming along. So I knew and I took over a lot of his ex clients. And I had to resign from my electronics and software clients. Because I couldn’t handle that bigger client load given to other partners. And I figured out kind of the strategy was to continue to, you know, maintain and enhance relationships we have with people in San Diego in the industry, that become active in the trade group, and ensure that we had a pipeline of people that are coming up in the firm, and understanding the business. So that and you know, involve getting us organized, building two processes, building some sales and marketing tools, you know, doing a lot of networking with people being very successful with your clients. So they would speak highly of you and have a good referral base. You know, and that was a strategy. So a lot of being out in the street, meeting people knowing but but again, I had a very good base of clients underneath me. So eventually, we grew the practice team. We went from that 60% market growth to 90 95% market share. And when I retired, and then when I retired I I came in, I was one full time partner in life sciences, I left five full time partners and licenses and created a new, a new position that would help ingrain us with the young company that eventually would mature and would need more work and work more sophisticated talent and other partners we do so. So it’s kind of that strategy that, you know, to take what we had and really try to find ways to enhance it. And to ingrain your gait, you know, so well your name was top of mind when a life science company needed work and it wasn’t my name as much as I wanted the firm’s name.

Justin Fortier: That makes sense.

Richard Mejia: So we did well in San Diego. And people would ask you know what, you know, get your number Continue, we’re going to well, you know, we’re starting to see some investments and license companies in Colorado, we’re starting to see some in the Phoenix area 30. More in Los Angeles, in Orange County. So, you know, help us build what you’re doing in our cities. And so we started identify some partners and in the city in the orange county office in the Los Angeles office, in Colorado, in Phoenix, and started to visit them. And that’s when they said, Well, you know, take over the area. So at that time, was a packed Southwest. And so I did I, we kind of tried to develop, you know, the industry groups and each of those offices, share with him what we were doing, and help them go out with them the meetings and proposals for new business, and get involved with some of their clients in a support role. And so we started to build practices in those and that’s how I eventually became in charge of the tech Southwest area, because I was an area leader, and also I became was on the firm’s by Science Committee. And, you know, worked with our national group and and with our global Life Science Center in Boston, you know, on our publications, and sharing best practices and, you know, being helping to develop our thought leadership material. That’s how the position grew. And that happened from 2001 to 2008.

Justin Fortier: At what point do you start forming relationships with companies and through what vehicle? Is it? Is it the industry group, where’s usually first contact for UI at the time?

Richard Mejia: Well, there’s a lot of firsts, because you get referred clients from people you’ve worked with as clients. The legal the law firms are especially good referral sources. Also are the insurance companies, the commercial insurers, commercial insurance brokers, as well as bankers, commercial bankers that do business with those companies. So in San Diego, there were because technology was such a crapshoot, financing them as a commercial bank was, you know, very difficult. So they had to understand when they raise money, how that money was, was being used and spent how long it was going to last. And then they would try to come up with different vehicles to do financing, like, you know, leases, for equipment, because a lot of lifetimes can police can be, you know, need lots of equipment to perform research, and they need laboratories, and they need custom real estate, custom, custom facilities. So bankers, you know, they would raise some of that money from equity from venture capitalists, originally, ultimately, they developed some science, they would go try to go public and do you know, larger financing that would carry them for longer. But, you know, until you had product and revenue, you had to continually raise money. So getting to work with lawyers and showing knowing that, you know, how, what was involved in raising money, what the requirements of the with banquets from the accounting firms, that was, you know, making sure the attorneys knew us and what our capabilities were the bankers, they would start to meet in somebody’s bank, a small company would come into, you know, want to develop a relationship with you. They’d say, well, we’ll lend you money, but you need an audit, where do who do I go to? Talk to her to hear. So that’s kind of the way things work. So I would say there’s a lot of first you have to understand who the network of professionals are that work in, in your particular industry, and slowly go and get, you know, get to meet those, you do that through one of these get togethers with a work, you know, you graduate from, from Trinity, and you decide to be a personal wealth manager, well, you know, accountants will work with certain firms, certain companies that they know those executives, so you have a wealth manager may want to meet us to say, Look, I’ve got these kinds of programs. So I like to do with executives, I could do this with their options, I can do this with their, with their stock, and I can put them into these investment programs where they start to liquidate, you know, their, their investments, investment. So everybody’s looking to understand how to build relationships within the network of professionals.

Justin Fortier: When those relationships are developed, and you’re actually getting into doing the work of auditing I imagine Life Sciences has to be up there for the the hardest to make sense of what were some of the things that when some of these companies are young and start out, and what were some of the most interesting parts of assessing risk or what’s factored into some of those things where you’re, you’re auditing a life science company?

Richard Mejia: Well, initially, you know, the, the first early rounds of financing are always preferred stock, they work with venture capitalists, so they get certain preferences. So you know, you don’t want to raise money, you need to raise lots of large amounts of money, if you don’t want to raise money for friends and family, that’s not generally a way that licensed companies start. So they’ll start with venture capital in those initial preferred stock agreements of preferred stock rounds of financing, as those shares of stock have certain features. So you have to be aware of those because let’s say there are features and say, you know, if you do an IPO within three years, you know, I’m going to the stock will stay at one to one, if we don’t do an IPO in three years, I get 10% warrant coverage. So now all of a sudden, they’re entitled to some warrants, you need to account for those as you’re going along, based on whether or not they’re going to transpire. So there are different triggers as a result of the nature of the way you negotiate your agreements. And what’s important. companies take much longer to get to revenue, like a drug development company versus a specialty pharma company that takes a drug that’s been used for something else, a certain in their chemical makeup that would allow it to be used for something else, and try to develop that which can generally be much faster route to development and approval than starting from scratch. And then you take a diagnostic company who’s developing something like being able to teach test for drugs at work, or the police force can use it to test drugs of abuse, while somebody you know, they stop something that’s been driving erratically. Or you can go and do a medical device company, like somebody may be developing a special laser and catheter to do peripheral artery disease, you know, say somebody is from their leg from amputation, that might be a much quicker way. And, you know, those products can be sold much sooner and developed and sold in the marketplace much earlier than the new drug. So a lot of scientists bother the four or five categories. And it depends on the type of company. So their financing, because of the length of time involved in revenue. And the number of financings that they’ll have to do, each of them gets more complex and has certain features that need to be accounted for, like derivatives, okay? So you’ve got to be careful on that, then they go public, and they still need to do large drugs, and maybe they want to do an acquisition, and they want to have our driver financing. And they’ll do convertible debt offering, which again, has certain features to protect, you know, depending on how the app performs during that period of time, they’re holding whether there’ll be be debt or whether it will convert in stock in either. But for those those issues. As far as the actual audit issues to where you get into complexities, if you’ve got a drug developer, that’s doing a lot of clinical trials. So they will have maybe four or five agreements or sites that are performing trials. And they’ll start with a clinical research organization that manages all those trials, and the recruiting of patients and how a patient gets paid based on the level of participation in the study that needs to be accounted for and understood. At what point you’ve occurred, expense and cool. Then you go into relationships and you do partnerships with Big Pharma. Big Pharma looks at biotech as being a much more efficient entity for performing research and development than they can do. So a lot of times, they’ll see a new company that’s out there developing a diabetes drug or something, I’ll say, geez, that would really enhance our portfolio. Let’s watch that company. And at some point, when they get to, let’s say, stage two clinical trials, basic clinical trials, they’ll enter into an agreement with them to partner and they’ll give them milestone payments as they continue to develop product. So you’ve got to understand the milestones and whether they’re revenue or they’re just cost reimbursement.

Justin Fortier: With the bigger pharma companies. You mentioned that they viewed the biotech companies as being more efficient. So we’re doing research. Yeah. Yeah. Can you elaborate a bit on that? What about is it just that they’re smaller? Is there a better relationship with government or?

Richard Mejia: They’re more focused and less administrative less, less administrative things happening in a smaller company than in a bigger company, you know, that’s more the, you know, the executive structure is much simpler, you don’t have all the layers of management, you don’t have all the approval processes. And though they’re working again, maybe on one or two indications versus a large pharma might have, you know, 2000, researchers, you know, 50 are working in one project, another 100, another 1000, in another, etc. Yeah, are focused on getting something along moved along.

Justin Fortier: A little bit earlier, you brought up that there weren’t really friends and family rounds in biotech, because things are generally expensive. So I’m assuming that investors are a bit more sophisticated, and they transfer some of that to companies at the beginning. But are there any things that in your role when you guys come in, whether it’s raising a new financing or helping something with an IPO? I don’t know what stage you involve, or you get involved with, but are there any big missteps you’ve you’ve seen repeatedly, with companies starting up, whether it’s formation or any sort of things that really cause difficulty on your end, when you are going through and doing an audit, any things that people starting companies should really think about, to make sure that they don’t have problems later on?

Richard Mejia: Yeah, most of the missteps, you know, companies are not successful, either, because they get too greedy, you know, the executives don’t want to share the equity, that doesn’t happen very often. Sometimes they don’t tie up their executives correctly, or sometimes they don’t protect their intellectual property correctly. They don’t build that trademark and patent portfolio quickly enough to make sure it gets registered to somebody in a foreign country doesn’t try to copy it, or steal something from them. So those are kind of mistakes they make. The other one is not raising enough money, you always need to raise more than you think you need. And you don’t tie up your executives correctly. So you don’t give them the right equity packages, trim occasion equals key guy, you don’t get don’t build the right advisory board. Those relationships are probably the most common thing this can be costly to a company, as it starts to become successful is the original founders, they be a pure scientist, and the brilliant scientists, you know, gets appointed to get the product moving ahead and stuff. And now you’re trying to hire lots of people build a Salesforce etc. And he has no idea what he’s doing there. And, you know, totally screws up the company. That’s probably it’s not, it’s not unusual to have to replace a founder as a CEO. Once a company starts to develop some size.

Justin Fortier: You mentioned compensation, and you’re talking about replacing a founder, I noticed in my research that you served on the over the course of your director roles, you’ve served as chair of Comp Committee multiple times, what are some of the really important pieces that you found to retain good people and assess and make sure that those are fair? And with the market? Is it really just about research? Or is it something more than that?

“Research is important. Understand what the local market is and what other companies are doing in your space.” – Richard Mejia

Richard Mejia: Research is an important part, understand what the local market is and what other companies are doing in your space. So you know, at least a decade, you’re gonna lose them to the company next door, you don’t want that. So research is important, but more important, too, is you have to think about is how important is his role? Whether or not it would be difficult to replace him or her. And you have to also think about, you know, how do you keep them interested long term, not just for two or three years? So you don’t want to throw the throw the whole war test at them on day one, you have to kind of think longer term, you know, where’s he going to be by the time you’re ready to take this company public and monetize it stock and then it’s gonna be gonna become so rich right after the company goes public is going to want to stay. They got that issue. So, yeah, it’s research, you know, to understanding the value that the company’s understanding like the time that you really need it.

Justin Fortier: At the individual level. Did you have to assess at all that psychology of that person? Or is it usually a little bit more general than that?

Richard Mejia: Especially if they’re you know, crackpot in or short tempered, or whatever. Yeah, you do, because, you know, you’re telling them to behave themselves and you know what, Senator readings So, if you got to make sure he’s comfortable, but at the same time, you don’t want to make him feel so special. That That just you know, brings out more bad behavior. So, you really, you know, I think it’s all part of the review process goes hand in hand with the compensation. Now everybody likes to feel appreciated.

Justin Fortier: At the director level sharp, the hospital system is not for profit, but you’ve also served on two other for profit boards, one a tech company another, more life sciences. What’s the difference between the goals of those different ones? Is the Comp Committee role still pretty similar? Or do you have to think about things a bit differently?

Richard Mejia: Even though it’s not for profit? It’s a, you know, it was a $3 billion company. So, you know, and the reason it’s still had public reporting requirements because of public debt. Now, they don’t sell stock, because it’s not for profit, but they have to raise money. And they do that through debt, debt financings. Okay. So it behaves very much like a public company for about, I would say about 85%, like a public company. He just did have all the quarterly releases and the importance of angel filings and conference calls with investors and that kind of stuff. But we had all the board committees. And unfortunately, you have more people on the committee than you do in a public company. But so there’s more communication involved. But sharp is very well run. I mean, it’s a real well, very well run business. So it was, it was easy to work with. But I do feel good about what we did.

Justin Fortier: And with sharp being a well run hospital system, looking at your time, across San Diego, it seems a lot in what creates, I guess, a great healthcare hub, was there. Did you have any relationship with the other large institutions, whether it’s government or universities or during your time at EY or after?

Richard Mejia: Well, I relationships with the community on the sharp board, because being a local large entity, they attract a lot of community leaders. They’re involved in Advisory Committee, so you see them there.

Justin Fortier: I asked a bit about what other institutions I guess were meaningful for you to be involved with, either at UI or after in to, to be I guess, fully immersed in life sciences. You mentioned venture you mentioned commercial bankers, lawyers, were any the universities did that play a role and it looks like a lot of companies.

Richard Mejia: Mostly from work recruiting, UCSD has a terrific Science Center. You know, they grow they graduate a lot of great researchers and scientists and biologists and cetera. So it was a good program to get to know and have relationship with you can’t say, your player in life sciences and that touch all the different areas. So we would be the face a UCSD had a way they had internally group called Connect. And it would be a way to where they could incubate small companies. And then we would come and listen to their proposals. They would develop their business plans. And we would listen to the presentations and critique them. I did some of that. I participated on an advisory committee for them a times and the bio calm. You know, we were very close. Balcombe was a trade group and I was on their board. I was their treasurer. So you know, we interface with with schools here locally.

Justin Fortier: On a trade group putting on events, what were some of the types of activities or networking that you felt really facilitated the most benefit for the companies or EY some?

Richard Mejia: Well, we would take I was on the San Diego venture group board of directors. That was a president one year and so what we would do every year, we would develop an annual forum where we would select companies, young companies in the area and allow them to present their business plans and their proposals to raise money. And we would recruit venture capitalists etc, to come listen to the presentations. So that was a whole event. Selecting the companies to present have them come and do many presentations, select the winners give a give them a little bit of money. And then also, you know, have them present to investors.

Justin Fortier: That sounds like an interesting event. There was I’m moving back a bit to risk and government bodies, did you ever have to get involved with the FDA, or maybe on the funding side, the NIH, were either of those come up in over the course of your work.

Richard Mejia: The only time we would get involved sometimes after somebody would get a special grant or something in an early stage company, and they’d have to show their audited financial statements. And they might come back to us with questions. So we did the audit for the company again, so they would provide the financials to a foundation or fund or somewhere to get a grant. And, and so they’d have to provide our audience financial statements. And sometimes those organizations will come back to us with questions. Yeah. But we also got involved with the SEC quite a bit, and when a company misbehaves, we might get involved with the Department of Justice. So things like that.

Justin Fortier: Switching gears a bit, to talk about why as a firm your movement, through it and and building it up. When you decided to make the switch from life sciences, what were some of the things you considered at the time of, to assess the opportunity?

Richard Mejia: I mean, it really wasn’t, it wasn’t much of an option, because I was on the logical guided ticket. As I said, we Greg grooms somebody to roll into that spot, and he just execute on it. So, you know, they came to me and said, Your it really wasn’t? Would you consider doing this? Your it? So the the interesting part was coming up with you know, what, what did that mean? Because, again, our lifestyles, while we had a very strong president and lots of clients, there really wasn’t a lot of process or organization built around it, you know, it was just, it was understood, he does like science, he doesn’t, etc, you know, somebody’s life science company came in, and they needed some, some work or favorites, you got some time to do this, go do it, you know. So, my mind was more, I knew we had ticked and present, there was no reason why we couldn’t do more. So how do we build for Windows? You know, you don’t have any processes? It’s easy to start.

Justin Fortier: Yeah. What were some of the more memorable processes, were there some some things that really helped move you guys forward?

Richard Mejia: Oh, kind of the way we would price our work to a young life science company, and then how that would become more lucrative as a grew, you know, really kind of sharing transaction. So having periodic, you know, scheduled periodic meetings, in the office of the people who worked in life sciences, to make sure they were aware of what everybody else will, seeing and sharing your best practices and, you know, examples of transactions. What else making sure that the people that were good coming up through the firm, were getting the right exposure, you know, that just as to one type of therapy, we’re working for more than, you know, the people that, you know, as they get higher up, you know, can become partners, making sure that there was a role for them, and they were exposed to people outside the office, to the national level, etc. So they would get get to be partners. But mostly, it was just, you know, this, like any club that you have, you know, think of it as like a club is, you know, having meetings, having education, having social gatherings with other life science firms that say, like, we would do a wine and cheese evening with a with a law firm. And I’d invite our young people and our partners that work in life sciences and their partners, it worked in my science that we get together for one or two years, a lot of us already knew each other from different clients. You know, we could just talk and share experiences. And then the next day, you know, you might get a call from a lawyer to they’ve got a new client, they don’t have accountant yet, when I told him you’d be calling stuff like that in a really a lot of networking. That make it fun, make it fun.

Justin Fortier: The actual work getting done, it’s it sounds like as you’re taking over and growing the business, I’d imagine you spend much less time actually doing the work and leading the projects for the different companies you’re with. As a leader of a practice, how many clients do you keep or what’s the process like of dishing them out to other partners?

Richard Mejia: No, I get the full client.

Justin Fortier: If there are other people who are, I guess, listening in the future is there is there a number now reflecting back That you think, I guess what, what is an ideal schedule look like?

Richard Mejia: Because, you know, a client can be a $5 billion company, that takes a whole lot more time than a company that’s only 100 billion just grow started coming out of the chute. So a lot of like, companies have the same issues, or at least you’re familiar with your issues. But you can be very efficient in you know, working through your audit process. So I don’t think you have a say in like in San Diego, no one, I think no partner should have more than five public companies, I would say that’s a reasonable number that I had as many as 16 at one time. So the SEC, doesn’t like anybody having that many times either. It just depends on the size of the companies in the area. When I had a very profitable practice, and I had about $14 million in Billings, I would call and talk to our guys in New York that worked on Goldman Sachs. They had like five partners working on Goldman Sachs, and each of them had 16 million in Billings, just to give you to give, you know, the differences in sizes energy.

Justin Fortier: Yeah, is, is that because life sciences companies are typically much, there are much less fewer things to account for, as compared to a large bank.

Richard Mejia: Yeah, yeah, large banks a lot more sophisticated and much more dependent on its processes and systems, analyze. Those in those systems and processes are very complex. And a lot of artificial intelligence, a lot of cyber security issues. And those audits are much more complex from that side standpoint.

Justin Fortier: So I think I have one more question. And you talked a bit about growing talent within your firm, making sure they have the right opportunities, and not just the same types of experience as your assessing that and helping build a team? In what way? Were you thinking about that? Because I’m sure there’s advantages for the firm of having somebody who’s done five, the same type of audit and can really get to know that. But as you’re thinking about it from a firm level, and also individual, when do you really want to start thinking about honing in your skills on one particular type of business? Or is there even at the partner level, always saying, hey, let’s take on a business that’s a little bit different than what you’re doing. So you can stay agile?

Richard Mejia: Yeah, I think where you want it to be pretty much industry focus as much as possible.

Justin Fortier: Does that start at late 20s, when people are really starting to get into Industry focus?

Richard Mejia: In San Diego, there may be really only four or five types of clients. The real estate guys were their own group. They were very close. Also, much like a licensed practice. They didn’t share a lot of resources, they, but I think it’s the best people. I would say when they get to be met a manager you start, you know, start to directing them with which direction you know which direction they’re going to take which industries you guys take and specialize.

Justin Fortier: Well, thank you for doing this. I certainly learned a lot. And so thanks for making time. I appreciate it.

Richard Mejia: No problem. Take care. Good luck.

Justin Fortier: You as well. Thank you. Bye.

Justin Fortier: Thanks for listening to another episode. My biggest takeaway from this conversation was how to think about building relationships and networking. For me, rich helped to take a concept that nebulously oscillates between handing out business cards at an event and direct messaging on LinkedIn and email, and crystallize it into a practical way to move forward. providing good products and services, plants the seeds for a positive reputation. From there, you can look to nurture lasting relationships with other people and businesses that can grow into a whole product solution for your customer base. A starting question to ask could be, who else is trying to reach the same people as me? And how can I help them? If you’d like to discuss an idea from an episode or suggest a guest for a new one? I’d love to hear from you at toolkit.fm. Until the next episode, be well!

The Toolkit

Tools for building the future

Subscribe to actionable episode summaries