My Journey to Coaching, Part I
I spent thirteen years employed at AIN Media Group (Aviation International News), and am so grateful for the experience, the opportunities, and the relationships. My father, Wilson Leach, co-founded AIN back in 1972, bootstrapping the company to become the most relied upon news source for the business aviation industry. Fifty plus years later the organization is still going strong, a testament to the culture that Wilson and his late partner, Jim Holahan, created and cultivated.
AIN is a family-owned business. Family-owned and operated businesses come with their own unique set of benefits and challenges. In my experience, the benefits vastly outweigh the challenges (although when the challenges do arise, they can be a special breed that only exist at the interaction of family and business). I have a relationship with my dad and my sister that simply would not exist without the business experience. My dad and I piloted many cross-country flights together, creating those uninterrupted hours of one-on-one time that I am now finding so hard to carve out with my own kids.
During my time at AIN the company celebrated many wins and suffered our share of setbacks. We managed a dramatic change in the media landscape. Some of the specific tactics of what got us to where we were would not get us to where we wanted to go. Advertiser appetites were changing and we changed with them. Our team did an incredible job adapting to these changes. In 2016 80% of our revenue came from print advertising. By 2023 that had dropped to 47% with digital revenue making up another 47% and a newly launched events business the remaining 6%.
But those are simply the tactics. What got AIN to where it is now and to where it will be in the future is the creation and evolution of AIN being a fantastic place to work. Culture, taking care of employees, being a great place to spend a career…they are all the normal business cliches but they are cliches for a reason.
What sits above all these cliches is the care. The care that AIN shows to its employees, its clients, its readers, and its partners. When employees faced hardships, we would take care of them. On occasion, would the benefit to that individual be slightly greater than what was stated in the handbook? For sure. Did that ever come back to bite us in a negative way? No.
If I could sum up the biggest business lesson I learned while working at AIN, a lesson I would attribute mostly to my Dad, is it this:
Above all else, take care of your people. And when things are hard, focus more on taking care of your people.
I am sure there are times that we strayed a bit from this in management, I did for sure. Being analytical by nature I became overly reliant on the numbers. What are the sales? What is our website traffic doing? What are the click-through-rates for advertisers? Employees likely rolled their eyes at my latest dashboard but it was where I defaulted to in looking for answers. But numbers are only a result of the inputs of our employees and I could have spent much more time with and understanding the challenges of those employees.
At some point along the way it became clear that it would be best for me to move on from my day to day responsibilities at AIN. I was ready for a new challenge. From the start of having these conversations to an actual transition occurring took close to four years, with a COVID-19 pushing the delay further than originally planned.
During this transition we employed the services of outside experts, something that rubbed against our cost conscious culture. But in this case, I am incredibly grateful for the outside counsel of Mike Fassler from the Family Business Consulting Group and Bill Stranberg at Stranberg Resource Group.
Mike assisted us in coming to the realization that, as a family, our goal was to retain full ownership of AIN for the long term. But he also helped us come to the conclusion that we were also in need of outside leadership to help guide AIN through its next chapters.
Bill then facilitated an exhaustive search to find the best candidates to fill this leadership position.
Both of these individuals understood the opportunities and the pitfalls that family businesses present. They taught both us and the candidates what to expect during this process. They explained how bringing in outside leaders into a family business can go sideways and gave us the tools and the awareness to avoid those situations.
In January of 2023 we hired Ruben Kempeneer and I am pleased to announce that he is proving to be a tremendous steward for AIN.
I am grateful for the opportunity to now have a role on the Board for AIN, allowing me to stay close to the business that has been such an important part of my life.
Six months after hiring Ruben, in the summer of 2023, both my day to day work with AIN and my job of helping transition Ruben into the role began to tail off. It was time that I decided upon my next chapter.
