Tips and Strategies for Rapid Growth
The following article appeared in the Kansas City Business Journal and is published here with permission.
In today’s constantly evolving economic landscape, business leaders face a multitude of challenges. From adapting to a decentralized workforce to attracting top talent to positioning your brand, companies must be strategic in their approach to achieve sustainable growth.
The Kansas City Business Journal recently gathered leaders of thriving local companies to provide insights and practical strategies to navigate economic uncertainties — all while staying on track to achieve growth goals. Beth Collins, advertising director, moderated the discussion, which took place March 1.
Beth Collins of the Kansas City Business Journal: Which industries do you expect to experience the most growth in 2023 in Kansas City?
Will Fox of Bank of Blue Valley: With several large projects underway, construction and construction services will most likely experience growth in 2023. Big plans for the future of Kansas City include hosting the 2023 NFL draft and the 2026 World Cup.
Kansas City continues to invest heavily in its infrastructure, including the building of a new international airport, expansion of the streetcar system and improvements to highways and bridges, to support continued economic growth and attract new businesses to the region.
Companies such as Panasonic, Facebook and Hill’s Pet Nutrition contribute to the growth with new battery plants, data centers and headquarters. Kansas City is also a major health care hub with leading hospitals and health care providers in the region. The University of Kansas Medical Center, Children’s Mercy and University Health all have plans for expansion in 2023.
Collins: What economic headwinds should businesses consider when looking to grow in 2023?
Fox: At Bank of Blue Valley, we sourced data from business leaders across the country to determine where they stand heading into 2023. The data showed that businesses are facing considerable headwinds with rising interest rates, labor market challenges and increases in commodity prices. Therefore, our customers are faced with tough decisions to pass on cost increases to their clients in order to ride this economic wave.
While we have seen some encouraging signs that inflation has started to moderate and should cool over 2023, businesses may still want to consider adjustments to strategies, pricing or product mixes to help weather the storm in the near term.
Collins: Casey, as a leader of a recruiting firm, you have a unique perspective. How would you say your clients and partners have been able to grow?
Casey Wright of Chief of Staff: We did business with over 200 companies in Kansas City last year, which is quite a bit for our industry. Some of them are growing incredibly rapidly. Some are maintaining the status quo, and some are having to rightsize. But just because someone has gone through layoffs or has hit a dip in terms of their revenues doesn’t mean that they don’t need to still use us to fill crucial roles.
We work with multibillion dollar companies, startups and everything in between. We are completely industry agnostic. So there’s not one answer that’s applicable for all of our clients.
Collins: How has Chief of Staff been able to grow in both the number of employees and revenue each year?
Wright: We’ve been in business 11 years. I took over as owner and president nearly four years ago. I have about 17 years of industry experience, so I brought quite a bit of knowledge about this industry to the company. Frankly, we do things significantly differently from any other firms that I’ve ever been around.
We’ve focused the most on culture, both internally and externally. We want to partner with clients who have and promote the best culture. They want to work with us because they see that we also put such a great emphasis on culture. We’ve had next to no turnover since I’ve been here, and we’ve tripled the number of employees we have and grown even more than that in revenue in the past four years.
We’ve had to adapt and change with the times, too. Nothing about the last couple of years is the same as what it was before the pandemic. You have to evolve and find new ways to approach the business. We’ve been ahead of the curve with that.
Collins: Elizabeth, your company helps businesses harness the power of their brand to take them to the next level. How can strategic marketing lead to rapid growth?
Elizabeth McFadden of Novella Brandhouse: Whether times are great and business is booming or you are in a recession or coming out of a pandemic, you’re watching every dime you spend. Most companies have to be strategic with their marketing in part because their budget is not going to allow them to be marketing every single day of the year.
As companies scale and grow, they have to pay attention to who their target audience is. It’s easy to lose sight of that. Often, companies were really dialed in to a certain sort of target market like their ideal client or customer. But as they grew, as they added products or services or acquired other companies, that target audience changed.
A strategic marketing plan is important because your target audience is always changing. It’s always evolving. That’s not to say that every other year you’re going after a completely different market. But the market itself changes. You need to understand where your customers are talking about your brand and where they’re looking to solve for those pain points. You want to be relevant in that conversation.
In addition, you want to make sure that you’re spending your marketing dollars on the client base that will help your company grow. Fox: Elizabeth, are you seeing any differences in marketing strategies between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer clients?
McFadden: That’s a good question. Content strategy is much more important to a B2B company now in 2023 than it was in 2019, especially for those companies that depended on trade shows and conferences for those first-time client interactions before the pandemic. Their customer journeys changed during the pandemic when those trade shows went away.
Trade shows and conferences are coming back, but they seem to be farther down in the sales funnel. Potential clients and customers are doing a lot more research online.
Collins: As you grow, how do you manage marketing to new clients or new markets?
McFadden: Most companies know their target audience or ideal customer. Sometimes, companies get bogged down in several different customer personas, which becomes hard to manage in terms of sales materials, budget and marketing strategy.
Focus on that main target audience to keep it from getting too broad. Identifying three or four different audience personas or segments helps you dial in to the pain points of each group. This allows you to be more individualized with your content, paid marketing and even PR while still remaining homed in on what you’ve identified as your ideal client.
Collins: Attracting and retaining top talent is key in the success of every company. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen an uptick in people making career changes. Erica, what are some of the benefits that are enticing people to change jobs?
Erica Brune of Lever1: Pay is still the number one motivator. There are still good high-level, high-paying jobs available.
We suggest employees who are ready to change jobs fully understand the promises being made. During the pandemic, many companies jumped on the bandwagon and told employees they could be totally flexible and fully remote. They made promises to lure employees, but then for one reason or another, those promises went unfulfilled. So, we’re seeing employees boomeranging back to their original employer.
We are being clear with employees who are ready to take a new job to fully understand what that pay and benefits package looks like. Sometimes, a conversation can be exciting and you hear all the positives. You want to get all of that in writing so you’re making a smart decision.
Fox: Erica, have you seen those influences changing among subsegments of employees?
Brune: Pay is still the number one motivator, but there are creative ways that employers can offer additional benefits that are different, unique and exciting. For employees looking for a new opportunity, we’re seeing student loan reimbursement packages. Flextime, of course, is very popular. Additional voluntary benefits, such as commuter plans and the earned wage access or daily pay access, are popular with our clients.
Collins: Let’s dig into that a little bit. What is earned wage access and how are employers adapting that as a growth tool?
Brune: Earned wage access has been around for a couple of years. Now it’s really starting to catch on, and a lot of big businesses are starting to offer it for their employees
In essence, earned wage access allows employees to draw upon their wages in real time. So instead of employees having to wait a week or two weeks to get paid, they can get paid daily.
Technology has made this possible. It is an automated payroll function that allows the funds to flow back and forth to the employee as they earn them. You can see how this is appealing for many industries, such as service workers and gig workers
The concept isn’t new. Implementing it into corporate America is new. We know that for lower-wage workers, it is a huge motivator.
Wright: Going back to what Erica said, I agree that pay is hugely important. I do think that differs quite a bit by generation though. In my opinion, the younger generations are much more focused on pay than on many other benefits or perks that a company has to offer.
When you are two years into your career, retirement isn’t as much of a selling point. We did profit sharing for the first time this year, and we’re excited to roll it out. It’s great, but it won’t affect me for a long time. Some of those who are closer to retirement think it is the greatest thing ever.
If you’ve been around the block, you know that more money is not everything. For example, if I’m making $40,000 now and another opportunity will pay me $47,000, that’s $7,000 more. That’s better. But in the grand scheme of things, is $7,000 going to make a huge difference in your satisfaction? Are you going to have to work 15 hours more a week? Is that worth it if you can’t go to your kids’ school events or you can’t leave at 3 p.m. every other day to make choir practice or whatever?
So it is figuring out what is going to be the selling point for each person. There’s not one universal, most-important factor.
Brune: That’s a great point, Casey. It gets back to customized benefits. It’s almost like employers are encouraging employees to pick what’s important to them.
Collins: From a banking perspective, how are you planning to partner with your business customers in 2023? What steps should businesses take to achieve their growth goals?
Fox: We’re in a very interesting point in time with rising interest rates, labor market challenges and increases in commodity prices. With this economic landscape, it’s critical to have a reliable, local financial partner, such as Bank of Blue Valley, to help navigate future uncertainties. In fact, we are sitting down with our clients and recommending three key strategies to embrace this year:
- Optimize cash flow for efficiency. Take a hard look at your cash flow forecast analyzing receivables, expense payments, sales trends, assets, capital plans for expansion and new hires. Much like a detailed business budget, this should cover a specific amount of time: six months, a year, five years. From here, you can then explore creative solutions to optimize this flow.
- Plan ahead — especially if you need financing to grow. The processing and time it takes to get financing can vary, so it’s best to seek funding early before you run out of cash.
- Expand your contingency plan to reduce uncertainty. Running a business comes with inherent risks so creating a contingency plan can help insulate growth and operations from unpredictable and unplanned events. A good place to start is by asking tough questions: How resilient is our supply chain? Do we have a back-up supplier in case our main supplier can’t fill orders? How will our customers respond if we need to pass along higher costs?
Collins: What will 2023 look like for Bank of Blue Valley?
Fox: Bank of Blue Valley is a growing company. So everything Casey, Elizabeth and Erica are talking about really resonates with me. Our goal is to grow our Kansas City book of business by a double-digit percentage next year. That’s a pretty aggressive growth target in this industry.
Bank of Blue Valley is a 30-year-old bank. To hit our next evolution, we need to continue to acquire the best talent in Kansas City. We’re trying to work with the Caseys of the world to find the best talent.
We need the Elizabeths of the world to help us with the different business lines and channels to communicate with businesses and consumers. Erica is bringing new ideas to help us recruit the best talent.
It’s a very unique time. It shows that sometimes growth is all about getting back to the basics, knowing what you’re trying to accomplish and figuring out who you can partner with to achieve your goals.
Collins: What are some of the creative approaches that clients are using to attract and retain the best talent?
Wright: It is important to evolve with the times. If I continued to do my job the way I was trained to do it 17 years ago, I wouldn’t be in this business anymore.
We stress flexibility with our clients as well. If someone calls us and says they want an employee to be in the office every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., no ifs, ands or buts about it, we tell them we are probably not their best resource. Obviously, there are exceptions, such as manufacturing jobs where you have to be on the line. But in many cases, the rigid office-hour structure is not realistic anymore if you want to be able to attract the best talent.
With my team, I would say 90% of them are in the office 90% of the time. But they all have the choice. They can come and go as they please as long as they’re getting their work done.
People who aren’t willing to recognize that they have to evolve are going to get blown out of the water. For example, one of my clients needed to hire a specific skill set for a new controller position. I knew a woman who had the perfect background for it, but she was not looking to work 40 hours a week. I told my client that they should have a conversation with her because I knew they were going to hit it off.
They ended up hiring her. She works a 60% schedule right now. They didn’t reach out to me looking for someone to work a 60% schedule. But this was the right person. Now, a couple years later, they’re emphatic that she’s the best employee they’ve ever had in that role in years. And they get more out of her 60% time than they do from other full-time employees.
We came up with a creative way to solve a problem, and it’s worked out tremendously.
Collins: What are some of the best ways to identify and carve out your niche to stand out from the competition, whether it’s branding for recruiting or marketing purposes?
McFadden: A brand has become so important. Whether it’s on the consumer side or the business side, people are much savvier about understanding a company’s brand. It’s more than just the product you make or the service you offer. People need to like you as a company.
Going back to the question of carving out your niche, part of that is again dialing in and knowing who your audience is and how you are the right fit for them. But then you need to be known for something.
Sometimes clients have a hard time wanting to focus on a niche for fear of leaving business on the table. You can offer more than one product. But you need to be known for something so that people know that when they need HR, they go to Lever1. Or when they need banking, they go to Bank of Blue Valley. People can remember a company for one thing, and then once they get there, they can see other services or products you offer.
Consumers get hit with so much advertising and messaging — thousands a day. And so it’s a lot for all of us to get our heads around. And when you’re asking your customer or even a potential customer to think of you for multiple things, they think of you for nothing.
Collins: How important is a company’s website in their marketing strategy?
McFadden: Whether you are a small company or a large corporation, your website is your only marketing piece that you completely control. You own that content, and it’s up 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Don’t confuse social media with your website. Your LinkedIn and Instagram accounts are always up. Your content is there, but you don’t really own that. Your page could go down at any point, and the social media platform owns those followers. You don’t. We have seen companies focus heavily on their social media. And when something happens and their Facebook page goes down, for example, they no longer have access to their followers or customers.
Your website is the most important piece because it’s the piece that you own. And again, it’s up all the time. I guarantee for every business, your website is working for you right now and you don’t even know it. Somebody has heard about your product or service. Somebody’s running across your service or product. Somebody’s referred your service or product to a friend.
When people first hear about you, they go to your website. They want to check out what you know, what you offer, what your products cost and when you are open. For e-commerce businesses, those without brick-and-mortar locations, websites are even more important.
Companies that are scaling and growing have to keep in mind that their websites may need to change as they do. Your website may have been great when you first started. But eventually, just like with a warehouse, as you grow, you need to make sure that your e-commerce website can accommodate your plans for growth over the next three to five years.
Collins: Erica, as employers hire more remote workers, are benefits adapting to accommodate that decentralized workforce?
Brune: Companies have been forced to update their benefits packages. For example, many medical carriers are regionalized. What is available in the Kansas City market, may not be in-network in other areas of the country where you have remote workers. In addition to offering multiple plan options, companies may have to completely revamp their medical packages to ensure they cover all of the different markets where they want to operate.
We’re seeing that employees are craving what works for them. We’re talking about flexible working, but it goes into benefits as well. Some people love health savings accounts so they can save money and use it as they deem appropriate. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who want the high-premium, low out-of-pocket plan.
Offering flexibility goes beyond medical benefits. Employers need to be mindful that now unemployment and workers’ compensation need to be covered at each home or remote work site. So what once was one policy for your one office in Kansas City may now be 17 different policies in 17 states. Some states require purchase through the state versus a large group. Remitting can become incredibly complex for the employer. So there is an added layer of complexity on the management of these remote employees.
Collins: Do you see that as a deterrent to offering remote work options outside of specific geographical areas?
Brune: I don’t see people shying away from it. At this stage, you’re trying to find the best candidate you can get to fill the role. I would say there’s a lack of awareness. Most employers have still been utilizing their home office location and not realizing they’re actually operating in multiple locations because of those remote workers. Some states are catching on and starting to send notices wanting to collect retroactively.
Further, many companies have to figure out how to navigate through a 50-50 or 70-30 split work schedule. That keeps me busy. That keeps me employed.
McFadden: In addition, now you have four generations of people working: baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen. Z. They have different expectations.
Brune: That’s absolutely true. To piggyback on what Casey talked about earlier, there is this romance with being remote and being flexible — an ideal the incoming generation has created about what they should be able to expect.
There are many unfilled positions in industries that can’t offer the option of working remotely, such as health care, construction, education and hospitality. We help coach clients through that. How can we entice employees to want to work in those fields that don’t meet that expectation of being able to work remotely? That’s creating a disconnect between employers, available jobs and the pool of candidates.
Collins: What are the most common benefits or attributes that your candidates are universally looking for? Is it flexibility?
Wright: Just to be clear, when I talk about flexibility, that doesn’t just mean offering the option of working remotely. I know plenty of people right now who are able to work 100% remotely and are choosing not to for all sorts of different reasons.
In fact, I had one person recently who moved here to be closer to family after the company he worked for said it would be 100% remote and remain that way going forward. Then, the company changed its policy. It still allowed people to be 100% remote, but it reopened its office. Now this client regrets moving back here because he’s missing out on that watercooler talk. He feels he’s getting passed over because of the lack of social engagement.
As I said, people in my office chose to come back to the office for the most part. They want to. We make it a fun environment. They feel they’re missing out if they’re not here. So when I say flexibility, it’s about being able to work from home if you need or choose to. But here’s an office space, too.
I’ve seen a lot of companies take a big hit because they got rid of their corporate office space and there’s no cohesiveness now. They miss the chemistry and camaraderie.
McFadden: So much of the time we focus on the brand from the outside perspective. But you have to consider your brand internally, too. We may call it culture. People want to work for a company because of what they think they’re going to be a part of and what’s going on there. And you’re right, without some of these office spaces or even just a location, some companies have lost that.
Collins: What are the top two attributes that you look for when hiring someone for your organization?
Wright: I always say attitude and aptitude are the top two aspects to focus on. More specifically with me and my team, authenticity and integrity are the qualities I focus on. I look for people who have the willingness to put in the effort to learn.
You can’t train attitude. They have to have the right attitude, and then you can teach the rest of it. That’s what I encourage my clients to focus on, too.
We’re not a resume shop. In almost every job search I’ve ever performed, which is thousands at this point, the employer’s idea of the ideal candidate evolves over time.
It requires us to talk with clients multiple times throughout the search process. Recently, we’ve had success placing former teachers. A lot of people are leaving the education field because it’s a thankless job right now, unfortunately.
Currently, we have one phenomenal candidate who has been a teacher for five years. On paper, her skill set may not look like it applies to XYZ job. We know her personality. We know her drive. We know her work ethic. We have no doubt that she will be able to pick up the technical skill set to succeed in XYZ job.
You can get so hung up on some of the technical skills and too focused on employees hitting the ground running. There’s always going to be a learning curve anytime someone switches jobs. I’ve worked in multiple companies in my industry. But terminology and systems differ from one company to the next. There’s always going to be some training. It’s always going to take some time for people to get used to a new company.
Collins: What is the impact of hiring the wrong person?
Wright: Negativity is contagious. If we have any issues with a negative attitude in someone new, we nip that in the bud as quickly as possible, because misery does love company. It can be cancerous for the whole team.
A number of people from our competitors have tried to join us over the last couple of years. Some of them come with what would be considered a big book of business and are not restricted by noncompete contracts. On paper, it makes perfect sense. Why the heck wouldn’t you hire them?
I’ve made a living trusting my gut. If I don’t feel they will fit with our culture, I won’t hire them regardless of how big their book of business is.
Collins: What other staffing pitfalls should companies avoid?
Brune: As many people are growing their companies, they hire the best talent they can afford. I was under that mentality for many years as I grew my business.
But when I hired outside of what my budget was and went for the highly experienced leadership team I desperately needed to support my growth, my business quickly pivoted in a positive direction. That was instrumental.
If you’re in a rapidly growing company, you need people who’ve been there and done that before, even when you think you can’t afford them. Making mistakes for your customer costs a whole heck of a lot more than the higher salaried person who can completely run autonomously and make great decisions on ideas that you didn’t even think about. So looking back, that is something I would do differently.
Collins: Erica, how does the legalization of recreational marijuana change the landscape for employers in terms of pre-employment screening?
Brune: Employers are scrambling to understand how to adapt their pre-employment drug screens, which may no longer be applicable or relevant based on their industry. Many tests are not able to determine if cannabis use is recent or within the last 30 days. And as it has become legalized, it is not an effective way to screen employees.
So we are spending more time coaching employers and managers on reasonable suspicion of recent use and being under the influence during the time of injury or accident, just as you would for alcohol, rather than sending them off for a test that’s going to be inconclusive.
Obviously, that differs based on the industry and the business that you’re running. Risk averse industries will still maintain a zero-tolerance policy. Other companies, such as marketing companies and banks, have to decide whether they want to keep a policy that could potentially exclude people who use cannabis in a legal and recreational way. Is that going to completely restrict your pool of applicants in an already tight labor market?
Wright: This is something that we’ve seen change drastically over the years, even pre-legalization here in Missouri. Early in my career, almost every person we found a job for had to take a drug screen. That was part of the hiring process. No ifs, ands or buts about it. If something showed up in your system, you were out.
A lot of employers don’t screen for drugs at all anymore, and for many of the ones who do, it’s not as black and white as used to be. You are not automatically out if something shows up in your system. Sometimes, it depends on what’s specifically in your system.
We’ve certainly seen a giant shift. Many governmental agencies are still pretty strict. As I said, it’s a different story for anyone operating heavy machinery or driving vehicles. For the most part, though, we don’t get many inquiries anymore on needing someone tested.
Collins: To close, what challenges are businesses likely to face in 2023?
McFadden: As companies are growing and scaling, overall budgets seem to be tightening across the board, not only in marketing or advertising. But companies need to remember that it’s going to take investment in marketing to be able to grow, whether that’s supporting your sales staff, creating materials for them, creating a campaign around a new product or service, or marketing a product or service to a new market.
The problem that I see is that clients don’t give themselves enough runway to do that, or they think they can grow by word of mouth or sell a new service or product to their current clients. But it takes investment in branding and marketing, and it is an investment because it may not pay off immediately. Companies need to factor that into their strategies when they’re rolling out new products or scaling.
Wright: More than ever, people need to know what they don’t know. We have seen insane changes in all facets of life, not that there was any time that was super easy for any generation. Everyone has had different challenges.
But if you look back, I think we have seen a wider variety of changes than about any other generation. Everyone on this call remembers the pre-internet days. Obviously, we remember 9/11. Certainly none of us anticipated a global pandemic would shut down the world for two years.
In the past, people had more of a mentality of, this is how we’ve always done it, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Now, you have to realize we have no idea what the heck is coming our way. But we know that we might have to pivot. We know that we might have to change. And most of our best clients share this way of thinking, and they, too, are evolving with the times whenever necessary.
It’s good to be ready and adaptable. It’s good to be big enough to service your clients, but small enough to be nimble so you can pivot when necessary. A lot of our growth at Chief of Staff has come from being able to get creative and evolve.
Brune: Here are Lever1, we feel the challenge is staying abreast of all of the changes. It’s hard enough to keep track of what Missouri wants employers to do for employees, let alone what other states require, such as pay transparency in Colorado or mandated paid leave in Illinois. And every state is becoming more independent in the way that it interacts and provides resources to and protections and benefits for employees working in that state. Staying current on the various state rules and regulations will be a challenge for employers.
Fox: Companies are facing a dramatically different economic landscape — volatility of commodity prices, rising interest rates, remote work, supply and demand issues, hiring challenges and the list goes on.
To combat this and stay afloat, companies should take the following steps to embrace this year’s economic conditions.
- Improve their resilience. This means reducing exposure to volatile market pricing of commodities as well as building protective measures into supply chains to deal with shortages and rising logistical costs.
- Streamline their business processes and create efficiencies. This includes everything from analyzing their cash flow cycle to pre-ordering inventory to passing on costs to their clients. At Bank of Blue Valley, our clients feel assured going into 2023 due to projects in progress and a backlog of orders. However, they seem less optimistic for 2024.
- Be agile and innovative to respond to industry changes.
Collins: How can businesses pivot to resilience, while staying profitable and sustainable?
Fox: At Bank of Blue Valley, we work with companies to create a year-long plan to prepare for the best-, normal- and worst-case scenarios.
Some of our recommendations include:
- Proactively plan for a slowdown in sales and profits, and how you will communicate raising prices to clients.
- Review your supplier relationships. Consider renegotiating contracts and rates. You may also realize greater efficiencies by outsourcing certain functions to a vendor.
- Make sure you have adequate liquidity in every case.
- Look for transaction opportunities. A downturn may offer advantages, such as M&A opportunities.
Will Fox is the Head of Commercial Banking and a member of the executive team for Bank of Blue Valley. He leads multiple lines of business that provide financial solutions to middle-market companies with annual sales of up to $1 billion in C&I, commercial real estate, health care and nonprofit. As a 20+ year veteran of the banking industry, Fox also oversees the local treasury management group, which offers cash management and payables solutions for both for-profit and nonprofit entities.
Erica Brune is the President of Lever1, a Kansas City-based professional employer organization providing human resources, payroll and employee health benefit solutions. Within five years of launching Lever1, Brune helped drive the company to become Missouri’s Fastest Growing Company of 2017 — ranked No. 44 in the nation by Inc. Magazine. Women Presidents Organization named Brune No. 4 in the 50 Fastest-Growing Women-Owned/Led Companies 2018 and again ranked No. 7 in 2022.
Elizabeth McFadden is the CEO & Director of Brand Strategy for Novella Brandhouse. With over 25 years of advertising and branding experience, Elizabeth McFadden brings award-winning strategy to businesses that want to scale. Taking the brand strategy model used by Fortune 500 companies, she designed a method for smaller companies to develop their brand. McFadden has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Kansas City Business Journal and Startland News, and has co-authored two business books. In 2022, she was named one of the Enterprising Women of the Year.
Casey Wright is the President of Chief of Staff. He has been an instrumental figure in the Kansas City recruiting industry since 2006. His years of cultivating meaningful relationships with candidates and clients alike provided the opportunity to become president and owner of Chief of Staff KC in 2019. COS has celebrated tremendous growth since Wright’s arrival, quickly becoming Kansas City’s go-to recruiting firm. Through authentic and empathetic leadership, Wright is dedicated to positively impacting people’s lives and careers, and the KC business community as a whole.