Eric Lauterbach on the Leadership Signal CEOs Can’t Find on a Resume

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello, and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast where today's top executives share stories of their leadership journey, including defining moments that tested their values, sharpened their judgment, and shaped how they build teams and lead with purpose. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group Executive Search. You can learn more about us at notogroup.com.

As a trusted partner to mission and values-driven consumer brands, we've had the privilege of working alongside some of the world's most inspiring operators as they've tackled the challenge of building high-performance leadership teams. In this podcast, we spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies.

Today, I'm sitting down with Eric Lauterbach, the former CEO of Peet's Coffee. Eric joined the California-based coffee brand in 2010, rising to the CEO in 2022 and leading the company through acquisitions, expansion, and global challenges. Eric started his career in marketing and sales at Procter & Gamble and went on to spend nearly five years with Clorox.

But he didn't always stick to big brands. He's also helped lead four startups, and today he serves on the boards of Ace Hardware and MPM Products. We're going to talk about what all of these experiences have taught Eric about leadership, teams, and talent strategy.

Eric, thanks so much for joining us. It's great to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:34] Eric Lauterbach: It's great to be here, Roy. Appreciate you asking me along.

[00:01:37] Roy Notowitz: Let's dive right in. I want to go back to the eighteen-year-old version of you. What would you think you'd be doing today, and how close or wildly off do you think you'd be?

[00:01:48] Eric Lauterbach: I was always in leadership roles, high school, college, things like that. So I, I think it's consistent that I would've continued to, you know, advance my career.

I don't think I would've thought that I was going to be leading an organization like Peet's at eighteen, but I don't know that I didn't either. I've been really fortunate to have had a lot of experiences and have made the most of them, so I don't know that I would be that surprised on some of them. I look back, I got there in a way that I'm proud of and have enjoyed the journey along the way.

[00:02:19] Roy Notowitz: Let's talk a little bit about your journey. So what was the path that led you to ultimately becoming the CEO of Peet's Coffee?

[00:02:29] Eric Lauterbach: I started my career, you know, actually even before Procter & Gamble, I went and worked for my collegiate fraternity for a couple of years. I turned down an offer out of undergrad to go work for P&G, went to work for the fraternity.

Great life-changing experience. Met some incredible mentors, traveled the country as a little guy from California. Came back and ended up working for Procter & Gamble, and that early formative experience taught me how to work with boards and accomplished businessmen at a very young age, and then I was able to translate that.

We were self-starters into a, I think, a really good sales career at P&G. And for me, then that experience that led me to Peet's was big company down to a couple of small companies, back to a big company at Clorox, and then down to another startup. So, you know, I've always told the story quite honestly on the startups.

I think I've been part of four startups. I've cashed in zero options. But I kept going back to the startups because there was something in me that loved the building, that liked the energy. Go back to my 18-year-old self. I think I've got a little bit more patience now than I might have then, so I don't know that I always had as much patience as I would've needed in the big company.

But when I got to Peet's, you know, Roy, everything just kind of lined up. I had the big company experience with the entrepreneurial piece and the small companies at a midsize company, and I came in with this charge to go build the CPG business, which was 70-ish million at the time, and when I left the company back in November, it was north of 800 million.

[00:03:59] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:03:59] Eric Lauterbach: And all of that came together because I had enough of the structure of the big companies combined with the ability to go fast, take more risks. You know, part of being in the startup company is not having the answer to everything around the corner. You have to keep making things up as you go a little bit.

I think I've always had a sense of urgency and movement, and I think I've always brought that with me to the jobs that I've been a part of. And finding out when to have patience and when to have urgency is an important piece. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. I had an old boss that, you know, said I always had one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake, and I think that's right.

So I came into Peet's at a time where we grew the business, and 15 years later, the last, you know, three years and change, I was able to be the CEO president for the last five years. I was President COO, then President CEO. But that was a result of being there, creating value. We went through three leadership changes. Grew the business, grew the footprint.

I really think did it the right way for the most part. There's certainly plenty of things I would take back and do differently, but how did I get there? I think I got there by producing a lot of results. We were in the part of the business that was creating a lot of value for shareholders and consumers, and we just kept doing that.

And I think those of us that were there in those early days, if you look back, we all built our careers pretty consistently over a period of time. We had longevity and results, and the business, more importantly, moved and grew.

[00:05:26] Roy Notowitz: What was it about CPG that held your interest for so long, or that really kept you there in these different environments? What'd you enjoy about that aspect of being in that industry?

[00:05:38] Eric Lauterbach: You know, I'm a competitive person. The beauty of CPG is you go into a store, and your product's either on the shelf or it's not on the shelf, and you're looking at the share numbers every week. And, you know, in a lot of ways, it was simple, and I understood it, right?

I mean, I think there's part of it, but there was part of the fun, too, of whether it was P&G and Crest and Clorox Bleach or Kingsford, and certainly with Peet's, you know, I was fortunate to work with some great brands and products, but those are brands that are in people's homes, and people have an emotional connection with it.

And even though it's this simple thing, so many people use that product for generations because their parents did or their mothers did. I think there's something with consumer goods that was tangible. You could touch it, you could see it, and you told a good story about it. So I think that's what's kept me in it all these years.

[00:06:23] Roy Notowitz: So having spanned the large CPG and early-stage companies and private equity-backed consumer brands, including your most recent role, how has leading across those different environments shaped your view of what great leadership looks like?

[00:06:37] Eric Lauterbach: You know, I've had a lot of time to reflect on this, and I think there are a lot of ways to answer that question.

Procter & Gamble, I never had a bad manager, right? Very trustworthy organization, principally based, learned a lot, and I think it's an organization that has stood the test of time and really cared a lot about its people. You get into the private equity and the startup world, you have to create your future.

At P&G, you had a career path. At early stage startups, if I didn't do this or I didn't do that, we didn't get to the next round. And I think I've learned to go back to patience. I've learned how to take a little bit of the patience from the big companies and apply it at the right points in time. I don't believe we can effectively go full speed all the time.

And I was much more cognizant as I grew in my career of what was really hard that we needed to pause on and which ones we needed to take more risk on. And I, I got better at making those decisions and discerning those as I moved along. The contrasting of both of those was the respect for process and that understanding that fast is not always better, first of all, I'll qualify that.

But also, not everything has to take as long as we think it has to take, and really understanding where to push and say, "No, I don't think you need three cycles on that copy. I think we're just talking about the same coffee or the same seasonal drink in the store. We don't need six weeks to do that. We can really do that in the next week."

And finding where we can push the organization in a way that helps people see that they can do better work faster, which is at the end of the day what a lot of folks want to do. People are frustrated with pace as much as anything else, but they also don't want to make a mistake. And I think I've learned through the whole time, honestly, Roy, how to be okay with making mistakes and really try to create a culture that it's okay to make a mistake in.

And that is not easy to do, but I fundamentally believe that, and I think, you know, the old story of bad news has to travel as fast as good news. I think that's what I've shaped along the way. In my experience with private equity folks, they're pretty smart, so going around trying to BS somebody with a pretty PowerPoint slide when the numbers aren't there, it doesn't work too long.

So I think you just have to own the mistake, be clear about the decision, be clear about the next decision, and then get people comfortable with that pace, and it is not oftentimes for everybody. When I would take calls from old colleagues at big companies in the early days at Peet's or startup companies, they'd say, "I want to go to a startup company."

I'd say, "Hang on. I'm going to ask you three questions, and then do you really want to do this?" Right? "'Cause nobody's answering your phone here. You're doing your own-"

[00:09:11] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:09:11] Eric Lauterbach: "... Expense report. There may not be a tomorrow if we don't get this next product out the door on time. Are you sure?" And then the phone got quiet.

So it's not for everybody, and that's okay.

[00:09:19] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. And that's okay.

[00:09:21] Eric Lauterbach: It's totally okay, yeah.

[00:09:22] Roy Notowitz: So as you think about your career and all these great roles you've had and the organizations, the different pace and different types of challenges, what role has talent played in the success of those organizations, and what's your philosophy on talent?

[00:09:37] Eric Lauterbach: It may sound like the typical answer, but I think talent is... Honestly, it's everything. When I look back at early stages, all the early experiences coming up to Peet's, you made it or you didn't make it because of the people around you, and there's no substitute for that, quite honestly. I always try to measure managers and myself on your ability to attract, develop and retain the best talent.

And I'd go further, too. I think if I were to look back at mistakes I've made, it's in not turning over talent in an organization as quickly as I needed to. It's not always about keeping people. Many times, honestly, I, I think I found places for people who are our top performers when I probably should have said, "You know what? There's not enough here to stretch you or keep you because we're a one-brand show," et cetera.

It would've been better served for that person's career if I were to look back with the benefit of 20/20 to help them move to the next role. And then it also goes without saying, certainly the talent threshold has to increase as the levels you go up.

You have to expect more out of people. You have to get rid of toxic employees, no matter how good they may be functionally, if they are not right for the culture, and I had an experience with that. And I, I think on one level I moved at the right pace, another level I didn't. And everything a leader does or doesn't do is seen, and you can't unsee those things.

My other big learning, honestly, when I've hired executives who have had people follow them in their career They've turned out to be really good executives. When I've hired executives that didn't have people that have been working for a long time and people didn't follow them from job A to job B, they turned out to be some of the least productive executives in terms of building an organization, building your organizational capacity, capability, as we used to say at P&G.

And that became, for me, as I went deeper into my career, one of the questions I asked was, "Okay, you've moved around a lot." I looked for people that moved around a lot. If you moved around too many times, that was a red flag, but if you moved around and you didn't have people that moved with you, that said something.

I think it's hard, and you have to find a way to stretch the talent, but do it in a respectful way. As Peet's was being sold, it was my third leadership change, ownership change. Without a doubt, I was not the right person to go into the next phase, and I was totally okay with that. And I think the hardest thing for leaders is to say, "You know what?

That was a great run. We could not have gotten from point A to point B without you, but the next stage is going to require different people." And part of that difference, too, is you can't see it clearly. I had an old boss that talked about the 10-year rule. I was 15 years at Peet's. At a certain stage, it's just healthy for the organization to bring in new eyes and new ideas instead of having a guy like me say, "No, I tried that three years ago."

Well, may or may not be appropriate now.

[00:12:33] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So thinking about your own evolution as a leader and reflecting on that, how have you cultivated self-awareness, empathy, and judgment that you need to lead effectively?

[00:12:46] Eric Lauterbach: I'm a big believer in executive coaches. I've had a couple of great executive coaches who would call you on it, challenge you, really push and make me ask those questions to the next level down of myself, and it's the why, and it's not take the pat answer, and really pause and help me become a better listener.

So I think through that, I became a better listener. That helped. I also believe that having a leadership team with people that are as good, if not better than you, is critical, and it forced me to be engaged. I did not want to always have... Because it's impossible, I think, to always have the right answer, and there are certain functions, if I, I take supply chain as an example, or finance, two key functions to any organization.

I didn't grow up on those. I needed an expert there that knew that business better than I would, and that meant I had to be okay with not having the right answer, with deferring to the expert, playing a different role, which is to bring people together versus to do that. Now, it was a hard role to report to me, and if you came up through sales or biz dev or marketing to a certain degree, because I've done that job.

I've learned to listen more, and I'm really clear that I have to surround myself and build a culture and a leadership team with people that are stronger than me in areas where I'm not, and that means, for me as a leader, I go in knowing I'm not going to be the expert in a certain function, and I'm completely okay with that.

Now, over the years, I'm not a supply chain person, but supply chain reported into me when I was COO, so I got better at asking the right questions where I could figure out where to go poke or figure out the patterns. So figuring out when to push, when not to push, but really honestly, it comes with getting better people around the table in areas than I am creating the culture where I don't always have to be right, but I can bring, if I'm doing my job well, I can bring focus, move to a decision, create alignment.

That's important. Having every answer just because I've got the biggest title in the room, I don't think that's realistic. And I'd also add hiring people that are okay making decisions. You know, early in your career everybody wanted to make the decision, but then you realize, okay, if you make the decision, that means you're accountable for the decision.

Yeah. And I was more interested in how did you get to the decision than whether the decision is right or wrong in the process because that helped me understand the thought process where you're bringing outside people in. I can't make every decision, but I can help people think through a decision. But when it came time to make a decision for the company at a certain stage, my biggest failure would've been if I don't make a decision, the company stalls, right?

So I have to keep the line moving.

[00:15:30] Roy Notowitz: A lot of people ask me, what exactly do you do at Noto Group? We partner with entrepreneurs, founders, executives, investors, and boards to help them build high-performance leadership teams that excel and endure. We've had the privilege of working with more than 250 leading brands, from early-stage innovators to global icons, and we've placed hundreds of executives along the way.

As a certified B Corp since 2013 and proud 1% for the Planet member, it always starts with your mission and values and finding leaders who can bring those to life. If you're curious, you can find out more by visiting our website, notogroup.com. Thanks, and now let's get back to our episode.

So were there specific experiences, mentors, or failures that helped you better understand your own strengths and blind spots or leadership values?

[00:16:27] Eric Lauterbach: I think my first experience out of undergraduate, our leader of the organization, Ken Maddox, called us into a meeting one day, wrote on a flip chart, "The Big Eff Up."

And he sat there and looked at us, we looked at him, and we didn't quite know what to do with that. We just kind of stared at each other. And his point was, like, "It's going to happen. You're going to learn from it. We're going to create the environment where it happens. When you do it, you're going to own it," right? And that gave us freedom to say, "Okay, we don't have to be perfect, but we need to take action."

Similar theme, I go back to when I was hired at Peet's, Pat O'Dea, he said, "You know," same frame, "you can eff up and still work for me, but you have to own it." And we had a situation early in my tenure there where we had a licensed partner that we basically... The licensees would operate a Peet's brand in an airport or a college and university, and we caught them in violation of their agreement, principally financially, et cetera.

And I made a mistake. It was my first time through a big event like that with outside legal firms involved, and I was out over my skis, and I didn't say I was out over my skis, and because of that, I cost the company a few bucks there. Now, the way Pat handled it, I think, was it, it was my mess. But it wasn't a fatal mess, right?

And we worked through that. And I think those moments, I take those two examples of those two mentors, leaders, of how I tried to create the same environment when we have those things in business that don't go the way they look like on the PowerPoint. And I had to make it okay that somebody could come in and say, "I know we're not going to make the number," or, "I said we were going to be profitable in this business, and I don't have it, and I think we're going to have to shut it down."

And that was not career limiting. Of course, if you make the same mistake three or four times, it probably is. But what's the bigger issue is not telling me and not working through it. And I think the transparency and really being okay with failure and figuring out how to own it, and I learned that at an early age.

It was reinforced at Peet's in a big role. And in the startups, we're failing all the time, right? A couple of my startups, you thought that nobody knew that you didn't have the number. Everybody knew you didn't have the number or you were missing the forecast. They were just waiting for you to tell them.

Right? So you're not fooling the people half the time anyway, and I just think working through that culture of transparency, owning the mistakes, dealing with them, recognizing that my expectation was not that you're going to be perfect all the time. But the one thing I had no patience for is if you weren't transparent, if I didn't trust what you were saying, if people were not being a team player and working against the culture, then that can't be tolerated.

[00:19:03] Roy Notowitz: That makes a lot of sense. When you're hiring leaders, what's something that you look for that doesn't necessarily show up on a resume but that you've learned is absolutely critical?

[00:19:15] Eric Lauterbach: I want to see what kind of questions they're asking. I want to see how they present themselves. After a while, everybody's resume looks kind of the same, right?

So if I want to look between the resumes, I would look for why did you move from job A to job B? I want to spend more time understanding the transitions. What drove you from one transition to the other? The motivations, the values. It could be the life stage. It could be the career stage. Without judgment, I'm just curious.

I want to see how somebody makes a decision, and I want to see questions that they're asking. And then I would ask questions around, tell me one of your biggest mistakes and failures. If it was a real lightweight one and they've been working for 25, 30 years, I'm like, "Eh, I, no- nobody's had that good of a run," right?

And it also helps me see whether they have any humility. And if they don't have any humility, they may be a fantastic leader, great at the functional area, but they're not going to be the right person on any culture that I'm building. So you wouldn't be a match on my team or the culture if you don't operate with a certain degree of humility.

That's just incompatible with me, and that doesn't mean they're not good at what they do. It just means back to where we started the conversation, you're probably not the best person in this environment at this stage.

[00:20:27] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So what do you look for to understand whether somebody will fit into the culture or add to the culture or help the culture evolve and strengthen?

How do you kind of assess how that person might show up and how they might impact and influence the culture?

[00:20:46] Eric Lauterbach: I would look for in those processes when we would have, let's just say it's a senior executive coming in, and they would meet with potentially one or two direct reports and others. I paid a lot of attention to what people picked up in interviews because we all interviewed differently.

What did they see that I didn't see? And it really depends. I had a toxic person who was getting out. The next person had to put the pieces back together. Okay, is that person going to be able to do that? We also knew if we had a hole in a certain function and a, a leader was coming in, would they be strong enough, make a good judgment, listen, take the input in, and then move, you know, quickly enough?

I would look at what were their past cultures, too, that they were a part of and try to understand what did you like about those, what did you not like about those? Not every culture translates. You do need people to create change, positive change, momentum in the organization. So I go back to, you know, the, the days at Peet's.

When I started, we weren't in Walmart, we weren't in Costco, we didn't have the single-serve pods, we didn't have medium roast. When we did all of those things, certain people said, "That's not our culture. That's not our brand." And I would come back and say, "Boy, guys, if we hadn't done those things, this room's a lot smaller today."

So you had to figure out how to understand what's really important to the culture, get the big parts of it right, and then change and push and bring it on. And then it goes back to, again, Roy, like, I had to look at that person and say, "Can he or she bring in more people like you?" And if I had a couple of high potentials in the area that the person was coming into, I was really trying to be attuned to is this new leader going to help this high potential get to the next level?

Those are the things I look for. And after a while, it becomes a gut feeling, but I also think it's getting a really good interview team that you know will ask different questions than you, will hear different things than you did because they have different perspectives and will be really discerning about it.

I wanted to make sure we had interviewers who would think about where the company, not just where we are today, but where we're going. So are we hiring people that are going to help us get to the next stage? And the company has to be moving. I mentioned the word momentum. I think a big part of my job was how do I make sure we keep getting momentum. Whether that's making decisions or getting us unstuck from things.

In a certain stage, I think your role moves as you get a different team. More of my role was I had to clear the path so people could move.

[00:23:13] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about instilling a sense of shared purpose across a large or cross-functional team. That's not easy to do.

[00:23:23] Eric Lauterbach: No.

[00:23:23] Roy Notowitz: How do you align people behind that vision and/or the mission and the purpose so that people are inspired?

[00:23:31] Eric Lauterbach: I think it's really hard. Sometimes I've done it well, and sometimes I candidly have not done it well. And you could always feel like, "Ah, I didn't get that one right today," or you saw it in the engagement survey. "I thought we were better at that. I still haven't landed that message," right? The beauty of Peet's was that it was an emotional brand and an emotional category, so you had now a shared purpose.

The most effective folks said, "We have the best coffee, right, wrong, or indifferent. That's what we believe. This is what we do. Here's our principles." So we had that shared purpose to move the business forward, and then I think you had shared ownership values that said, "If I do these things, this is what's going to be in front of us here."

But I'd say the purpose can't just be financial, because the financial piece doesn't reach everybody in the organization the same way. Coffee was easy because it connected... We sent a lot of people to the country of origin every year, but when people came back from that, it was contagious. And I think then you took pride in, "We are selling a premium product, and why are we doing that?

Because that enables us to reinvest back in or pay people a higher rate for their beans." And that was part of our shared purpose at Peet's. And then I think there is another part. You talk about the culture and the future. I stood up in front of the company and said we had an imperative to change the company, and I had one slide.

I said, "We need to move from direct store delivery to direct shipment, change our percentage of business," because we had to figure out how to be successful with Costco and Amazon. That move was going to have an impact on people's jobs, right? We were going to reduce the organization, take costs out of that. The second one was we had to be okay with franchising and/or refranchising our stores because we didn't have the capital to build new cafes.

Another impact on the culture. And those two things were going to free up resources that we need to go invest in and build the brand. Now, our shared purpose on that is we need to do that because the competition is changing. The world is changing, and if we don't change, then all those things that were important to us as a company, we're not going to be able to deliver on.

So the shared purpose in a lot of ways has to be around how does the organization grow? How do we create value? If we create value for the shareholders, my experience has been we're going to create value for the employees. And I am most proud of over the time at Peet's, we grew the business, but we also added jobs, and people progressed their careers, and we were able to do all of that, and we were able to do that and be true to principles of our founder.

So I think the purpose, honestly, Roy, it has to get back to growth. I think that growth is a combination of growth of the organization, growth of the people's careers, and the financial growth that feeds the engine that allows you to keep moving.

[00:26:06] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome. So what advice do you have for the next generation of emerging leaders as you think about what it'll take to be successful in the current and future business landscape?

[00:26:18] Eric Lauterbach: A couple things come to mind. You know, we wrestled with post-COVID, who's in the office, who's not in the office, hybrid, et cetera. I do believe in flexibility, I do believe in hybrid, but I'll tell you, and I watch my son, our oldest child, going into his senior year in college, getting into an environment where you can learn, and I think you have to be with people in an office.

There's an informality of business that doesn't happen when you're just talking to your computer all the time. And I think it gets too easy to say, "Well, we'll do that. That's cool. That's remote. I'm learning." I don't know. If I think of all the questions you've asked, I was shaped in meetings side by side with a boss, with a peer.

Sometimes it was a question, real-time feedback, or you walk around the corner to a teammate and say, "I got an idea. Let's kick it around." So for the next generation, it's going to be very easy to type it into Claude and get an answer and think you're right. But how do you get the judgment that helps you guide and shape the technology in front of you?

How do you become really good listeners and have enough patience? Because part of this is we're so used to getting an answer right now all the time that some things just have to develop, and you have to figure out, "When do I have to take two or three iterations of something, and when is one going to be close enough to go?"

So I think the next leaders, they have to be patient. They have to be working with people physically so they can understand leadership styles for theirs, be exposed to good bosses and bad bosses. We've all had them. That's part of what shapes you. They have to become good listeners, and that is easy to say and hard to do, but that comes with asking good questions, really good questions with the intent to listen and do something about it.

We had a great value at Peet's when I joined. It was one of curiosity, and I thought it was just powerful. It forced you to ask a question. It created the expectation on the company that they were going to listen and answer your question. And so I did look for curiosity in executive leaders, you know, real meaningful curiosity.

I looked for curiosity when we had younger brand managers or younger marketing folks or people coming with an idea of who is asking good questions that will help you get to the next one. So curiosity, listening, working with people, and that elusive patience, which I'm still trying to find sometimes.

[00:28:36] Roy Notowitz: So what you're emphasizing for this new generation is, yes, we have all this technology, but really double down on the human side of things and the listening and the relationship building and the things that help create context and learning amongst groups.

[00:28:53] Eric Lauterbach: Absolutely. If you keep building the people skills and you combine those with the technical skills, I think that's really powerful. And I, I don't know how you do it if you just have one or the other. I think you have to do both.

[00:29:04] Roy Notowitz: As you reflect on your career and you look ahead, what kind of challenge feels most energizing to you right now, and what are you most excited about as you think about the future?

[00:29:15] Eric Lauterbach: I'm excited about the unknown a little bit, which is new to me, and I've had a lot of mentors who have talked about take a year, the better part of the year, and just reflect, and I've made that commitment to do that. Our youngest is going off to college in the fall. I know, you know, you share that program as well, so we'll be empty nesters.

So I'm going to value this life stage and really think about what is next and be able to shape and define that more so than I probably have in the past, so I'm excited about that. The challenge that feels most energizing to me, and I'm seeing that with a couple of the boards I'm on here, is getting back to building something again.

What I loved about Peet's, I go back to growth. I do believe the organizations have to grow. Part of what created the opportunity for me to lead Peet's is I was leading the growing part of the business, and we kept growing. So I like the building. I like the energy that comes from growing and building businesses and building brands, and I like brands, companies with a good story.

I'm excited about finding those brands, companies, people who want to build, to work with in some capacity. I'm less excited about something that is, quote-unquote, just financial because my experience says they're not that much fun, and they don't really shake out the way they're positioned. So I do think you have to have both, and so I get excited.

I think there's a lot of those businesses in the growth stage that I can be a part of in some way, shape, or form and help, and that's where I get my energy. When you see people contributing and you build and you are able to move the business forward, and you're able to do that in the right way and still deliver the right shareholder and financial returns with the company because you see that coming back in, that's exciting.

[00:30:53] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. Well, we've really enjoyed working with you all these years, and you've been a fantastic partner and a great leader, and I just want to thank you for that and for this interview.

[00:31:04] Eric Lauterbach: You and your group have been a fantastic partner over the years as well, and I appreciate that.

[00:31:11] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire.

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This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com