https://youtu.be/909yDIlWajk
RJ Grimshaw is the president and CEO of UniFi, an equipment financing company. We talk about the ABLE leadership framework, the concept of intrapreneurship, and break down the world of equipment financing.
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Identify Your Intrapreneurs with RJ Grimshaw
Our guest is RJ Grimshaw, the CEO and President of UniFi Equipment Finance, which grew from $13 million in revenue to $18 million in two years. RJ sits on the board of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association. And he is a head coach with USA Hockey. RJ, welcome to the show.
Hey, Steve. I'm glad to be here. Real quick correction. I coach not for USA Hockey, but within USA Hockey. So I don't want to mislead anyone that I'm actually coaching the USA Hockey team. But we have actually a side note, where I live is where USA Hockey is based for the whole country and they bring in the top 20 players, 17 and 18 year olds, every year to play for USA and typically that's your Olympic team. So I again, I don't want to confuse anyone or anyone think, geez, RJ is really getting ahead of himself thinking that he's coaching USA hockey, but I am a certified level four coach for USA hockey. And I've coached for close to 20 years. So it's one of my passions. I just love the sport, but more importantly, I just love, you know, the life application you can, you know, teach players.
Yeah, definitely. And building a hockey team is not completely dissimilar from building an effective business team, right? Who can execute a playbook and score some profitable goals and get things moving, right?
That's spot on. And there's a lot of parallels between team sports and business on a daily basis. So, we actually search within Unifi for athletes that have a background and it doesn't have to be a high level. They just played in high school or club or things of that nature. That means that they understand what it takes and the sacrifices, discipline, and more, most importantly, a compete level of the strive for excellence. So I think that there's a lot of parallels between any athletics and in the business world.
I definitely agree. And when I was running my own company, I was always looking for, as well, I was always welcoming former athletes, because I knew that they understood how to strive and how to persevere and how to overcome challenges, which in business and entrepreneurship are a given, right?
And it continues to, on a daily basis, those attributes continue to be pressed more and more in the world that we live in and what everything's been thrown at us over the last couple of years. And it seems like it's not going away anytime soon now with the other challenges relative to human capital and supply chain and things of that nature. So again, if you built those attributes at a younger age and now you can rely on those and continue to build those muscles in regards to the adjectives that you just said, it's important.
Yeah, they say that winning is a habit. So let's start with your entrepreneurial journey. You grew up in a family business, I believe, and you got your first start with a couple of businesses. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got started and how you end up running an equipment leasing company?
Sure. I guess I picked my parents correctly because they're both entrepreneurs. My dad was a successful business owner and my mom supported him. And one of the first businesses that they had was a mobile home park that they actually built from dirt up and built it to 40 units and maintained it for over 20 years and then ultimately sold it out to private equity firm. And I was part of that and saw what it took in terms of discipline, evening hours, weekends, and things of that nature.
I was young when they started it back in 1969. That was the year I was born in terms of the true hard work of laying electrical and things of that nature. But I was able to witness that. And then my dad owned several businesses.