Pod Insights Growth Think Tank Building a Scalable Foundation for Growth with Christa Schott at Alliant Consulting About this episode In this episode, we explore Building a Scalable Foundation for Growth with Christa Schott, President of Alliant Consulting. Under Christa's leadership, Alliant Consulting has achieved significant growth, earning the No. 4,509 spot on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list. We discuss how establishing a Scalable Foundation for Growth has been pivotal in their success, enabling the company to adapt and thrive in a competitive market. Christa shares insights into the strategies and practices that have allowed Alliant Consulting to maintain excellence while expanding operations. Tune in to discover how Building a Scalable Foundation for Growth can drive sustainable success in your organization.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 75% of women who seek menopause care don't receive it. The lying awake at 3 a.m. wondering what's happening to your body ends now. Midi is virtual care built for women in perimenopause and menopause with clinicians who specialize in women's health. Plus, it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. Midlife needs Midi. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit today. That's join M I D I dot com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.
0:30 Speaker 01 When you're running a growing business, the right systems can unlock your full sales potential and make fulfilling every order effortless. Switch to ShipStation before peak season so you're prepped and ready before the rush hits. ShipStation connects Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and over 200 more marketplaces with one platform that does it all. You can manage orders, sync inventory, track returns, all automatically. Everything your operation needs, all in one place. Upgrade your shipping operations to stress-proof your biggest sales days and capture every bit of potential revenue. Go to shipstation.com and use code AUDIO and get 30 days free.
1:00 Speaker 02 The scalable foundation for growth is two-fold. The first one is providing an opportunity for my team to grow. And so I'm really proud of the growth structure that we've created here. So each team member as an individual has their own success plan. So it's a personalized plan for their growth. They are assigned a teammate who is basically meant to work with them to reach their milestones and objectives, to succeed in their current role and then get to the new one. I guess the person's kind of like a swim buddy. That's what they act like. They guide them along and won't let them fail, leading them to reach those milestones and objectives as they grow in their position.
1:41 Speaker 02 And then with that growth path, every quarter it is reviewed. The success plan is reviewed and the individuals are allowed to either apply for a new promotion or a position or a potential merit increase.
1:55 Speaker 03 Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately-held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hemmott. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we're going to talk about building a scalable foundation for your company. When you have a strong foundation in a house, you're able to build the first floor, second floor, and maybe even a big house to a third floor. But without a strong foundation, you can't build it. Same thing happens in a regular business. And sometimes, we have to slow down to speed up. So today, we're going to have on here the CEO of Alliant Consulting, Krista Schott.
2:39 Speaker 03 Krista and I talk about building a scalable future, or a foundation for your business. And so, when you look at today's interview, look at some of the things that you could be doing as your company continues to scale. She has over 100 employees, so put that into context. You're not going to get to where she is overnight, but thinking about those things, working with your team, and figuring out what's missing and what's most important, that's what you can do through today's conversation with Krista. My name is Gene Hemmott. I'm an executive coach. I do focus primarily on CEO coaching, but we do a lot of executive work as well, and we also take managers and turn them into leaders. We do leadership development for companies in fast growth. In fact, we work with more Inc. 5,000-level companies in leadership development than anyone
3:24 Speaker 03 else in the world. And when we go into companies, we're helping them identify the leadership roadblocks or blind spots that are getting in the way. So if you are a fast-growth company, you've got chaos, you've got people problems, you've got some things that are out of alignment, you want to have a conversation with me so that we could talk about your business, talk about leadership, and I can use some of the tools that will accelerate your understanding of where you are and help you decide where to move forward. This is not a sales call. This truly is about leadership strategy and about how you are showing up as a leader and identifying your own blind spots and really helping you rise up to that next level and get out of the way so that you can build the team of your dreams and have a business that performs without you being there pulling it along.
4:07 Speaker 03 If you're curious about this, go to genehemmott.com. You can send me an email, [email protected] , and we will get on the phone, use my tools, and I will explore and discover with you and give you a plan, give you priorities, identify the blind spots, all of those things. I've done this for free for the last 10-plus years, and I'd love to do it for you. If you are a fit, if you're a scaling company, growing fast, and you have these issues, you want to get real clear about it, send me an email, [email protected] . Now, here's the interview with Krista. Hi, Krista, how are you?
4:39 Speaker 02 Hi Jean, excellent. How are you?
4:41 Speaker 03 I am fantastic. We're gonna have a great conversation today talking about, you know, building a scalable foundation for growth. And before we get there, let's talk about your company, Alliant Consulting.
4:52 Speaker 02 Sure. Thanks for the opportunity, Jean. So, um, Alliant Consulting's been around for 22 years. I started it actually when I was 22, so I was just a baby out of college. I thought, oh, it'd be so cool to start a business and have an employee someday. Well, fast forward, our little tiny company started with just me. It's now 100 plus employees. We're national, going international and making a big impact across the country. What we do is prevailing wage compliance. And what that means to those who are not familiar is basically make sure people get paid correctly. And it's a, it's an honor to be able to help the little people to be able to make sure that they're paid correctly, what is owed to them to feed their families and to work alongside my amazing team.
5:36 Speaker 03 What is the biggest changes that are going on right now in the, the space that you're operating? I don't know, I don't know if AIs have an impact, but what are the, the driving forces right now for your industry?
5:45 Speaker 02 Driving forces is, um, mostly the clean and green movement. So, we are in the construction industry. That's kind of our bread and butter. And there's a lot of tax credits that require federal tax money that requires what we do, um, the wage and hour compliance and in the green and clean. What that means is clean energy. So, wind turbines and solar farms and clean gases, you know, hydrogen fuels or diesel that they're making out of soy and corn. So, all of those things are a big part of the construction industry, especially when backed by the federal government, that require services like ours.
6:23 Speaker 03 Fantastic. Krista, we came here to talk about really, you know, scaling your, your company and creating that foundation for growth. Where do you think we should start?
6:32 Speaker 02 You know, I really, it's been such a crazy ride in our growth the last year or two. I mean, 200% growth this year, 100% growth last year. You know, 85% the year before, year over year. So it's been kind of a crazy ride. But you know, the, the foundation of that truly to me is the people and the leadership component of it. That's my favorite thing to talk about because that's what's going to take us into the next growth phase as well.
6:57 Speaker 03 Well, when you think of leadership for a company your size, do you have an executive team? Do you have, you know, kind of manager coaching and all that kind of stuff?
7:07 Speaker 02 I do. So we have built our executive team out over the last two years of our hyper growth. Two years ago, it was just me and everyone else. I had an org chart that just had me at the top and a lot of names beneath it. Since then, we've had to build out our departments and our teams as a really strong foundation to that growth. And so what I realized right away was my Achilles heel was I didn't have management. I didn't have leaders who could really step up and take the ball and one with it with the growth that we, we have. I like to say that we've been building the car as we've been flying down the highway. You know, we're, we're in a little Kia, but we're trying to be on a NASCAR track and like soup up our car as we go.
7:50 Speaker 02 And so really developing leadership programs for our management to be able to make sure that they are properly trained with what our leadership style is and their management focus to be able to lead the team as we grow. From 23 people two years ago to over 100 now has been a foundation of that.
8:10 Speaker 03 Well, let's unpack that. What does it look like to create that scalable foundation for growth?
8:14 Speaker 02 You know, I think the, the scalable foundation for growth is twofold. The first one is providing an opportunity for my team to grow. And so I'm really proud of the growth structure that we've created here. So each team member as an individual is, has their own success plan. So it's a personalized plan for their growth. They are assigned a teammate who is basically meant to work with them to reach their milestones and objectives. Um, to succeed in their current role and then get to the new one. I guess the, the person's kind of like a swim buddy. They, that's what they act like. They guide them along and won't let them fail. Uh, leading them to, to reach those milestones and objectives as they grow in their position.
8:56 Speaker 02 And then with that growth path, um, every quarter it is reviewed. The success plan is reviewed and the individuals are allowed to either apply for a new promotion or a position or a potential merit increase. So that growth opportunity right there has been instrumental in, in growing people from the ground up from entry level towards management. And then the second thing was really having a good leadership development program. Making sure everyone's on the same page when it comes to our management style. Uh, we choose to lead from behind. So we lift up our team and, and kind of give them the tools and resources to succeed. Guiding by example, uh, but supporting as they embrace those challenges. And so
9:39 Speaker 02 developing, um, a good leadership structure and program, starting with that idea. Um, you know, everything kind of falls in line.
9:47 Speaker 03 Let's go a little deeper with this. The first part of this, the success plan, I think a lot of companies would say, check the box. I've got that. We look at these things and we realize that they're very much not clearly defined. They're mostly things that they put in an employment agreement and they change quickly. Um, what is different about your success plan that you feel like is, makes it work for you?
10:10 Speaker 02 Sure. Because it's an individualized success plan. So once everyone is trained in the work that we do, so they understand the language that we speak. We have an interview process with them and we say, what do you like about this? What are your strengths in these types of things? What are your weaknesses? And let's build a position around you. And so there are multiple ways to grow within the company. You can go down training. You can go towards management. You can go towards research. Um, finding out what the person is most interested in. If they like to do it, they're going to succeed. If they don't like to do it, they're probably not. And so truly making it an individual a growth path and roadmap for them, um, is foundation number one. And then the second thing is
10:51 Speaker 02 The growth path and all of the milestones and objectives that go along with that success plan, because they are cured basically to that person, then they are eager to check some of those things off the list. But the path will have about seventeen to twenty milestones and objectives to complete every three months. So it's not a one size fits all for everyone. You're not putting them all in a bucket and say, hey, this is the pathboards management. It's who, what can you individually contribute to the team? What are your strengths? How we can build on that and push you along in the path that you want to take?
11:26 Speaker 03 Krista's talking about the success plan. I just wanted to highlight this. I've been researching fast growth companies for a long time. And one of the things that really drives fast growth companies is they don't hire people just for to take responsibility of their work and their projects and the client experience. They hire people to take a sense of ownership. And the best way you can get people to take a sense of ownership and feel like owners in the business, even without a financial stake, is to give them a place to grow, truly grow, working on their own skills, their their success plan, and giving them leadership development training. Those things combined together to create the most powerful element of personal growth inside the business. And those people tend to be loyal. They tend to overcome the challenges.
12:09 Speaker 03 They're not, you know, talking behind your back because you're giving them a chance to grow. In fact, if you think about where you are in your career, someone who gave you a chance to grow is looked at fondly and you probably look at admire that person for what they gave you. You could be that for the people on your team. Back to Krista. Love the detail there. When you mentioned the second part of that is a good leadership development program. What are the core elements of that for you? Because some people go, we have a book club. That's it. Some people have bank investments. I've heard the top tier of this is we had one of an Ivy League companies, I can't remember which which university it was, but to create a specific bespoke program for their entire company. That was probably overkill. That
12:52 Speaker 03 was the most I've ever seen anyone invest in their people. Where do you guys fit with that leadership development program?
12:58 Speaker 02 So once they, the employee reaches a certain Level of knowledge and they want to go towards the management track. We put them in a few different leadership, formal leadership development programs. The first one is a program that has been customized for us through the University of California, San Diego. It's kind of like a mini MBA focused on leadership. And what we love about it is it's been fine tuned to us and our goals and our company and our growth and our leadership style. So that has been kind of foundation number one, incredibly successful. The second one is to have monthly meetings with the management team to really talk about where are we struggling with leadership?
13:39 Speaker 02 What are we seeing? What are the, the speed bumps that might be in the road and how can we fix that? One of the things that we constantly stress is, hey, let's evaluate our problems. What has gone wrong this month and how can we look in the mirror? And say, what can we as leaders do better instead of looking out the window and pointing fingers? That's not the leadership style that we want here. And so making sure that all of our management and anyone going through the leadership program, understand the fundamentals of the program that we're teaching them, but then also the respect and the empathy and then the discipline to be able to look in that mirror and say, how can I do better as a manager, as a leader to help my team along the way?
14:19 Speaker 03 I always curious about the different inflection points of leaders that come onto the show. We've all have different things that we've addressed, blind spots. Sometimes it's just letting go of an, an identity to be able to become CEO. Is there anything that you feel like you've, you know, kind of overcome or the breakthrough to be the leader that you are today?
14:39 Speaker 02 You know, I appreciate asking that question because to me, I jokingly say I haven't had a real job in 22 years. Because, you know, I started the company so young, I don't know what other leaders and, and managers are doing. But to me, over time, I learned that good leadership truly starts with respect and then trust. Um, I do make sure to connect with every single hundred plus employees, um, every, uh, every month at least. Ideally a few times a month if I can. Uh, I really feel that it shows them my care because I do, that I'm supporting them, that I respect them. I believe that our most valuable employees are learning from this example because they're implementing their own types of showing respect and trust with their teams when they
15:20 Speaker 02 become a leader. I also realized very quickly that people are following me and and what I do. And I didn't really realize that until I was going a couple of years ago, probably five or six years ago, going through some family things. Everybody has them, right? I was kind of down for a couple of weeks and I noticed that staff were starting to get frustrated. Our work productivity was starting to go down. People started taking sick days or mental health days and it was just really odd for our team, which normally is very positive. I would just go in and shut myself in the office and kind of focus on my work. So I didn't have to think about anything or talk to anybody. You know, we all go through those moments in life. But it really hit home when somebody knocked
16:02 Speaker 02 on my door, comes in and said, fake it. And I said, what do you mean fake it? And she said, Krista, fake a smile. We're miserable around here because you're miserable. Everybody follows your lead. And I said, I just didn't understand it. She said, when you're frustrated, we're frustrated. When you're happy, we're happy. And if you need to, you know, fake it, because we need more positivity around here. And that was a really changing moment for me, because the next day I came in with a smile and everything changed. There was laughter, there was teamwork and collaboration and work productivity went up. The change was truly astounding. And that was a defining moment for me in my leadership journey to realize that good leadership truly includes attitude and that makes a big impact on the team.
16:46 Speaker 03 Krista said, the advice she got was fake it. Now, that can work. I really have seen this work in different places, but I will also know that some people need to just be much more intentional about what's going on. So I use the question, who are you being? So if we reflect back on who she was being, she was being down or sad or or something was impacting her and that wasn't the place she wanted to be. Had I asked her who she wanted to become, which is a big two questions I ask in my coaching them quite a bit, she would have been much more succinct about who she was and she would have been able to see that it's a choice that she can move
17:21 Speaker 03 You don't have to just fake it. It can work, but a more higher, more intentional way of shifting yourself is to answer the question, who am I being that's getting in the way of X? And who am I becoming as a leader? And when you answer those really clearly and specifically, you will have a much better way of getting to where you want to be. Back to Krista. I'm glad I asked the question. I don't always get a chance to ask that question, but it was such a rich answer. I think it's going to serve a lot of people here today. Krista, we're here talking about building a foundation for growth. There's a lot that we could cover. I don't know if we've left out anything that you feel like is really important to that topic.
18:03 Speaker 02 You know, I think to grow, I didn't know we were going to grow this quickly. I wasn't prepared. And so truly building that foundation, I think is trying to see ahead, but also learning from the mistakes that are made along the way. To implement what we've learned and grow from it will really help build what you called, you know, the topic of this, that true foundation for growth.
18:29 Speaker 03 All right, well, we're wrapping up today. Is there anything else that you wanted to highlight from building the kind of culture that you have or the kind of leadership development program that we haven't touched on?
18:39 Speaker 02 You know, I just think it's so important that everyone's on the same page when it comes to that leadership and management style. You know, each company is going to have its own culture and its own way of growing and developing good leaders. And so I truly believe that, you know, going back to what I said earlier, leading from behind to lift up that team and and really give them the tools and resources necessary and support them along the way. It gives people a lot of ownership when it comes to leadership and their roles. And it gives them the the trust that they know that I trust them. It gives them the encouragement and it really causes them to lean on, lean in to where we're growing. And not only are they growing individually, but we're growing as a company. And it's been an amazing thing to watch.
19:22 Speaker 03 Well, I look forward to getting this podcast out into the world and I appreciate you sharing your wisdom.
19:27 Speaker 02 Thank you so much, Gina. Appreciate your time.
19:30 Speaker 03 Wow, what a great interview. I love how she's investing in her people and the success plan that she's put in place, the leadership development. That's what it takes to create homegrown leaders. Now, you may have to still hire from the outside, but you want to be able to develop the people. It does increase their ownership, increases their ability to grow with you as the company scales, because a lot of companies are so focused on the marketing or sales and operations of their business that they don't think about developing their people and creating the kind of culture. But today, we're talking about building a foundation for your business to scale. That's real leadership. When you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth thinking. As always, be with courage. We'll see you next time.
Previous Scaling Culture to Drive Growth with Brett Turner at Kalon Creative Next 5 Ways You Can Use AI to Improve Your Leadership with Ethan King from Zeus' Closet Page updated November 7, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
