Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Nicolas Thomley started Minneapolis-based Pinnacle Services Inc. back in 1999 with a $20,000 loan from his grandmother and a significant dose of passion for the idea of helping people with developmental disabilities and mental illness maximize their opportunities.
The company blew through that money in a hurry, quickly opting to add a bank loan. Pinnacle has grown substantially in the nearly two decades since, but he’d like to be doing more.
Growth, however, has been stunted in recent years by the inability to find more quality employees and the tight spigot he says the state Legislature has on funding for programs like this.
“It’s a struggle to find good people,” he says. “We simply can’t pay enough. We’d like to pay a lot more. We’re really tied to the Legislature. And it’s probably the worst hiring environment I’ve seen. It’s impossible to find good people and retain them. It’s really a struggle to grow or expand or do more.”
That’s not to say Pinnacle hasn’t had some successes over the years. The company has grown significantly in 10 years since it was first featured in Upsize. Revenues have doubled from just under $8 million in 2007 to around $17 million in 2017. And the company now employs more than 300 staff, half of whom work full-time. The growth, Thomley says, stretched to the limit Pinnacle’s headquarters in Minneapolis and the company now has overflow space in another building.
But they need more.
“We’re scrambling to find as many good people as we can just to fill the needs that we have,” he says.
The company started out focused on working with people who have intellectual disabilities. Over time, Pinnacle has begun serving additional populations, including people with mental health issues and, more recently, seniors and some people who have suffered brain injuries.
“It’s broadened,” Thomley says. “We’ve served someone as young as 18 months. I think the oldest person we’ve ever worked with is 108. It’s a pretty broad spectrum of age and varying disabilities.”
The necessary skillsets for a potential hire at Pinnacle vary depending whether the client is a semi-independent adult versus a highly-dependent adult or child, but regardless, it takes a well-trained person with the right temperament.
“They are caring people,” he says. “They wouldn’t be going to work doing the things they are doing if they weren’t. If you can’t pay them what they would make driving Uber, that’s really challenging. With an aging population, the need for caregiving is only going to increase.”
Funding isn’t the only challenge Thomley has dealt with over the years. One he wishes he’d handled better was the culture shift that came along with the significantly increased employee count. In the early days, the company culture was fairly intimate. He acknowledges that’s not quite as true today, in part because he didn’t notice it early enough or plan for it.
“The shift in culture … is going to happen one way or another,” he says. “One of the things we missed was actively engaging and planning for that shift. We knew we were growing, but I don’t think we really thought about the bigger we get, the more difficult this cohesive culture will be.”
Thomley also acknowledges that while he has a passion for the business, he also often gets distracted by new ideas. In a nod to his own challenges in dealing with daily operations, he hired a chief operating officer, Jill Cihlar, whom he ultimately promoted to CEO. Cihlar now handles most of the day-to-day functions at Pinnacle so he can focus on strategy.
“She’s much better at systems and executing, pushing everything forward” Thomley says. “I get distracted by the next thing. That’s a big one. We wouldn’t be where we are without her.”
Thomley has started other businesses since opening Pinnacle and he’s in the early stages of researching another that would focus on affordable housing for people with disabilities. He acknowledges frustrations related to the pace of Pinnacle’s growth, but he retains the passion for the cause that pushed him to initially start the company.
“Pinnacle is the first company I started,” he says. “It’s got a lot of meaning to me. There is an emotional attachment to it in a lot of ways. We’ll get through this rough patch. We’ll come through the other side and things will start moving forward again.”
Description: Provider of assistance to people with developmental disabilities and mental illness in finding housing, jobs and other necessities.
Founder: Nicolas Thomley
CEO: Jill Cihlar
Headquarters: Minneapolis
Founded: 1999
Revenue: About $17 million
Website:www.pinnacleservices.org
Nicolas Thomley, founder of Pinnacle Services Inc.: 612.977.3100;
ni*************@**************es.org; www.pinnacleservices.org.
