Episode 15 - Building Beyond the Blueprint with Mike Kichline

Join host Aaron Burnett as he sits down with Mike Kichline, co-founder of Projectline and LER, to explore the lessons behind scaling a business from startup to successful exit, the power of defining leadership roles, and why the hardest chapter of entrepreneurship can begin after you've achieved everything you set out to accomplish.

Note, this podcast features real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. No pitches, no sales - just honest conversations about the moments that shape successful businesses.

From Finance Degree to .com Trenches: Finding a Path

Aaron: You've had a very successful entrepreneurial career. Tell me the story of your business life — you spent some time at Microsoft coming out of school.

Mike: Microsoft was kind of the big gravitational force everyone orbited around to a certain degree.I got a couple of degrees in college — one in finance, one in marketing — and when I graduated I had no real idea what to do with either of them. Back then, data wasn't the lingua franca it is now. Finance was essentially a math degree, marketing was creative, and nobody quite knew what to do with someone who was both. You either did accounting or you sold something.I struggled to find my footing until I ended up at a little startup called Avenue A, which became a quantitative shop. Everything they did was based on measurement and data, and it clicked immediately. Strangely, even though I was only about 28, I was one of the older people there — it was a young, .com-crazy juggernaut.The Microsoft team was doing the most cutting-edge targeted, results-based advertising that had ever been done on the internet. Big anchor clients were coming aboard. Meanwhile, I was getting assigned all the problem clients — partly because I was good at managing difficult situations, but at some point I had eight clients when everyone else had one or two. The Microsoft team was going down to Eugene for trust falls in the woods with Nike. I was coming in every morning to voicemails telling me my entire team should be fired.It was really rough, but I learned an enormous amount about clients, their personalities, and their people. When layoffs came, I went in and said I needed to step back — I was burned out. For quite a while afterward I thought it was the stupidest decision I'd ever made. But I did some consulting at RealNetworks, one thing led to another, and I ended up at Microsoft on a contract basis. That's where everything kicked off.

The Microsoft Years: Building the Blueprint for What Became a Company

Mike: I was running programs for the launch of Windows Server 2003. The program was designed to get compelling marketing stories from key enterprise clients — case studies, video testimony, the proof points you need at launch. But to do that, you had to convince large enterprise accounts to actually deploy a pre-release, unproven build of software in a live production environment. Which is harder than it sounds.One of the best moments came early in the program. A consultant from the Microsoft services group said, "We run these programs all the time and they always fail. This one isn't." And the guy who built the program, Scott, explained why: most programs like this give everything away for free, so participants have no skin in the game and no real commitment. His approach was different. Participants paid — one week of consulting time, when they were getting three weeks of value. And they had to come out to Redmond for two or three days to meet the actual product team.That last piece was huge. Clients almost never got to talk to product people — only sales reps. In those sessions, clients would ask why a feature was being removed, and the product team would explain it was being folded into another build coming out alongside it. Suddenly the client understood. The product team got real feedback. Everyone left more informed.Programs like this typically had about a 30% success rate. Ours had about 85% of customers arriving at launch with a compelling story. That result stuck with me. I started to think: there's a practice here.A colleague, Dave, was running a similar program for an early tablet initiative using the old approach — and running into all the same problems. He saw what we'd done and said, "There's a better way to do this." Around the time my contract was wrapping up, the virtualization team asked if I could repeat what I'd done for their program. That was the start. I was on my own.

Aaron: And how did that grow into a company?

Mike: At the time, consulting was like the Wild West. Thousands of one-person shops. I could see that wasn't sustainable and started thinking about a different model — pulling in free agents, managing their engagements, handling their IT and billing. Then clients started asking me to staff those engagements, and we started growing quickly.Dave reconnected with me around that time. I brought in a third partner, Anika, who I'd known from the Windows Server program. She had been deeply involved in the production side of customer evidence — case studies, content. So we all met for beers, talked about it, and she said, "Sure, why not?"We started landing programs for most of Microsoft's flagship products. Anika built out all the evidence programs. I kept expanding into other services. And then, about three years in, a client came with a different kind of request.They'd spent heavily trying to build internal tools for marketing attribution — where does spend go, what do leads turn into, how do you measure it? And they'd learned that marketers are genuinely bad at using tools. Could we build out a team to just own that layer?I pushed back on their framing. They wanted a just-add-water solution — highly paid experts doing spreadsheet work, no accountability for results. I told them they were thinking about it all wrong. What they actually needed was to hire smart, entry-level people and teach them. Build a team from the ground up. That's not how Microsoft typically operated, but they gave us the runway to try.We started with a pilot of three or four people. Within a couple of years we had 60 people and effectively owned that marketing operations layer across the US for Microsoft. Out of that grew other services and connections, and we ended up with three real divisions: a broader consulting practice, a marketing operations group, and content services. That became the foundation of how we grew going forward.

[ SPONSOR BREAK ]

Before we continue, I want to tell you about the community that made this podcast possible. The Seattle chapter of EO — that's Entrepreneurs' Organization. It's not networking, it's not selling to each other. It's real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. If you have a business that does at least a million a year in revenue and you're curious about joining a community that gets what you're going through, check out EO Seattle.

Launching LER: Building an Agency for the B2B Marketing Age

Aaron: At what point did you establish LER as its own entity and brand?

Mike: Around 2012, with the emergence of marketing automation platforms. What we'd been doing inside Microsoft — building campaigns, measuring lead flow, building analytics — was through their proprietary tools. As platforms like Marketo started hitting the market, we saw where things were headed.Dave came back in to build out what was essentially an intrapreneurial venture. We picked an automation platform, picked a CRM backend, built four or five strong pieces of B2B content, and launched LER as a separate brand — deliberately not serving existing clients. We wanted to test the model cleanly.We got a couple of early clients, got some momentum, and thought: alright, this is working. About a year and a half in, we made a bigger call. We took all of our content and marketing operations teams from the existing business and realigned them within the agency model under LER. Project Line continued as our broader consulting and on-demand services arm.The analogy I used at the time was catering versus a restaurant. Project Line was catering — dinner for twelve, breakfast for a hundred, lunch with three vegan options. All on-demand, all custom. LER was the restaurant — we decided what cuisine we made really well, put it on a menu, and opened the doors. The kitchen could do both. It was complicated at first to run two brands and two models simultaneously, but underneath it they were the same capabilities, just positioned and sold differently.Within that model, we found a specific kind of client who was most valuable: the ones who said, "This is really smart. We're not there yet, but we're starting to think about it and we want to talk more." We were ahead of the curve, and when those clients were ready to move, we were the only ones who'd already figured it out.That showed up most dramatically with Google. We'd published a piece solving a Marketo tracking problem on mobile — one of our people figured out the right code — and someone at Google saw it and asked us to come do a workshop. A five-figure project became an eight-figure line of revenue globally, two or three years later.From 2014 to about 2018 or 2019, LER grew to about 70% of the organization. Project Line continued at about 30%. We briefly explored other verticals beyond tech, but pulled back quickly. Other industries weren't using the tools yet. And what we also learned: having Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Adobe, and SAP on your client list means you can talk to anyone. Nobody questions whether you can figure out their problems.

Defining Roles: The Partner Clarity That Changed Everything

Aaron: You remained CEO of the entire organization. How did you and your partners navigate that as the company scaled?

Mike: It's one of the most important lessons I share with companies in growth phases, especially ones with founding partners: know your roles, and define them clearly before you have to.We didn't. We were just doing things, and we grew to over 200 people across multiple countries before we really confronted it. Dave was running LER. Anika was running the content groups. I was running Project Line and still deeply involved in LER — because I'd built the Microsoft and SAP relationships and closed most of the business that led to those engagements. So we had these complicated areas of overlap. I had the client relationships, but Dave was managing the delivery. Nobody quite knew who owned what.We'd brought in a board member by that point — a veteran M&A guy who knew business realities even if he didn't know our industry. And he gave us the direct version of what we needed to hear: you're confusing everyone. When mom says no, go ask dad. You need to define your roles or you're going to create bigger problems.He was right. And it was harder than it sounds, because everyone's ego gets involved. You're like, I don't want to let that go. I don't want to report to you. I want that part. Even between three people who were genuinely close, it was uncomfortable.What broke it open was Anika. She'd never had any involvement with Project Line and said: what if I ran that, Dave ran LER, and Mike you're CEO? It clarified everything overnight. Anika brought completely different ideas for how to scale Project Line. Dave owned LER outright — it had been his baby. I kept the senior client relationships and could engage across both businesses.It was the only time all three of us felt genuinely awkward for a stretch. And then everything started working really well. Our board was instrumental in forcing us to look at what we'd been glossing over.

Building a Board, Growing Without Outside Capital

Aaron: At what point did you bring on a board, and was it because of investment or by choice?

Mike: It started with our first acquisition — a small marketing automation agency in Portland. Our CFO navigated the deal mechanics. When we went to our bank, they basically blew us off. Our CFO connected us with an old-school M&A advisor who we assumed was beyond what we could afford. He said, "It's not that big a deal. I like you guys."He was the one who gave us the lecture about clarifying partner roles. He also told us to change banks and helped us set up the financial infrastructure for growth through acquisition. He became our first board member — not because he knew our industry, but because he knew the business realities we'd be confronting at each stage of growth. That was exactly what we needed.After a couple of years we expanded to a full board. We actually interviewed candidates and were surprised by some of the people we were able to bring in. None of them were industry experts. Between them they covered legal, finance, M&A, and broad business realities. And they helped us prepare for an eventual exit we hadn't yet defined.We went from a couple million in annual revenue to nearly 70 million. From three or four people to 430. The line was essentially straight up. We never had a down year. We never took outside funding. We were always profitable — maybe a down month here and there, occasionally a tough quarter, but always in the black. That discipline gave us enormous freedom. We could invest in what we wanted to invest in, build what we wanted to build, and do it without answering to anyone outside the company.

Finding EO: Imposter Syndrome, Then Possibility

Aaron: At what point did you come to EO, and what brought you here?

Mike: Early — 2006 or 2007. I met an attorney at a Davis Wright Tremaine event who'd been in EO a long time. He did the hard sell over lunch and it sounded great. But any imposter syndrome I'd felt before was magnified coming into EO.

Aaron: Magnified in terms of trepidation going in, or in your early experiences once you arrived?

Mike: Both. I came in with maybe 30 people, doing some projects at Microsoft. I didn't have cash flow problems. I didn't have some of the big complicated growth challenges I heard others wrestling with. I'd look around and think, wow, that's a really amazing business and it seems really hard — and I just didn't feel like what we were doing was that interesting by comparison.EO is not a field manual for success. Some people come in expecting to be taught how to do it. You're not. You're going to learn whatever you choose to learn from the people around you. But eventually, what you start realizing is: why couldn't I do something bigger? Why couldn't I do more?When I joined, we were maybe a three million dollar business. I never would have imagined we'd do 20, let alone 50 or 70. But when you're in the organization, you start assuming you should be able to do those things. And "more" doesn't necessarily mean bigger or richer — it might mean running your company more effectively, getting your time back, having a real exit path with an audacious goal. But eventually you realize you can probably do a lot more than you've let yourself believe.

Aaron: It exposes you to the art of possibility.

Mike: Exactly. And there's the flip side too — some people arrive thinking they can do everything themselves. EO is an ego check for them as well, but still with an upside. The message isn't "you can't do that." It's: here's how you could actually build something that gets you there. You're not a one-man band. You need to build the organization around you.

The Lifecycle of EO: From Absorbing to Giving to Just Being

Aaron: How have you changed through your involvement with EO?

Mike: I've run the full arc. I came in eager and absorbing. Moved into a phase where I was giving and taking — sharing, processing challenges, getting perspectives. Then toward the later stage, many of the things I was dealing with were outside the typical scope of what forum conversations covered. But I could still find specific people in EO who could give me guidance on specific things when I needed it.I'd also accumulated enough experience that I was able to share things with people and see them have real impact. So the value shifted. I wasn't reliant on EO the way I was in the early days to snap me into reality or expand my sense of possibility. I was in a different state.Now I'm still in — partly for the relationships, the community, the social fabric. I've taken breaks from forum at points, because when you're not running anything actively, the format fits a little differently. I've been in a group of veterans lately where everyone's been through enough that the collective knowledge is extraordinary.

Aaron: You mentioned that your imposter syndrome was initially magnified when you joined. As you reflect now, how has your sense of self changed from that first year to today?

Mike: I feel more confident in what I have to say. I'm not sure how much of that is EO specifically versus just having been in business a long time and having seen some things. But I know who I am and where I am much better than I did back then.In the early days you're always trying to figure out: am I helping? Am I learning? Do I even know anything? Eventually you start realizing that everybody knows something. Some people realize it and some don't. Some of the best insights I've received came from people who didn't think they had much to offer — and it turned out they knew a lot.Someone who's been in forum for a couple of months drops something, and you think: I've been here for years and nobody's ever framed it quite that way for me. That's a genuinely remarkable thing when it happens.

Aaron: I often leave forum unsure what I got from it. And then a week or two later something said in the room surfaces at exactly the right moment.

Mike: It's a body of work being constantly fed in. You'll have a deep conversation about a set of circumstances that has nothing to do with you right now. And at some point, that perspective shows up at an interesting time. It's like an education — an ongoing accumulation of how other people are navigating challenges and finding their way through successes. You collectively get smarter. That's really what's special about being in forum and in the organization over a long period of time.

The Exit: Accenture, COVID, and the Cost of Not Planning for the Outside

Aaron: You built a very successful company, grew it significantly, and had a successful exit. How did that exit meet your expectations — and how was it different than you imagined?

Mike: I never would have predicted an exit of this scale. Post-exit, I don't really need to do anything. I'm essentially done financially. That's something I'm genuinely grateful for.The challenging parts were real, though. We had several potential buyers and it came down to a large global agency or a large global consultancy. Given how much of our work was in tech and operations, we went with Accenture. I knew I wasn't going to stay for another 20 years, but I thought I could see myself there for a few years if I liked it.I didn't, really. It's disillusioning in a very specific way. Going from running everything to being a cog in a machine is a hard transition. And then we closed the deal on April 2nd, 2020.We sent everyone home three weeks before we signed, and they didn't know what was happening. When we announced the acquisition, we never came back to the office. I never physically met anyone from Accenture for a very long time. Navigating a new organization entirely remotely — while also supporting 430 people through a disorienting transition, during a global pandemic — was something I hadn't prepared for.Culture had been one of the things we were most proud of. And so much of what creates culture happens in the margins — the five minutes before a meeting starts, the five minutes after, the side conversation in the hallway. I learned more about what was actually happening in the business from those unscheduled moments than I ever did from formal meetings. When everyone went remote and everyone was new, all of that was gone. You click into a room, cover the agenda, click out. Really sterile. Really disillusioning.And some of the things our people were experiencing — things they'd come to me with — were no longer in my control. Reassuring someone of an outcome you no longer have authority over is not a comfortable place to be.

Aaron: You're still held responsible, but you don't have the authority.

Mike: Exactly. I had a lot of arguments with leadership at Accenture about how to think about things. Fortunately, post-transaction, our people largely landed on their feet. It just took time. I wouldn't want to do that particular set of circumstances again.

What EO Gave in the Hardest Moments — and What Comes After the Exit

Aaron: Can you think of a moment — either during that difficult transition or in the period of rapid growth before it — where EO really delivered for you?

Mike: Going through the pre-acquisition process, all that rollercoaster of stress, anxiety, and excitement — my forum was really wonderful. You're on the edge of this life-altering shift, and all the emotions that come with it, positive and negative. Having a place where I could be completely honest about what that felt like was invaluable. Outside of that room, I had nowhere else to put it. My kids didn't know. Most of my family didn't know. My partners were on the same train I was — we talked constantly, but we were all feeling the same thing. Forum gave me something different. That was really special.

Aaron: And what about life on the other side of the exit?

Mike: It's been five years and I still struggle with it, honestly. The analogy I keep coming back to: it's like spending years in this building where you can see the mountains through the window — just beautiful out there. All your energy goes into getting to the exit, getting out the door. And when you finally do, it is amazing. And then it starts getting dark. It's a little cold. And you realize you didn't bring a coat. You didn't pack food. You don't know which direction is north.You spent so much time trying to get out that you didn't plan for being out. You don't know where to go. Your sense of purpose is completely different now.I think that second half — what comes after the exit — is something people in EO are starting to talk about more, but it's still underweighted. A lot of people think about what their exit looks like. Not enough think about what the outside looks like once they're standing in it. I could have invested a lot more energy into preparing for that. It's something I think matters more than most of us realize.

Aaron: I agree. Thank you for a really remarkable conversation.

Mike: This was good. Thank you.

— END OF TRANSCRIPT —