Editor’s Note: CNY Executive Q&A is a feature appearing regularly in The Central New York Business Journal, authored by guest writer Jeff Knauss, who is president of his own digital-marketing firm. In each edition, Jeff chats with a different executive at a Central New York business or nonprofit, with the interview transcript appearing in a conversational […]
Editor’s Note: CNY Executive Q&A is a feature appearing regularly in The Central New York Business Journal, authored by guest writer Jeff Knauss, who is president of his own digital-marketing firm. In each edition, Jeff chats with a different executive at a Central New York business or nonprofit, with the interview transcript appearing in a conversational Q&A format.
In this issue, I speak with Gregg Kidd, founder of Pinnacle Investments and CEO and board chairman of Pinnacle Holding Company, LLC in Syracuse.
KNAUSS: Tell me a little about your background, where you grew up, an your career path.
KIDD: I grew up in Fulton. I went to Fulton High School and played sports — football, basketball, and baseball. I went to Ithaca College and graduated in 1984. After college, I had a couple different jobs before I got into the financial-services industry. I spent 10 years as a VP at Smith Barney. I left in September 1995 and started Pinnacle Investments with Dan Raite and one other assistant. Pinnacle has grown to five companies with 65 employees.
KNAUSS: When you first started, what was your vision for what you wanted Pinnacle to be?
KIDD: From the beginning, I wanted to create a business where anybody that worked with us would have a voice to offer ideas for the business to consider. I also wanted to create a business where people that were important to us would become equity owners in the firm so that they have skin in the game. That ownership builds loyalty.
KNAUSS: What qualities do you look for when you’re hiring people?
KIDD: A very positive attitude and people that want to win. I go back to my background growing up in sports. I think business is the ultimate sport. It’s all about winning because if you don’t win, you lose. I think people that want to win and want to be part of a team become successful.
KNAUSS: Give me a quick elevator pitch for all five companies that are under the Pinnacle family. Tell me a little bit about why you’ve branched out into some of these other business lines.
KIDD: The common denominator is that they are all service-oriented businesses with financial services. We started as a broker-dealer, which is your typical brokerage firm. We ended up with an asset management company managing portfolios for high-net-worth individuals and companies through relationships that I brought the company. I knew a gentleman that worked for an insurance company, Joe Masella, and we ended up through that relationship starting an asset-management company, and then we acquired an insurance business. We’ve got a 403(b) [retirement planning] business, [called Pinnacle Confidential Planning] that is for school districts. That came from that acquisition of the insurance company where we saw another opportunity and created a 403(b) business. We recently just launched Pinnacle Employee Services, which allows clients to manage human resources, payroll, employee benefits, etc. That was more of an opportunity that came to us. Some of these opportunities aren’t planned. They just happen, and we have to take advantage of them. We are very entrepreneurial minded here, and we are constantly looking for opportunities that we believe can be good for our clients, for our company, and for our shareholders.
KNAUSS: Were you attracted to leadership roles from a young age?
KIDD:Yes, in sports I was a natural leader. I was a quarterback on the football team, a pitcher and left fielder in baseball, and a point guard in basketball. I was comfortable leading people and not afraid to try to direct people, to take criticism, get booed, and be told you stink. I believe all those things helped me for the future in business. Being thick-skinned is very helpful in the business world. I would say being able to transfer the skill sets that I’ve learned, and the criticism I’ve faced have helped shape me into the entrepreneur I am today.
KNAUSS:What do you feel differentiates Pinnacle from some of your competitors on a local, regional, or national level?
KIDD: Well, I’m not sure there are any firms that are running the way we do as far as the way we offer ownership in the firm to people that work for us. The competitors tend to be owned by one or two people, or are the larger companies that are headquartered in New York City and have a million shareholders. For a small firm, I think we’ve got an interesting business model that is successful, which involves people buying into the story and also getting rewarded with ownership in the company. I believe that is the biggest differentiator between other businesses and ours. Also, we’re taking risks that nobody in this community is taking. We have the only equity hedge fund in Central New York. We have a mutual fund that is our proprietary fund. We’re looking to start a private-equity, venture-capital fund. These are not things that businesses in Central New York typically do. Again, we’re looking to create a company in Central New York that is unique, that is a place where ideally kids who graduated from college would want to work at instead of going to a place like New York City or Silicon Valley to find a career.
KNAUSS: What is your outlook on Central New York?
KIDD: I believe that Central New York needs to become more of a risk-oriented community. It’s a low risk, low return environment here, and I think somehow we have to change the thinking of this community that views risk as a bad thing. We have great universities around here. We’ve got students graduating that are extremely talented and most of them leave once they graduate. We have to create a new environment with risk capital and people with a mindset that risk is a good thing; it’s not evil. There’s an embedded mindset in this community that risk is a bad thing and people tend to want to do today exactly what they did yesterday because it’s safe. It’s pervasive in our community. Somebody needs to come in with a sledgehammer and just blast that mindset and create a whole new mindset in this community. ν
About the author: Jeff Knauss is managing partner & president of a digital-marketing firm, DigitalHyve.com, and has always been interested in hearing successful executive’s stories. He lives in Camillus with his wife Heta and son Max. For more, check out his blog at www.CnyCeo.org