Raymond (RJ) Grimshaw is the Founder of ABLE Leadership and former CEO of UniFi Equipment Finance, where he scaled the company from $14M to $250M. A recognized expert in intrapreneurship and business growth,
RJ now mentors leaders on how to think like owners and use AI responsibly through his platform, The AI CEO. With decades of experience and a certification in Financial AI, RJ continues to shape the future of leadership with clarity, strategy, and impact. 
He holds financial AI certification from Upstart and continues to write, teach, and serve the industry with a steady hand and clear voice.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjgrimshaw/
Website: http://www.theaiceo.ai
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is RJ Grimshow, founder of ABLE Leadership and the AI CEO, a recognized authority on entrepreneurship. We’re going to talk more about that in a little bit. And business growth. Rj spent a decade as CEO of Unify Equipment Finance, where he scaled the company from 14 million to 250 million by focusing on execution, team development and long term value. Now, through his leadership programs and AI expertise, he mentors Towards executives that think like owners, and to leverage artificial intelligence responsibly to scale what matters. With a financial AI certification and years of hands on leadership success, RJ brings a clear voice and practical strategies to the future of leadership. Rj, welcome to the show.
RJ Grimshow: Wow, thank you for that introduction. Uh, I better compliment my bio writer, which is ChatGPT in regards to that. And uh, makes me sound, uh, you know, I’ve been blessed enough to be surrounded by amazing people, uh, in every team I’ve worked with, which is driven all the success that I’ve been able to be blessed with. Um, and it doesn’t stop. I mean, we’re in a time right now that a lot of business owners are facing either excitement, uh, in terms of what the future looks like or uncertainty. So, um, I feel it’s a good time for, you know, people like what you do and the people you surround yourself with. And what we’re trying to do here at Able Leadership, it’s much needed, um, for the for the society that we all, we all live in.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So you want to give me a little bit of background on RJ? Who are you as a human being? And then let’s jump into able leadership.
RJ Grimshow: Sure. I was fortunate enough to be born into, um, somewhat entitled into a family of entrepreneurs. My dad owned his own company. My grandparents on both sides of the family. My grandfather owned a soda distributorship in Massachusetts. My grandmother on the other side had many florist stores. My uncle was an optician. He owned three locations, and this was back in the 70s and 80s before you saw, you know, mass consolidation. So he was a leader in that. And I started my first company at 23. Uh, crazy enough, my dad actually bankrolled myself and my brother into a bar restaurant, which, looking back. Oh, wow. Dad, I don’t know what you were thinking putting a 23 year old in a bar. But the good news I was married because I was actually in the military, in the Air Force, which was the best thing that ever happened to me. Uh, because the Air Force, you know, really taught me discipline, teamwork, how to serve your country, why we serve our country. And it really laid a foundation for me to enter into or entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship. See, I’m already confusing the two. Trisha. Um, and then by the age of 30, I fell into corporate America by accident. Unfortunately, my dad died at 61 from a massive heart attack. I turned 30, I already had two boys at the time. I started young, and I had a hard decision to make. Either. Do I want to go into a safety net of corporate America with benefits and things of that nature, or do I want to continue on this entrepreneurial path that we’ve been successful doing? And I made the decision, uh, to go into corporate America, and that’s where I found the term entrepreneurship.
RJ Grimshow: Uh, I started an individual contributor and 15 years later worked my way up again, being surrounded by a lot of great people. Lucky at the right time, at the right place, and also being extremely proactive. So many. Um, I don’t want to sound, um. We all control our destiny. We all control our careers. It doesn’t matter if you’re in corporate America or working for yourself. And so many people forget that, that we are in control of our future and where we want to go might not be a straight line, but I knew I wanted to get to become a CEO. I from the day that, you know, high school, I would tell people, what are you going to do? I’m going to be a CEO. I don’t know what, I don’t know where, I don’t know what kind of organization, but I know that I want to, uh, and it wasn’t about the title, it was more about leadership. And, uh, in regards to that, today is a somewhat of a special day for my family. Um, over the last three weeks, both my sons, uh, Tyler, who’s 31, and Trent, who’s 26, both have accepted an assistant coaching positions at the college level, the collegiate level.
RJ Grimshow: Both of them played college hockey. But it’s crazy to think within three weeks of both of them being offered full time assistant coaching positions at the college level one in Minot, North Dakota, and the other one in Middlebury, Vermont. So leadership has always been part of, you know, our core. Beliefs and standards. And it doesn’t come down to title. It’s just the way that you interact with other people. And it starts with your interpersonal in terms of leading yourself. So sorry for the long winded answer on who is RJ, but kind of gives you a backstop. And then my other passion is just business. I love the art of business. I love the science of business. I love just just taking the macro view of a business. The E-myth is a fabulous book that every entrepreneur should have to read of working on your business, not in your business, because we’re all guilty of that. At, and I just love taking a step back and working with business owners to understand and try and see around the corner before they can. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m wrong. But that’s the fun of it. And the art of it is making that educated decision of what the future might look like. And that’s right. Now is a critical time. Um, a lot of those decisions.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So, RJ, I you didn’t talk specifically or use the word mindset, but I heard you say, uh, being in the right place at the right time. And your boys, um, Tyler and Trent taking on those leadership responsibilities, just something about them. And I think the energy and the mindset that you put out there is so important. So that’s my perspective. What’s your perspective on the energy and the mindset that we carry around with us, and how it correlates to good or bad leadership?
RJ Grimshow: Yeah. I um, everything is around energy. You know, I’m a big Pete Carroll fan. Uh, who’s now the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. And and Pete is a high energy. And when I used to coach youth hockey back in 20, I’m going to date myself here. I think it was 2010. Maybe his book came out, uh, compete. Uh, and I had my coaching staff at that read. It wasn’t even corporate America. It was a coaching staff. We’re coaching 15 year olds. But my point being, energy, it all starts with energy around leadership. And energy isn’t about being the loudest or the rah rah, but it’s the energy and the passion that you bring to the task at hand in terms of who you’re leading or what you’re leading. And more importantly, focus on the people within the team and the organization. Relationships are everything now, um, and I learned the hard way. I was at times transactional over my career. I’m not going to you have to be self-aware in order to improve. Um, but the world that we live in now, today, The meaningful, fruitful relationships that will give you more than the transaction is when you form that relationship with. I don’t even want to say like minded people because the world that we live in today, you have to understand everyone’s point of view and then make a conscious decision if it fits into what you’re trying to build within the ecosystem of your business, if that makes sense.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate that. So from the mindset has to be straight. You have always known what it is that you wanted to do. You’ve taken unify equipment finance from 14 million to 250 million. Besides having the right energy and mindset, what are the other key leadership decisions and practices that really made that transformation possible?
RJ Grimshow: The true growth really came when we built out our management team. Um, and what I mean by that is we grew from 13 to 30 6 to 70, and at that 70 plateau range is really where we made some great investments in bringing in key individuals into the organization and allowing them to do leverage their superpower within the discipline and the organization. So what I mean by that is, in our world, you have, you know, operations. So a real strong CEO that’s really focused on processes and understanding processes and the ins and the outs. A credit portfolio manager that understands their their role, customer service, the key thing, and this is a great segue though into that is the term entrepreneurship. I started learning and teaching around that topic back in 2010, 2011. And there’s characteristics that you can look for in individuals when you’re hiring them or bringing them into your organization, that when you identify these individuals, you know that they’re going to have discretionary effort because they are wired a certain way. And most entrepreneurs are very resourceful. They’re life learners. They love learning new things, which means that they’re going to stretch themselves. They’re very resourceful, so they can figure out influence things without, uh, the capital per se, and or the direct line of hierarchy of leadership in the organization.
RJ Grimshow: But they can influence people. And as soon as we had those that those team members in place, as well as the culture of idea sharing, the whole idea of entrepreneurship is 75% of your front line workers. Your employees have ideas and best practices to make your company better. However, as business owners and leaders, we don’t provide the proper vehicle for them to share those ideas and be rewarded for sharing those ideas. So when you’re able to formulate that and it starts at the top in terms of your communication as a leadership team that we want ideas. It fosters everyone feeling they own a piece of the organization and the processes and their voices are being heard, which today is so critical for people. People just want to be heard. They want to feel valued. They want to feel they’re part of something bigger than just showing up and going through the motions. And people you can attract higher caliber talent, people. And guess what? It’s not about pay. Pay is important, but it’s more about feeling part of a community and part of a team that their personal beliefs are aligned with the company’s beliefs. And that’s critical for any entrepreneur.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so if you guys didn’t catch it, we’re talking about intra preneurs, which are these growth minded leaders inside of a bigger business, right. Yesterday when you and I had a conversation, I was very interested in that. You want to dig around in that just a little bit further, RJ? Sure.
RJ Grimshow: Yeah. So an entrepreneur is a individual that works in the confines of an organization but has the mindset of the entrepreneur. I did not know what that was, but I went into corporate America as a 30 year old, just thinking the same way that I did the last ten years of owning a business. Also, then taking the discipline from the military, from the Air Force before that, and just thought that was the normal, just the normal way of behaving in terms of corporate America. You figure out ways how to do things, and that’s the way I was brought up. So I was blessed, fortunate enough. And it starts as an individual contributor in sales. And that’s what I was in. So rookie of the year, top salesperson, top salesperson. And then all of a sudden you can it leads into management. Unfortunately corporate America that’s the normal path sometimes is they take we take high achievers and we put them into leadership roles. But I knew at that time that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a manager, a leader, a coach. I’ve you know, I grew up again in that family and I saw that. So it was just naturally in me. But then I found I read a book by Tom Peters who’s a brilliant, brilliant gentleman who wrote a lot of books in the 80s and 90s around leadership.
RJ Grimshow: And that was when I was introduced to the term entrepreneurship. And when entrepreneurs can self-identify as an entrepreneur, you see their confidence level go up tremendously, and they understand what they’re doing and the value that they’re bringing the organization. So they lean into it. And that’s what I did. And the beautiful thing about being an entrepreneur, I like to expand on right now, if you’re listening to this, uh, or watching on YouTube and you’re debating on going into business on your own, but you’re in corporate America right now and you don’t want to give up the safety net of corporate America, and probably is a wise choice right now in the economy we work in and the world. Go find the job that is similar to what you want to start in your business and be paid to learn how to run that type of organization. I’ve had people push back and say, isn’t that stealing from the business owner when you when you are going there just to learn and then maybe go start your own. Know what I said was go add value. Learn we’re not stealing anything if it’s proprietary. No, we don’t take that. But learn the behaviors and learn what the day in the life of. Before you have to write a check, okay. To start that business, to ensure that you like it.
RJ Grimshow: And guess what? You might like the company end up staying there and becoming an entrepreneur there without writing the check, and have amazing success. Because entrepreneurs will have success in their roles. And their compensation, of course, will be in correlation to that success because they’re bringing higher value to the organization, which at the end of the day is all around revenue. It’s about bottom line revenue. Um, so that that’s why entrepreneurship, we look at organizations and we we identify team members as really functional, which is 80% of everyone that shows up within an organization, 20% are vital. Your intrapreneurs are your vital you. You don’t want all vital employees, because that means that no one’s focused on the day to day of running the business, the functional, because they’re just as important. But you want the vital who are always looking and striving and looking at everything within the organization. They understand the inputs and outputs, and they naturally do this on their own. A leader isn’t telling them, hey, go learn this, go learn that. And I have a story to exemplify this or example of this at Unifi. I had a young program manager that identified as an entrepreneur multiple degrees sports Athletics. He he had it all. I mean, just well rounded but more importantly, energy that we talk about before he had a lot of energy, passion, energy of becoming a better version of himself.
RJ Grimshow: He came to me and said, hey, RJ, I believe that we need an online portal for our clients to make payments. At that time, this was 2014 and we’re just really taking off, and my focus was on other areas. And I said to him, I said, well, Tyler, I believe I’m not sure I haven’t done enough research. We don’t have anything in the budget allocated for that this year. It was right right around August time frame. I said, but if you want to take and run with this and keep, you know, you still have to know what you still have to deliver on your objectives, your other objectives. But if you want to take this in your spare time and push this along, I’m all for it. I’m a huge proponent of this, and this was really before we started the whole what I call the EOS entrepreneur operating system within Unifi. So this was early on, one of our first use cases, PaTrisha, within four months. And I think our cost, the capital outlay was maybe $3,000. He had an online portal built out leveraging our IT department, leveraging an outside service provider. And now Unifi process is close to a quarter million dollars a month of monthly payments for our customers.
Trisha Stetzel: Wow.
RJ Grimshow: You just had to allow them the opportunity to say, I’m focused up here working out. Not that I’m more important, but I’m I’m trying to do direction and things of that nature, and you’re tactical. And if you can drive this forward without the resources you’re going to influence and things of that nature, then let’s do it. And he was successful doing it. Now here’s the downside of an entrepreneur. If there’s one negative. If you can’t fulfill the entrepreneur’s curiosity of what’s next for them in the organization, unfortunately they’ll leave. And Tyler ended up leaving. I could not fulfill that. But I’m okay with that because at at that time, um, he wanted more. He also was an attorney by trade.
Trisha Stetzel: Okay.
RJ Grimshow: So he wanted to follow that. And that’s what he does now. He practices law.
Trisha Stetzel: That’s amazing. So for those of you who are listening, who are on the edge, because I know there are a lot of you about wanting to open your own business and get away from corporate. There are actually ways to embrace that entrepreneurial spirit that you have inside of the position that you hold today, which is intrapreneurship. If you’re in the right space, if you’re in the right space, and you can also help others be in that entrepreneur mindset if you’re still in, um, bigger businesses, right? Or you can help them.
RJ Grimshow: I love to expand on this, too, Trisha. Uh, yeah. Let’s go. Now, there’s a lot of people, and I know this is a business focused podcast, but in the same respect, you you have a lot of high achievers, and maybe they’ve been downsized recently. Maybe they’ve been, you know, maybe they’re just not happy. And they had enough. And they said, I can’t take this anymore. You know, there’s really this is just our opinion. There’s a couple of things that you could be doing as you go enter into the job market. Or if you’ve been frustrated by trying to be in the job market. Take some time today or when you’re listening to this, learn around the topic of entrepreneurship. You can Google it. There’s all kinds of papers, YouTube videos, things of that nature. And it’s about mindset. Add that to your resume that you have you’ve identified. Now if you’re not, if you don’t identify as an entrepreneur in terms of the characteristics, don’t list yourself as an entrepreneur mindset. But you’d be surprised if you added that to your resume. Okay, your likelihood of an interview will go up tremendously. However, you’re going to have to talk around that topic and give examples of that when you identify during your during your interview. The second thing. And I and and you, you mentioned this earlier, is AI. Focus on learning how to prompt how to drive the LMS. And you can reach out to me at RJ, at RJ Grimshow Comm. I can send you an ebook that shows you how to prompt and then add that to your resume.
RJ Grimshow: And there’s several free classes on LinkedIn, on several other, you know, YouTube things of that nature, and start learning around how to leverage AI. Just subtly learn how to prompt learn the differences between ChatGPT Claude Gemini just from a high level. Again, you’re going to take your resume and it’s going to go up a notch because you are leaning into what the future looks like and understanding it. I gave this advice to a young girl that just graduated college. I said, what are you doing with are you dabbling with AI? She goes, oh no, I, I’m not doing anything with it, which is normal. People are busy with their life. I said, and she was looking for a marketing job. I said, hey, I would I would press you tomorrow as a Sunday, on Monday to take a couple hours. And this is youRJob now because you don’t have a job. This is youRJob. You’re going to study AI for a couple hours. I can send you some videos and then do exactly what I said to do. List it on your entrepreneurship. Because she was an entrepreneur. Two weeks later she had a job, full time job, marketing department, dream job. Just subtle changes. Now, I don’t know if it was that or not, but in the same respect, it makes me feel good. And and at the end of the day, she’s fully gainfully employed and and is extremely happy. So my point being, you have to think a little bit different in the world that we live in today.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I do want to tackle and go a little bit deeper in the AI space. But first let’s talk about able leadership. So RJ, what is it that you deliver under able leadership.
RJ Grimshow: So able is a framework that we leverage enable stands for analyze, build, leverage execute. And it’s a continuous circle. So if you’ve heard of EOS. Gino Wickman traction everything’s a there’s a lot of frameworks out there. And I would recommend that any entrepreneur have some type of framework. When you’re running your organization, which is your it’s really your operating system. I mentioned entrepreneur operating system either earlier EOS, which is not the Apple EOS. That’s why I do not use that, of course, because it’s trademarked things of that nature, but it’s an operating system that leverages able. And when I say able, again, if there’s an idea, we’re going to analyze the idea or if it’s an issue, we’re going to analyze it, and then we’re going to make a decision to build around that, to fix it, we’re going to leverage the process and then we’re going to execute. And that’s a continuous life cycle of every process within any organization. And it’s a mindset that plays into your abling the team members to do theiRJob, to make the ecosystem and the culture within the organization high achieving. And if you’re always analyzing from an able mindset perspective, it just naturally happens. It’s a muscle that you work that just naturally happens over time because intrapreneurship is just not an initiative. It’s an operating system and mindset, one for the individual in the company and two for the company overall. And now you layer on AI as a resource with a model to do deep research and expedite and speed things up for individuals. And you’re an entrepreneur. Game over. I mean, it’s it’s it’s a magic, powerful combination of human element because at the end of the day, AI is as good as the human that is driving it. Simple as that.
Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. All right. So then let’s dive into the AI CEO. I mentioned it a little bit earlier and you just started talking about you didn’t say the intersection between humans and AI, but there is right where the two come together. So let’s talk a little bit more about the AI CEO and what that looks like from a responsible use of AI.
RJ Grimshow: Yeah. Great question. And you know, you mentioned earlier, you know, AI expert or guru I’m far from that. I my buddies, you know, tease me all the time. I said no, I said the reason why I went in, really why I started leaning into AI is because I know as a business leader, you do not have the time to drink out of a fire hose and the information just gets faster and faster and faster. So if I could go and learn. Learned. Not as a data scientist, but learn from a business operations perspective and take that knowledge and then share it with my clients. Okay, that’s my goal is to be your ears and vetting opportunities and having cutting through the noise to say no, this is where we want to go. Or have you thought about this or have you thought about that? Because where companies are getting in trouble right now with AI, when I say in trouble, it’s not delivering. What they expected is from a foundation perspective. If you are a poorly run business before, AI is not going to fix you. If anything, it’s probably going to hurt you because you’re hoping that it’s going to do things that it can’t do. And if you’re a well run business before with solid mission, vision, values, operating system, everything that goes into a strong business, those are the organizations who are already using AI. They’ve been using AI, and you can use it in different capacities, either from automation to content to ideation to, um, you know, reviewing of data to manual, you know, just manual, um, tasks that you’re doing in your organization. Those companies are using it because they had the foundation built.
Speaker4: Mhm. Mhm.
RJ Grimshow: And to take a step back I talk a lot around strategy. And and there’s really we’re great planners. I’m guilty of it. I can plan like there’s no tomorrow. I mean I can, I can list and cross off and do everything. That’s not strategy. Strategy when you’re having a true strategic conversation as a team or an individual, if you’re strategically thinking you’re going, you will feel if you’re doing it right, nervous anxiety. Because now you’re talking about the future of Blue Ocean and trying to lay out a strategy of using tools that you might not know about today, but you know they’re going to be delivered in the future. So what I how I coach and consult our clients is everything starts with the foundation and we’re going to go backwards before we go forward. And it’s going to be uncomfortable because there’s going to be a lot of questions asked, a lot of evaluations, and really getting to the crutch of what you do and how you do it. But as soon as you I have a buddy that he he wrote a book, Burn the ships. You know, he burnt his down and built it back up. And so many entrepreneurs do do that. I’m not saying burn it down. Let’s take what you have and enhance it now by layering, taking the foundation and now layering on where we can leverage AI. Is it automation? Is it data? Where can we leverage it and then provide you the right tools? Either self-built because a lot of these tools can be built now very inexpensively with some some knowledge and education? Or do we just, you know, um, bolt on to Salesforce and Copilot, Microsoft Copilot and the big manufacturers are already delivering AI to us already.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, there’s a big difference between planning and strategy. I’m so glad that you brought that up. I know it was something we talked about yesterday and didn’t tackle here, so thank you for circling us back to that. So as we finish up our conversation today, my last ask is if you could leave the listeners today with one piece of advice on how to adopt that entrepreneurial mindset in their own careers or their businesses. What would it be?
RJ Grimshow: Be proud of who you are. You. You’re most likely the person in the organization asking why a lot of questions. You’re that you’re that doer that just is going to roll up your sleeves and get things done. But also you have that secret power of strategic processing, too, because you understand the ins and outs of every process. So first self-identify and then just start listening to videos around entrepreneurship. A lot of it’s ideation and new products that I focus more on the ideation around how we improve our current business. Then we focus on ideation and new products. Like I gave you example before earlier of Tyler. Maybe that wasn’t a product, but it really was an investment towards a product per se. So there’s two. And if you identify as an entrepreneur. Leverage that and be confident of who you are and lean into it and be proud of it and tell people and educate other individuals. Because if we can get entrepreneurs that are self-identifying, we’re only going to make corporate America or America or businesses better. Okay. And I’m all about the small person. No disrespect. If you work for a big company. Been there, done that. I’m now about to I want to help the SMEs and the my definition of SMEs is a company with 20 or less employees. You know, if they’re in the community, they’re they’re making meaningful strides of helping the community. They probably look at a bank at a local community bank. They’re active. Those are the organizations that I love helping. And I guarantee Trisha, probably you’re the same exact way. You know, and again, I’m not knocking big companies. They serve a purpose. But this country was built on businesses like my dad, my grandfather, my grandmother. And we need to bring those back and provide them the proper tools to be successful.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. This has been such a great conversation, RJ. I appreciate your time so much. Would you please give your contact information for those who want to learn more, oRJust reach out and have a connection with you?
RJ Grimshow: Sure. We have all kinds of resources at the AI, AI, the AI, CEO, AI. We have an ebook. We have a prompting guide. We have some agents that we’ve developed on there. You can start at least looking at at them from around custom agents. Uh, and my contact information is on that website. I’m on YouTube talking about entrepreneurship. You can just Google RJ Grimshow and you’ll, you know, a lot of stuff will pop up in regards to that. Or you can just reach out to me, RJ at the AI, CEO, AI. Um, I respond to all my emails, uh, try and get back to everyone within a day. Um, I have also exercises if you want to see if you would identify as an entrepreneur. I actually have a assessment that I can send you as well, that you can take, and it gives you, um, feedback in regards to your traits and characteristics around that.
Trisha Stetzel: Very nice. It’s fantastic. All right you guys, it’s RJ Grimshow g r I’m s h a w. As always, I will put all of the links that RJ talked about in the show notes. So you guys can just point and click if you happen to be sitting at your computer. If you’re in your car, please wait until you get home to point and click. And again, RJ, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation today.
RJ Grimshow: Thanks, Trisha for having me. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to to have this conversation.
Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that I had with RJ today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran or a Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.
