FOUNDED IN 1997 AS A BOUTIQUE INVESTMENT BANK

Provarus began as a small boutique investment bank in 1997.  After consulting and coaching business owners for many years, one of our clients was ready to sell his company and retire.  Summit Corporate Partners was born.  Summit quickly became a mid-market investment bank doing buy-side, sell-side and capital infusions.

Achieving Financial Success

We completed transactions with an aggregate value in excess of $300 million in the first three years.  We led a $12 million disk storage company through $33 million management buyout with a private equity fund as well as a syndicate in refinancing of $100 million bond offering for major film distribution company.  We were members of the Turnaround Management Association (a thankless job – you are the last person anyone wants to see in a turnaround), the Association for Corporate Growth and Marshall Goldsmith’s Association for Strategic Leadership (A4SL).  While the money was good, transactional deals were short lived.  Once the company was sold, we never saw our clients again.

FOUNDERS AND OWNERS  COULD NOT SEPARATE THEIR IDENTITIES FROM THEIR COMPANY

During this time, we were researching theories in the patterns of behaviors of people and particularly business owners.  Quite often at  the eleventh hour, owners would suddenly get cold feet and decided that they couldn’t sell their “baby”.  We realized that business owners could not separate their identities from the identities of their companies.  Without a compelling future, owners were being pulled by their past…and by their old identities.  Their companies defined them, they didn’t define their companies.

Organizations have lifecycles

In 2002 Paul Childs became the consultant to Dr. Ichak Adizes who wrote the major piece of work on corporate life-cycles.  We began to teach the Adizes methodology and merged our work with Dr. Adizes work to create a series of workshops called Breakthrough to Prime.  By looking at the patterns of people as well as organizations as they aged through their lifecycle, we discovered that we could predict problems before they arise.

The Impact of Action Learning Teams

In 2004 Paul co-authored the book :  “Leading Organizations from the Inside Out:  Unleashing the Collaborative Genius of Action-Learning Teams.”  This became the  guidebook for the design and implementation of major change initiatives through the use of Action-Learning .  These teams drastically shortened the time needed to effectively implement change initiatives and break the resistance encountered. In 2005 Paul became a Chair for Vistage International and discovered that transformation was even more profound with smaller companies.   Paul spent thousands of hours in one to one’s with his members and facilitating monthly meetings.  The patterns were the same but the drivers were different.  Paul became a speaker for Vistage and spoke to hundreds of executives and CEO groups across the country. He realized that the patterns are universal.

Neuroscience and Transformation

Today we are research the effects of the brain and perceptions of reality, both with individuals and organizations.  We are working today in the area of Attachment Theory and the notion of Positive Cognitive Distortion:  how people within their environments (their companies) solve real problems and not perceived problems. We are applying the theories of NLP along with the latest research into the executive vs limbic brain functioning. But we never forget our roots. It is all part of the art of making business better and more profitable.