Most CEOs didn’t start out feeling stuck. But the weight of leading builds quietly until one day you realize you’re carrying too much alone. The decisions get harder. The conversations get safer. And the people who used to challenge you now just wait for direction.

I know that place. I lived it for years.

I founded and led Applied Educational Systems for 36 years. Built it. Scaled it. Made mistakes that cost me. Had wins that taught me even more. And for too long, I thought I had to figure it all out myself.

That changed in 2003 when I joined Vistage. The group didn’t let me hide. They asked the questions I was avoiding. Gave me the accountability I didn’t know I needed. That shift helped me lead differently. We earned five straight years on the Inc. 5000, and I exited on my terms in 2022.

Now I privately coach business owners and chair a private Vistage group for CEOs and business owners in Central Pennsylvania.

I don’t coach strategy alone. I coach the whole person, because the business only grows as far as the leader does. I ask the questions no one else will ask—the ones that get below the surface, the ones that make you stop and rethink what you thought you knew.

This isn’t for everyone. It’s for CEOs who know they’re the most important hire in their company. Who are willing to invest in themselves. Who want real feedback, not validation. Who are curious, open-minded, and brave enough to be vulnerable in a room of peers who get it.

I limit my coaching clients and my Vistage group to the right fit. It has to be right for you and for the group.

Married 40 years. Five kids. Still asking better questions every day.

Jim Schultz

Two Americans from Lancaster walked into a traditional Japanese ryokan last year. The staff was gracious. They were also quietly surprised to see us.

Our travel agent had booked us one night. She wasn't sure we'd like it. The simplicity. The traditional style. Not exactly what most of her American clients were after.

We stayed two nights. One of the best decisions we made on the trip.

98% of the guests were Japanese. We were the odd ones out, and we knew it. The meals arrived course after course. Dishes I couldn't name. Flavors I couldn't place. Honestly, I had no idea what I was eating half the time. And I kept going back for more.

We're wired differently. We talk through meals. We move fast. We fill the silence.

They didn't. And it wasn't awkward. It was intentional.

That's the thing about being somewhere completely outside your experience. It doesn't tell you that your way is wrong. It shows you there's more than one way to be right.

I think about that when I'm sitting across from someone who sees things differently than I do. A family member. A client. Someone who runs their business in a way I'd never choose.

The instinct is to hold your ground. The better move is to stay curious.

Travel didn't make me agree with everyone. It made me less certain I had everything figured out.

That's probably the most useful thing it's ever done for me.

When's the last time being wrong about something actually made you better?

Tracy Schultz

12.31.25

'I'll start Monday' is rarely about Monday. It's about avoiding the hard thing. We tell ourselves we need more time, more information, more readiness. Usually we just need to start.

1.2.26

One question worth asking yourself: Do the people closest to you get your full attention or what's left after work takes its share?

Exited Founder | Guiding Business Owners Through Growth, Transition, and the Hard Calls In Between

Inbound

Helping Business Owners and CEOs Lead with Clarity, Purpose, and Courage

After founding and leading Applied Educational Systems (AES) for over three decades — and guiding it through a successful acquisition by a global private equity firm — I started Felix Enterprises to focus on the work I find most meaningful: helping CEOs and business owners grow through honest reflection, intentional leadership, and deep personal insight.

At Felix, I work exclusively with CEOs and owners of companies ranging from $5M to $500M in revenue, primarily in Lancaster and the surrounding region. My approach is rooted in one-on-one coaching — no groups, no noise — just focused, candid conversations that lead to real clarity and deliberate action.

This work is not about offering quick fixes or recycled advice. It’s about asking the right questions — the ones no one else dares to — and creating space for leaders to think more clearly, act more intentionally, and grow with greater confidence.

The lessons I bring to this work were forged over 36 years of real-world leadership — scaling AES, earning a place on the Inc. 5000 list five years in a row, and navigating everything from growth and complexity to succession and exit. Much of that journey was shaped by my 19-year membership in Vistage, which provided me with a peer group and framework that profoundly impacted both my business and personal growth.

Now, through Felix Enterprises, I aim to pay that forward — helping growth-minded leaders thrive in their business and in life.

Founder & President

Everything we do at AES is about believing in life-long learning. We believe that life-long learning sets people free.  We empower lifelong learners by developing digital curriculum systems that easily saves time for a teacher, promotes interaction, is simple to use and current. We make great interactive eLearning curriculum systems that give teachers the time to develop relationships with students.

AES achieved the Inc 5000 list for five years (2018-2022). In addition, AES was honored as one of the Best Places to work in PA.

In October 2022, The Riverside Company, a global private investor, acquired Applied Educational Systems (AES), a digital career and technical education content provider for K-12 schools and career centers. AES is an add-on to Riverside’s iCEV platform, a leading developer of SaaS-based digital curriculum, instructional materials, and industry certifications.  Read more here:  https://www.riversidecompany.com/currents/aes-news-release/

After the acquisition in October 2022, I helped with the integration of AES and iCEV as a consultant.

Founder & CEO 

I served as an advisor and, since 2013, as a Board of Director member. Cargas offers a rare and unique employee ownership culture called Shared Success. Creating a winning environment for owners, employees, customers, partners, and the community is simple.

My contribution from experience focused on sales, marketing, strategic development & planning, and process improvements.

During that time, Cargas, an employee-owned company, accomplished the following:

Sales Grew - 5x
Profits Grew - 20x
FTE Growth - 4x
Best Places to Work in PA - 10x
Inc 5000 list - 4x
Private Company "Board of the Year" Award

Member Board of Directors

Vistage brings together business leaders from diverse businesses and backgrounds to coach and advise each other to drive better decisions and achieve better results.  I was a member of Rick Oppenheimer's, then Shaun Balani Central PA Vistage Executive group 349.

Member of CEO Group

Member of the Board of Advisors

I was responsible for executing an annual sales plan within the United States by working with independent sales representatives to help open, manage and close sales opportunities in the career education and technical training market.  I provided outside sales support for independent sales reps as needed, including making sales presentations to potential customers, using selling techniques to assist the independent sales reps in negotiating sales, exhibiting and presenting at shows and conferences, and training new and current independent sales reps on Link's Simulation Systems products and sales processes.  The work also included developing close working relationships with independent sales reps.

Vocational Sales

Entrepreneur & Exited Founder | Supporting CEOs Who Scale Smarter, Build Legacy, and Create Life Beyond Business

2019 Entrepreneur of the Year 

Association Career and Technical Education

Retired- Human Resources at Applied Educational Systems

I sit with a lot of people. CEOs, business owners, young leaders on their way up.

Most of the time I just listen and ask questions.

Recently, a young leader said something I've been thinking about ever since.

They're talented. Everyone around them knows it. Their CEO knows it. And some days, they're just conflicted.

I recognized it immediately.

The shift from doer to leader isn't a skills problem. The ones who struggle aren't struggling because they can't delegate or think strategically.

They built their identity around being the best in the room at something specific. And leadership asks them to step back from that.

That's not a training problem. That's a loss.

The ones who make it through find a new source of meaning. Coaching someone else to do what they used to do. Building something bigger than their own output.

The job changes. So does the answer to this question: what am I here to do?

Most people never ask it. It catches up with them.

When did you stop being the best in the room at something, and start building people who were?

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"Your sons are more patient than you were when our kids were learning to ski."

Tracy said it. I didn't argue. 39 years of marriage teaches you a few things.

This past weekend three generations loaded up and headed to Round Top. A five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a two-year-old. Getting the layers on alone takes twenty minutes. Boots. Helmets. Goggles. By the time everyone is ready someone has already fallen over.

My sons just laughed and kept going.

I watched them and thought: they figured something out I hadn't at their age. Patience with the process. Trust that it clicks when it clicks.

And it does click. Once they find their legs, you can't get them off the mountain.

We started this with our five kids at Smuggler's Notch in Vermont years ago. Now it's happening again one generation down.

Some things are worth passing on. A sport your kids learn young and grow to love is one of them.

Tracy Schultz

I was a young salesman the first time I learned that doing the right thing wasn't good for business.

Our company made a mistake with a customer. I went to my general manager and sales director with a simple recommendation. Be honest. Make it right.

They shut it down flat. Not what's best for the company.

I sat with that answer for a long time. I knew then I needed to build something where doing right by the customer wasn't a debate.

I'm not the only one with a story like this.

Last week a business owner told me his. He ran three radio stations. Good career. Good money. New boss walked in.

One Friday he asked a simple question. Could he be 30 minutes late to Monday's meeting? First day of school. The kids. The bus. The pictures.

The boss looked at him and said: "You will be on time. Or you can leave right now and clean out your desk."

He went home and told his wife he was done.

Then he started his own business.

There's a line every founder crosses before they become a founder. Not the day they file the paperwork. Not the day they land the first client.

The day they decide something matters more than the job.

I know my moment. It didn't look heroic at the time.

It rarely does.

But every founder I've ever sat with can tell you exactly when the switch flipped.

When did yours?

I sorted my work into three buckets yesterday. I didn't like what I found.

My coach Chris Marr introduced a framework in our session. A, B, C work.

A is annoying. B is fine, neutral, routine. C is fascinating. Time disappears. You leave energized.

The exercise sounds simple. Sort your work honestly into three buckets. Eliminate the A. Delegate the B. Build toward more C.

It isn't simple. Because most of us have never actually done it.

I looked at my past month. More A than I wanted to admit. But going through the exercise gave me something I hadn't found on my own. Clarity on what I could actually change.

I see the same pattern in almost every business owner I coach. I lived it myself for years at AES. We just get stuck. Not because we're lazy or unaware. Because we haven't stopped long enough to name it.

If the A and B keep piling up, nothing changes. The calendar fills. The C never gets room.

I walked in with fog. I walked out with clarity. Not because I found the answer sitting alone with it. Because a good coach asked better questions.

Coaches need coaches too.

When did you last honestly sort your own work into those three buckets?

I used to think legacy was something you earned at the end.

I'm rethinking that.

Someone my age was talking about legacy recently.

Not the exit. Not the succession plan. Not the LinkedIn recognition. (I know, I know.)

And not being nice. Kind is not nice. Kind is harder than nice.

He was asking something quieter. Was I kind?

Did I make people feel heard? Was I really there for the people who mattered most?

I've spent a lot of years at the dinner table solving cash flow problems in my head. At the soccer game drafting emails no one needed.

Physically present. Mentally somewhere else entirely.

Tracy would tell you I still do it. She'd be right.

My dad figured this out long before I did. He lived one principle his whole life: be kind to people. Every day. No matter the context.

He never talked about it. He just did it. I didn't fully understand what that meant until he was gone.

I'm still learning it. Slowly.

Legacy isn't a trophy you earn at the end. It's the answer to a question you can only answer one moment at a time.

Was I kind?

Judge me by my actions. Not my intentions.

We had no business winning that game.

They were bigger. More talented. Better coached.

We won anyway.

I played baseball, football, basketball, and wrestled. And more than once, we beat a team that had no reason to lose to us.

I couldn't explain the feeling then. Still can't fully explain it now.

It wasn't just winning. It was something about needing each other. About nobody being able to pull it off alone.

I was a painfully shy kid. Never said a word if I didn't have to. But you can't stay invisible on a team. You have to show up. Trust people. Lose in front of others and come back the next day.

Sports were everything to me.

Not because I was the best player. I wasn't.

Because for a shy kid who didn't have much to say — being part of something bigger than myself was just the coolest thing I'd ever felt.

What shaped you before you knew you were being shaped?

They asked what I was working on. I listed eight things.

That was the problem.

Two business owners. Different industries. Same problem.

Revenue down. Cash tight. Customers unhappy.

Same answer from both of them.

When businesses struggle, the instinct is to attack everything at once. New marketing. Cut costs. Fix operations. Chase a new customer. Rebuild a process.

The one thing that would actually move the needle sits untouched. Because it's hard. Because it requires a decision nobody wants to make.

I made this mistake twice.

In my first five years building a company, we were bleeding cash and I went looking for new markets. New customers. Anything but the real problem.

Twenty-three years later, when I blew up the business model and started over, I did it again. This time I knew exactly who needed to go. I kept finding reasons to wait.

In the moment it feels like urgency. In reflection it was avoidance.

The businesses that turn it around do one thing differently. They get brutally honest about the single most important problem. Then they work on nothing else until it's solved.

Not eight things. Not three. One.

What's the one problem in your business right now that, if solved, makes everything else easier?

Many business owners are going to get hurt in the 2030s. Not because they weren't smart. Because they confused talking heads on TV and social media with actual math. Structural problems that have been building for 50 years are indifferent to politics, pundits, and wishful thinking.

I was first exposed to ITR, the Institute for Trend Research, in 2003 when I joined a #Vistage CEO peer group.

Their work changed how I ran AES. We stopped looking at lagging indicators and started measuring trends 12 to 24 months out. Built a real forecast instead of last year plus optimism.

In 2014 Brian and Alan Beaulieu published "Prosperity in the Age of Decline." Five structural factors that would make the 2030s both one of the greatest wealth creation periods in modern history and a prolonged economic contraction lasting three to five years. Potentially the most painful in the last 50 years.

Yesterday I sat and listened to Connor Lokar update that forecast. We are four years away from what ITR has been predicting for over a decade.

(Sorry for the photo, Connor. Better at listening than shooting.)

The five factors haven't moved:
1️⃣ Demographics
2️⃣ Healthcare costs
3️⃣ Entitlements
4️⃣ Inflation
5️⃣ US national debt

Some have been moving in one direction for 25 to 50 years. No bill, no policy, no technology reverses them on a timeline that matters.

We are hardwired as business owners to straight-line the future. Take last year, extend it forward, call it a forecast. That works fine until something structural catches up with you.

There will be real opportunity in the 2030s. Significant wealth will be created. The question is who is positioned to capture it.

Get liquid now. Reduce debt. Build cash. A business can grow and still go under because it ran out of cash. Banks don't get more generous when things get hard.

Playing defense to win is still winning.

Are you building for the opportunity, the pain, or both?

Or are you ignoring it and getting defensive about this type of scenario planning?

I found a journal entry last week from 25 years ago. One question. Four words. Still one of the better questions I've ever been asked.

I was in my early 40s. Fairly new to Vistage. My coach asked me: "What are you protecting?"

I didn't have a good answer. So I went home and wrote it down.

For years at AES, I was in almost every room. Every meeting. Every decision. Every deal.

Not because the team couldn't handle it. Because I couldn't let go.

I told myself it was about standards. Quality control. Nobody understood it like I did. Even Phillies managers know when to pull a pitcher. I didn't.

The honest answer, when it finally came, took about two weeks. And it embarrassed me.

I wasn't protecting quality. I was protecting my identity.

The business was me. I was the business. And if it ran without me — what exactly was I?

That's not a quality control problem. That's a fear problem.

That question changed how I led. And it shows up everywhere now.

I see it in almost every founder I coach. The sign-off bottleneck. The cc on every email. The "I just like to stay close to it."

It's rarely about the work.

It's almost always about the question underneath: Who am I if I'm not needed here?

Most of us never ask it. Until someone who cares enough forces us to.

I was lucky. A coach asked me at 39. Some founders never get asked at all.

What are you protecting?

I knew I was gone.

And I stayed gone anyway.

My kids were in the backyard. Running around. Loud. Alive in the way little kids are.

I was running through a problem I couldn't solve at 5pm.

Three conversations with younger founders this month brought it all back. They're home. Their minds are somewhere else. I didn't have a solution for them. I had honesty.

It still happens to me. The difference now is I notice faster. I come back sooner.

That's not a fix. It's just practice.

Spring is here. The backyard is open.

When your mind leaves the room this weekend, will you notice?

Your potential buyer lands on your website with a problem. What's the first thing they see?

For 25 years, our website was a trophy case. Awards. History. Products. We were proud of it.

Buyers didn't care.

The shift happened when we stopped talking about ourselves. Every piece of content answered one question: what does a teacher or administrator in Career and Technical Education actually need to know?

Not what we wanted to say. What they needed to hear.

We wrote about the questions buyers were too embarrassed to ask vendors. We answered the hard ones about cost, implementation, and what happens when things go wrong.

In 2021, a team of fewer than ten people across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success produced 284 pieces of content and 2,293 personalized videos.

Leads got better. Sales cycles got shorter. Trust went up.

That focus and behavior to build trust worked for us in our market. It took years, not months.

If your content still leads with your company, your team, your story — ask yourself who it's actually for.

When did you last ask a buyer what they actually think of you and really listen to the answer?

Most opinions thrown into a room aren't invitations to debate. They're noise.

Took me way too many years and a lot of wasted energy to figure that out.

Someone recently declared a well-known entrepreneur was a bad person. Then took the leap. Disagree with their words and behavior? Therefore their products and companies are worthless.

The room nodded. I kept my mouth shut.

Not because I'm a defender. I don't know the person.

But that's a pretty big jump.

Younger Jim would have said something. Probably not helpful. Just noise adding to noise.

Watching the news is like dragging a metal spoon across the bottom of a pot. Just to see what happens. Nobody's mind changes. Nobody learns anything. Everyone goes home certain they won.

I see it in business too. A CEO hears something that challenges their thinking. Jaw tightens. Arms cross.

The meeting becomes a performance of certainty.

People call it candor. Sometimes it is. More often it's just ego with good vocabulary.

Now I ask myself one question before I open my mouth: Is there any reason to fight about this?

Most of the time the answer is no.

What's the last argument you had that actually changed anything?

Most founders who say they love retirement are lying. Not to you. To themselves.

I sold Applied Educational Systems three years ago after 36 years of building it.

The closing was anticlimactic. Hundreds of electronic signatures. The real moment was when the wire hit the account. That night three of us opened a bottle of champagne, talked for half an hour, and then it was over.

The next morning I woke up and reflected on 36 years. The hard years. The good years. The people. The pivots.

And then a question I wasn't fully prepared for: now what?

Here's what I think founders and business owners actually love about life after exit. Not retirement. Freedom. No P&L. No weight of employees and families depending on your next decision. That pressure is real and it accumulates quietly over decades.

But freedom without purpose is just time. And time is either wasted or invested.

The founders and business owners I know who are thriving after exit didn't stop. They found something new to be curious about. Something uncomfortable. Something where they didn't know everything yet.

That part, not knowing everything again, turned out to be the best part.

I still don't fully understand what retirement means. Maybe that's the point.

What would you do with your time if the P&L was no longer yours to carry?

In my thirties, I took an assessment. The results said I got defensive. I got defensive about the assessment.

Early in my career at AES, when someone gave me feedback, I needed to defend my position. Prove why I was right. Win the debate.

Reflecting back, I'm a little embarrassed about how I showed up.

The grittiest founders and business owners I know are different. They systematically understate their capabilities. They don't need to be the smartest person in the conversation. They're almost amused at their own mistakes.

"Damn, I'm an idiot. I see why that didn't work now."

Then they learn and try something new.

The shift happened slowly for me. I started saying three words more often: "I don't know."

At first, it made people uncomfortable. Over time, I became comfortable and leaned into it.

Those words made me more curious. They opened up conversations I never would have had. I listened and learned. Sometimes from some of the best people in different functional areas.

Curiosity is a more sustainable driver than ego.

What's one thing you've had to unlearn as a leader?

Every family on payroll follows you home at night.
It greets you in the morning.
After decades, most owners never name what they actually want.
One of mine finally did.

I asked what their marker would be. How would they know when it was time?
They thought for a second.

"A day I don't wake up or go to sleep with a piano on my mind."

Not a number. Not an age. Not a multiple of EBITDA.
Peace.

That weight accumulates quietly over decades. I find it more with founders and first-generation owners than those who inherited a mature business. When you built it from nothing, it lives inside you differently.

I know because I lived it. Thirty-six years of pianos.

When I ask what owners actually want, the answers are never about money. They're about freedom. Time. Not carrying other people's weight anymore.

The money matters. It's not the one thing.

What would your marker be?

Would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your leadership team today?

Take your time.

I asked that question to 13 CEOs and business owners in a peer group. Every single one had at least one person they would not enthusiastically rehire. Not one exception.

I've sat with that question myself. When I got honest, the answer surprised me. Not because I didn't know. Because I did.

The follow-up is harder. Are you holding onto loyal people who execute what you say? Or do you have leaders who push back, challenge your thinking, and move the company further than you can alone?

Both matter. They're not the same.

The person who's been with you twelve years, executes well, never rocks the boat? Sometimes that's exactly what you need. Sometimes they're the ceiling you can't see.

Most CEOs know the difference. I did. It still took me too long to act.

One of the primary jobs of a CEO is building a leadership team. Not managing one. Building one. There's a difference.

Who would you enthusiastically rehire today?

In my 20s, hitting $1 million in sales was a wake-up call. It revealed that the skills used to build the business weren't the ones needed to hire the team to keep it growing.

At the time, everything felt overwhelming. Sales, finance, and the warehouse were all competing for attention. The solution seemed simple: hire a warehouse supervisor to take some of the weight.

But there was no role description. The interviews were hurried. The choice was made from a "not so good" lot because the seat needed to be filled.

The person lasted exactly four days.

"This wasn't what he expected," he said as he walked out.

That was a gut-punch. It was the moment I realized that "gut instinct" is no substitute for a hiring process. Success in sales hadn't translated to success in leadership.

Getting better at hiring didn't happen overnight. It came through reps, practice, and exposure to peers who were miles ahead in systems and recruitment. They had the processes that I didn't even know existed.

Looking back, those early years were a masterclass in what happens when you try to scale without a people strategy.

If you’re hitting a wall with growth right now, it might not be a sales problem. It’s likely a "right people in the right seats" problem.

Who are you learning from to build a better system?

One key leader per year.
I wish I could say that was my strategy. Honestly, I fell into it by accident.

I was being interviewed on a podcast this week, and Beka S. said it back to me: "Focus on one key leader a year instead of trying to fix everything at once."

I paused. That's exactly what I did. I just never named it.

When I got serious about building a leadership team at AES, I didn't have a master plan. I just knew I couldn't afford to hire everyone at once.

So it became one intentional hire per year for three years.

Director of Revenue Operations. Director of Sales. Director of Curriculum.

Each search took three to four months. We defined the work. Built scorecards. Ran assessments. Tested for the ability to handle uncertainty.

It felt slow. But each leader had time to onboard and run before we added the next. By year three, I had the strongest leadership team I'd ever had.

When we sold the company, those three people were the reason we got the valuation we did.

Sometimes the best strategies are the ones you back into.

What's the one leadership hire that would make everything else easier for you this year?

Build an Elite Team → Right Leader. Right People. Right Seats. ↗ Founder, Magnetic Consulting ↗ Executive Advisor & Keynote Speaker

He had the answer before I finished the question. Smart, experienced. Had been winning in his role for a long time. And completely certain he already knew.

It's not arrogance. It's what success does over time.

I've watched this pattern play out for over a decade. Business owners who stop getting better. Not because they ran out of talent. Not because the market turned. Because they found what worked and then stopped asking if there was a better way.

I watched it happen to myself at AES. For years I was a steward of what was working. Safe. Predictable. Then I started asking a harder question. Not about goals or KPIs. About whether we could become the most trusted voice in our market by doing something completely different than our competitors. That question changed everything.

The more you know, the less you tend to question. Success quietly closes the gap between what you know today and what you're willing to find out. That's where curiosity lives. And most successful people close it without ever noticing.

When did you last question how you work, not just whether you're working hard enough?

Engineering leader with 10+ years of experience building and scaling product development teams in small, fast-moving startups. I specialize in balancing leadership with hands-on contributions in APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and system architecture, while integrating product and engineering functions to deliver measurable outcomes.

At Okaya, I lead engineering efforts to develop AI-powered behavioral health screening tools, building new teams and guiding cross-functional initiatives around compliance, privacy, and reliability in non-deterministic systems. My career includes scaling SaaS adoption to 100K+ daily users in edtech, and leading teams that launched the first Broadway live-streaming platform.

I’m passionate about mentoring engineers, fostering collaboration across functions, and driving innovation in AI, healthcare, and education technology.

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