Peter Adams, VP of business strategy at BACSIT and serial entrepreneur, joins host Ben Towne to unpack what digital transformation really means. Peter argues it isn’t a fancy marketing term but the cumulative effect of small technology projects on people and culture, since technology’s only roles are increasing productivity, decreasing risk, and enabling new capabilities. He shares two real-world examples — a $100 barcode-scanner fix for Traeger Pellet Grills’ inventory chaos, and a customer-portal project built simply by asking clients what they value — showing how both big “home run” wins and small incremental ones can move a business from crawling to walking to running. Peter stresses that digital transformation must center on people and culture, not just technology, and that the right consultant coaches business owners to think for themselves rather than handing over a task list. The conversation closes with a lighter “Get to Know You” segment covering Peter’s martial arts background, his love of wine, boating in Alaska, and his admiration for Gino Wickman’s Traction.
Chapter 1: Welcome to Max Value
Host Ben Towne opens the show and introduces guest Peter Adams, VP of business strategy at BACSIT. Peter previews the episode’s throughline: technology exists to serve people, and all it can really do is increase productivity, decrease risk, and enable new capabilities. Towne frames the show around helping business owners maximize value through business valuation and exit planning.
Chapter 2: From Failure to Success: An Entrepreneur’s Journey
Peter recounts founding his first IT company in 1983, watching it fail, then building and selling two more companies before retiring in 2002. He explains why he came out of retirement: former clients kept calling for help, he “really suck[s] at saying no,” and retirement got boring. Peter notes he’s not an ERP expert but is skilled at deriving value from existing systems.
Chapter 3: What Digital Transformation Really Means
Peter calls “digital transformation” a marketing term used to make computer systems sound more valuable, but says its real core is using technology to solve business challenges in non-traditional ways. He stresses that culture and people matter more than the technology itself, and that an outside consultant can ask the “almost stupid questions” insiders can’t see to ask. Not every problem is worth fixing — only the highest-leverage, implementable ones.
Chapter 4: A Home Run in Digital Transformation
Peter tells the story of Traeger Pellet Grills, whose warehouse staff couldn’t tell pellet flavors apart in identical bags, causing fulfillment errors. His colleague bought a $100 handheld scanner and color-coded labels, solving the inventory problem cheaply and buying years before a costlier system was needed. Peter calls it his favorite “home run” example of low-cost, high-impact digital transformation.
Chapter 5: Small Wins, Big Impact
Peter contrasts a client’s costly team-building and coaching engagement, which produced only a small uptick in customer satisfaction, with his own simpler approach: asking customers directly what they valued. That led to a new customer portal and a much larger boost in retention. He reinforces that technology should always serve the people using it, since it can only increase productivity, decrease risk, or enable new capabilities.
Chapter 6: Choosing a Partner, Not Just a Consultant
Asked what to look for in a consulting partner, Peter says the best consultants coach clients to think better about their own business rather than just leaving a task list. He compares a good consultant to bowling lane guards — keeping clients “in the lane” without dictating exactly where to bowl. Asking basic, even “dumb,” questions helps teams surface answers they already know but haven’t articulated.
Chapter 7: Get to Know You
In a lighter closing segment, Peter shares that he holds a black belt in martial arts, which shaped how he handles competing business demands. He describes himself as an avid wine collector and boater who spends summers working from his boat in Alaska thanks to Starlink. Asked about his reading, Peter says he leans toward fiction these days but cites Gino Wickman’s Traction as a business book he keeps returning to.
