Scaling Smart: How StormTrap Used Fractional Marketing to Unlock Growth

From a podcast interview featuring Nate Olds, CEO of StormTrap

Overview

In this episode of CEO Growth Talks, Nate Olds, CEO of StormTrap, joins Pete Hayes to discuss how a national leader in underground stormwater management built an agile, education-led sales engine and a culture of collaborative innovation. Nate shares how StormTrap scaled its footprint through a precast partner model, now covering nearly every state, while maintaining the deep engineering expertise and client intimacy often lost in expansion.

Nate unpacks his transition from a Fortune 100 background to leading a high-growth, mission-driven company—and how Chief Outsiders helped StormTrap stress-test its go-to-market strategy for a new product line without cannibalizing its core business. His leadership philosophy emphasizes transparency, empowerment, and humility, providing valuable lessons for CEOs navigating growth and complexity.

Key Takeaways

• StormTrap protects communities from flooding through engineered underground stormwater management systems tailored to municipal needs and regulations.

• Its national scale is enabled by 40+ precast manufacturing partnerships, ensuring proximity to nearly every major U.S. city without the cost of centralized shipping.

• StormTrap’s team of sales engineers leads with education, helping clients design cost-effective, durable systems rather than pushing product.

• CEO Nate Olds brought in Chief Outsiders to validate the launch strategy for a new, shallower-depth product—balancing innovation with strategic clarity and organizational alignment.

• Nate’s leadership style centers on empowerment, transparency, and ego-free collaboration—creating a culture where input is valued and direction is clear.

Follow Nate Olds on LinkedIn

Follow Pete Hayes on LinkedIn

[Episode Transcript]

[00:00:00] Pete Hayes: Hey everyone. Welcome to another edition of CEO Growth Talks. It's my pleasure to welcome Nate Olds, the CEO of Storm Trap, one of chief Outsiders clients. Nate, just so glad to have you here. Pleasure to be

[00:00:23] Nate Olds: here. Really thanks and grateful for the opportunity.

[00:00:26] Pete Hayes: And right off the top storm trap happens to be an incredibly good description of your business.

[00:00:32] Pete Hayes: Tell us about it.

[00:00:33] Nate Olds: Yeah, so our lot in life is we control stormwater runoff. And, it's a very critical challenge for developers, owners, engineers. It's. And municipalities. Storms grow more intense and regulation become more demanding. The need for effective underground stormwater management really continues to rise.

[00:00:52] Nate Olds: And so what we do is we protect communities from flooding. Is really the most basic way to describe it.

[00:00:58] Pete Hayes: And your business model is interesting because you're up in the Chicago land area, but you're a national firm, but you're not sending. Loads of concrete pre pre-stressed concrete across the country.

[00:01:11] Pete Hayes: You've got relationships that help you cover the country.

[00:01:14] Nate Olds: Yeah, we've got partnerships with roughly 40 plus precast partners across the country. They are really good at what they do. We obviously have a list of things that they have to be able to meet in order for us to want to get into business with them.

[00:01:27] Nate Olds: But our, our strategy is. To ensure that we're within a hundred miles of any municipality, any big city that we can ship to. That's I think there's. Three states in the country right now that we don't have precasters in. But yeah, anywhere in the country that you need stormwater management or underground retention detention chances are, we're probably within an hour of you.

[00:01:48] Nate Olds: And so how long did it take you to get to that national scale? The company back in 20, it was around 2000 and six and they really decided to branch outta the Chicago area 'cause that's where. That's where the business came from and they started looking at, out in the Northeast.

[00:02:05] Nate Olds: And so they started, coming up with some agreements with some precast partners out in the northeast. Really proved the model out there, I would say. So around 2006. Then they started expanding in areas where they saw a lot of urbanization and a lot of growth. And when I came on board right around 2019, I think we had about 22 precast partners.

[00:02:27] Nate Olds: So we've effectively doubled that in, in less than, five years that I've been here. They were very forward thinking in going in into certain spots very quickly proving the model out. The model worked very well, and they were they were off like a rocket

[00:02:42] Pete Hayes: ship from there.

[00:02:43] Pete Hayes: Okay and then, and I had. Started to call you like a, you're a marketing organization, but you guys are really sales and engineering. It's your expertise that helps a potential municipality or client figure out what they're actually gonna need.

[00:02:58] Nate Olds: Yeah. We're in a, we're in an industry that is unfortunately for a lot of people, it's a have to have.

[00:03:05] Nate Olds: It's like a life insurance for your property. And, it's not anything that anybody sees. It's not anything that anybody, drives down the street and looks at and says, oh, that, that looks really beautiful. But what we do is make sure that when people are driving down the streets, they're not seeing a flooded field or a flooded street.

[00:03:21] Nate Olds: And so our job as a sales and engineering company is to really. Get out and work with the engineers and the specifiers and the municipalities to try to help them plan and design the most cost effective system that they can get, knowing that not only do they not wanna have to do this, but they want to make it as cost effective for their taxpayers as they can.

[00:03:44] Nate Olds: But also it's gotta be able to last, it's gotta do what it says it's doing. Because, we've seen other companies with different materials fail. Two years down the road. And one of the reasons that we go out and we evangelize precast concrete is because of the strength, longevity, and the simple fact that when you put it in the ground, you know it's gonna work.

[00:04:03] Nate Olds: But yeah we cover every state. We try to get to at least four to five engineers a day. And most of it is education and helping, right? You would not. Compare our Salesforce to a cold calling out in front. Get the order Now, type of Salesforce.

[00:04:19] Nate Olds: We're a very consultative educational driving education. Making sure that the customers and the clients get the right system. Not just, not just one that we think this is the best for them. It's what works for them. Wow, that's great.

[00:04:32] Pete Hayes: So you have a successful business. It's grown over the years, but there was something that triggered an outreach to Chief Outsiders, or how did we get connected?

[00:04:40] Nate Olds: Yeah. Yeah. Historically I've worked for, mostly in my career very large organizations. I spent 16, 17 years at Honeywell in various roles. We had resources, any help you needed. There was a phone call that you could make to someone at Honeywell and they would come and help you.

[00:04:57] Nate Olds: When I came over to Storm Trap it's a smaller company. And, it, it was grown from a family ran business. It was spun off from a precaster. And the resources that you have and the expertise that you have in a business like ours isn't necessarily as broad as what you would find in a Fortune 100 company.

[00:05:15] Nate Olds: Like I was used to. What we were looking to do is, there's areas of the market that, that we play in, but we don't play in as well as we should. And, the way that our industry is laid out, is I. Is, you've got depths and the systems are all going to be designed based on a depth.

[00:05:34] Nate Olds: And where our sweet spot is gonna be, the deeper systems that you can make obviously deeper, but also shorten the footprint. So building owners, property owners, municipalities can get more out of their, out of the property than just. Putting something in the ground, they can put parking lots over it, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:05:50] Nate Olds: And, but we understood that there's this shallower market that we're really not touching because concrete and how we are designing it at least isn't the most cost effective way to do it. And we understand that. So we were looking at ways to maybe break into that. Aspect of the market.

[00:06:06] Nate Olds: And we came up with an idea and we came up with some things that we think are going to be certainly relatable to that segment of the market. But our biggest challenge was how do we actually go to market with this system? Without cannibalizing what we're already doing with our others.

[00:06:25] Nate Olds: And there were things that, we were sitting in the rooms and, strategizing, is it a completely different sales organization? Is it a completely different strategy of how we attack the market? Do we go through distribution? Do we, 'cause we currently, we're a direct Salesforce.

[00:06:39] Nate Olds: And so do we go through distribution? Do we. We put more work on the folks that are already out there doing the job. And, we of course came up with our hypothesis and we had probably half the room agreed with one and half the room agreed with going the other route. And we really just didn't have the marketing, the customer segmentation, marketing expertise that, that we needed in order to really make that decision and feel very confident about it.

[00:07:04] Nate Olds: We're, I went to our board and we discussed kind of the challenges that we had and they actually had brought up chief Outsiders to me. And, I'll be honest, when they said, have you ever heard of a fractional marketing company? I said, I'm not real good at math.

[00:07:18] Nate Olds: I can't understand fractions at all. No. And they explained that, they had some of their companies. Had utilized it before. Ironically, one of my coworkers from Honeywell back in the day was running an organization up in Minnesota and I had looked on LinkedIn and he had used Chief Outsiders as well.

[00:07:36] Nate Olds: So I reached out to him. And long story short, we decided, you know what? Why wouldn't we wanna at least bring them in to, to test our hypothesis and to look at what we're looking at, how we're doing. Really it would, it's about looking at the blind spots that, that we can't see that those that have a much different approach and maybe not from the industry are looking at things in a different way.

[00:07:58] Nate Olds: And so that's really how it came to be that we came and found Don and Chief Outsiders. Wow. Okay. Did you look at alternatives? We did. I will tell you that, we, I interviewed specifically three different companies. And I would tell you the thing that separated Chief Outsiders apart from them was a couple things.

[00:08:18] Nate Olds: Number one, chief Outsiders spent the intake call that I had with them. I want to say there was prob, it was a 60 minute call and I think they listened for 45 minutes. Where the other companies talked to me for 45 minutes. Wow. And right there was, it was clear that okay, they're gonna listen and they're gonna hear versus tell, I have a mom, I have a wife. They I'm told what to do a lot. I don't need to be told by, by, by everybody. The other thing was the breadth and the expertise of the professionals that were at Chief Outsiders gave us a very solid group to choose from. It was what are you looking to do here?

[00:08:56] Nate Olds: Here's a menu and here's a list of all these professionals and what they've done and you just had a much larger group to pick from and then, looking at those and whittling it down and then talking to, I think I talked to three or four folks and, everybody was great.

[00:09:12] Nate Olds: It was just, you could find, we chose Dawn for number one, her background and expertise, but culturally. She fit very well in with who we are as an organization. We're a Midwestern organization. We're a we're a, I like to tell everybody, I don't care if we're, 120 people to, 10,200 people.

[00:09:29] Nate Olds: I want our company to feel small and that's just the Midwestern roots of who we are. And Dawn got that like immediately and she's no worries. 'cause, and yet Dawn has a background

[00:09:39] Pete Hayes: with giants like DuPont. Yeah.

[00:09:45] Pete Hayes: Wow. Okay. Was it were the other options you looked at similarly, were they fractional services or were there agencies involved? Yeah,

[00:09:53] Nate Olds: it was definitely, I would say it was consultative in, in, in most of it. And, the companies that we looked at, it wasn't their only thing that they do.

[00:10:03] Nate Olds: So one of the things I love about Chief Outsiders, very similar to Storm Trap. All we do is stormwater management. We don't do anything else. We don't provide pipe, we don't provide, we provide stormwater management product and that's all we do. We're not trying to be everything to everybody.

[00:10:18] Nate Olds: And we're Chief Outsiders is. You guys are providing a fractional service for a specific need that company is requiring. And then, we went out to, like I said, the other couple people, it was, they have all these branches in their businesses, and just one of them is a I wouldn't even call 'em fractional.

[00:10:36] Nate Olds: I would call more consultative and where Chief Outsiders will literally come into your business and actually act as a part of your business. Sit in your meetings, looking at all the things that you do. It, it feels more like you're bringing in a partner that is, a piece of the organization versus a consultant that is coming in and telling you what to do and not necessarily participating in, in, in some of the business things that you need this type of role to do.

[00:11:05] Pete Hayes: Yeah, that's interesting. We've had clients tell us that it feels, instead of outsourcing the role, it feels like you're actually insourcing. Yeah. You're bringing somebody into the, to the seat. Is that

[00:11:15] Nate Olds: Yeah, I can appreciate that statement for sure. Wow, so how long did we work together?

[00:11:20] Nate Olds: We worked together for, it was about eight months. And, it was a great process, right? I think, they talked to Dawn, had talked to, numerous people in our organizations. They talked to customers. They spent a lot of time understanding what we were doing, what we were trying to do.

[00:11:39] Nate Olds: And I think it was a very fluid. Process where I think eight months seemed like two months. It was very proactive. It was very much I had told Don, I said, listen, I'm gonna let you run with this because, this is what you do.

[00:11:54] Nate Olds: I'm not, this isn't my expertise. I think I know a little bit about it, but I, I certainly know a little bit about, customer segmentation and marketing and commercialization, but I'm also not an expert. I. And I want you to run with it and do it the way that you think you need to accomplish what we're trying to get to.

[00:12:11] Nate Olds: And I she did an amazing job.

[00:12:13] Pete Hayes: We're, and anybody looking at a solution, like a fractional executive, but probably they know going in, it's not inexpensive. Was there a, how soon into that eight months, did you have a sense that, hey, this was the right thing to do? Was did it take a month or two or was it right out the gate, or did you ever have that question in your mind?

[00:12:35] Nate Olds: I never really had that question in my mind to be honest with you, but I will tell you that, within a month you could you understood what was being brought to the table. And you could see that all right, the value of what you guys are bringing is very much where you need it to be.

[00:12:52] Nate Olds: So obviously money is, everybody, every, everything costs something. It's definitely, it's definitely not, it's not, inexpensive. But what I would say is it's, worth every penny. it's really when you break it down and, I look at everything on, return on investment and if we're gonna be able to do what I think we're gonna be able to do with this new segmented, know, product.

[00:13:16] Nate Olds: I mean, we got off really, really cheap. Wow.

[00:13:21] Pete Hayes: Good. That's, it's good to hear that the value was there and you know that eight months is about our average seven, eight months is about the average time we're in. And and in your case in particular, it sounds like, the ROI is out in the future, but you've got a good trajectory it sounds like, to go recognize that.

[00:13:39] Pete Hayes: Do you have any advice for anybody that's looking to make a decision like this? I do,

[00:13:43] Nate Olds: CEOs in general I we're very, you're, you obviously got to that CEO position for a reason. You were pro. You're, you're probably very confident in your abilities.

[00:13:54] Nate Olds: You're probably very competitive. You obviously have done something right where people are like, okay, that person deserves to be, in the in the realm of of the CEO level. Sorry, someone just, I thought I had myself on mute, but in the chair there wasn't

[00:14:10] Pete Hayes: any noise.

[00:14:10] Pete Hayes: You're good. Yeah.

[00:14:11] Nate Olds: But, we're very proud people for the most part, and. Admitting we don't know something is not the easiest thing in the world to do. And admitting that I need help is hard for anybody really. A lot of people struggle with asking for help. And I don't care if you're a CEO or or you're laying sod.

[00:14:28] Nate Olds: If you need help, you need to ask for it. And I think that my advice is, nobody knows everything and. If you need the help. You just have to have that self-awareness as an organization and certainly as a CEO to say, do I have this internally? If I don't, am I okay to say we don't, we need help?

[00:14:46] Nate Olds: And I think that was the thing that, we all agreed, hey, we as an organization need to do this different. And, my board is a very supportive board and I wasn't afraid to tell them, Hey, I. Yeah, I can, we can come up with a hypothesis, but I think that's a, it's a very big bet we're making and I think we need somebody to come in and really make sure that we're stress testing and making sure that we've thought all about the, the right things.

[00:15:11] Nate Olds: Wow.

[00:15:11] Pete Hayes: That's great. One last thing. You're, you've been a leader across multiple businesses, but now running storm trap, and what's your leadership philosophy? How do you go about. Making your decisions and what advice do you have to other CEOs?

[00:15:28] Nate Olds: Yeah I, my leadership style is very much I, number one, I want to be as empowering as I possibly can.

[00:15:37] Nate Olds: I don't subscribe to, I'm the CEO I'll tell you what to do, and you just go do it. I think that works for, a period of time, but people don't, they don't gravitate to that. And quite frankly, I'm not sure you get the most out of 'em. Not I, I don't wanna lead by fear. I wanna lead by, motivation.

[00:15:52] Nate Olds: And I like to have an organization where everybody's empowered to do their job. I make the joke all the time to people as listen. Most people don't wake up in the morning going, I want to go to work and do a bad job. I and I, so what I want to make sure is we hire people for a reason.

[00:16:08] Nate Olds: Let them do their job, let them go and execute on what we've asked them to do. I'm a firm believer in empowerment. I'm a firm believer in transparency and communication. I think I. It doesn't matter if you're a hundred person company or a 10,000 person company. I think everybody in that organization deserves to know what's going on.

[00:16:26] Nate Olds: They deserve to know how the company's doing. They deserve to know where we're going in the future and why I. I don't, I don't, I know not everybody agrees with the decisions that I make, but they're gonna know why we made 'em. And I've sat in a lot of organizations where decisions are made.

[00:16:40] Nate Olds: You don't know why, and it's really hard to follow because you don't know why. And then, the other piece is, we have a saying of, check your ego at the door. We're all, like I say, we're all very proud folks here at Storm Trap and we all think we do a really good job, but nobody's above anybody else.

[00:16:56] Nate Olds: And in order for me to get the most out of my people and I shouldn't say my people, but in order for me to get the most outta the company and the organization, it's. It's having a culture where people can feel confident enough to speak up, people can feel confident enough to be truthful.

[00:17:11] Nate Olds: And people can be confident enough to question, Hey, why are we doing it this way? Is there a different way we can do it? Because if I'm the one telling everybody where to go, what to do, how to do it, we're not gonna. Do very well. I'm pretty good at some things, I'm not great at everything.

[00:17:24] Nate Olds: It's really an inclusive leadership style where, I, I like to make sure we've got as much input as possible. I had a leader that, that said once your job is not to be the smartest guy in the room. It's to be right at the end of the meeting. And making sure that I bring in people that, listen, I tell me what needs to happen and let's go from there.

[00:17:44] Nate Olds: I, I feel, by the way, Mike, that's all called humility, by the way. Leadership. That's

[00:17:49] Nate Olds: and, and I, I've had. I've had a mentor in my career, he actually brought me here to, to storm trap. And he taught me everything that I know about what you just said, that word, humility.

[00:18:00] Nate Olds: And I think this day and age and the polarization that goes on all over social media and whatnot, I just I just feel like, it's a time where people. Need leadership that is willing to be supportive, is willing to be communicative and transparent, but also provide direction so they know, what they need to be doing.

[00:18:21] Nate Olds: And my, my advice to everybody on the team is I'll tell you where we want to be. I need you guys to tell me how we're gonna execute it, and then I'm supposed to be taking away those barriers so that you can make that happen. Yeah.

[00:18:33] Pete Hayes: That's powerful, inspiring, and and I'm sure it's one reason why storm trap is at the top of its game and

[00:18:42] Nate Olds: we're at the top of our game.

[00:18:44] Nate Olds: I will tell you because of the people that. I get to work for. That's, it's the greatest group of people I've ever had. The the ability to lead. And, and I, like I said, I think it's it's a very fun culture. One where I think, for the most part, people come and they know they can do a good job and they can get compensated for doing a good job.

[00:19:03] Nate Olds: But at the end of the day, I want people to feel like, Hey, when I go to work, it's not a burden. And I wanna be able to leave knowing that. Hey, when I come back tomorrow, it's gonna be awesome too. Not all sunshine, unicorns and rainbows, I want to create that, that feeling of, hey, this is where you can be for as long as you wanna be here.

[00:19:20] Nate Olds: But yeah, I am in no way, shape or form the reason for this the success of this company. It's the people that are putting in the hard work and the effort, and

[00:19:27] Pete Hayes: making me look

[00:19:28] Nate Olds: good.

[00:19:29] Pete Hayes: That's awesome. And on behalf of Don and all of Chief Outsiders, thank you for allowing us to participate in the journey that you're on and the trajectory that you're that you're pointing at.

[00:19:39] Pete Hayes: And we really appreciate it. And I just wanna thank you for joining us on CEO Growth Talks today.

[00:19:45] Nate Olds: I really appreciate it. And I can't thank dawn enough. And what I'm hopeful of is in a couple years from now, we'll be able to, I'll be able to call her up and say, this is what we've actually done.

[00:19:55] Nate Olds: And you guys can use that however you want. Great. All right, thank you everybody, and we'll see you next time on CEO Growth Talks. Thanks, Nate. Thank you.