040: Was Selling My Business the Right Move?

What happens when selling your business isn’t about financial necessity but a gut feeling? In this episode, Marc Thomas sits down with Michael McKean, a seasoned entrepreneur who shares his personal journey of selling his thriving company. Discover the emotional and practical considerations behind his decision and why aligning personal and professional goals played a key role.

Michael provides a behind-the-scenes look at the post-sale experience, discussing how financial health, client relationships, and strategic planning were critical during the transition. Learn how he evolved from a technical mindset to a financially savvy business leader and the pivotal lessons he gained through networking and business roundtables.

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this episode offers valuable insights into contingency planning, financial literacy, and the emotional impact of business transitions.

Williams Logistics:
https://waionline.com/transport-usa

Micheal McKeen on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michealmckeen

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating the Sale of a Business
• 9:31 Unplanned Business Sale Realities
• 24:45 Financial Focus in Business Growth
• 35:28 Post-Sale Life Adjustments and Surprises
• 45:53 Preparing for Post-Business Sale Adjustments
• 57:57 Work Experience Impact on Business Ownership
• 1:06:08 Business Ownership Transition and Consulting Post-Sale
• 1:17:39 Implementing an Effective Business Operating System
• 1:27:24 Focusing on Business Growth Accountability
• 1:42:13 Wishing Luck in New Venture

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So at some point you can have this business until you die for sure, but at some point you have to realize that I need to get this money out of the business in order to be able to retire. So how am I going to go about doing that? And unfortunately it seems like a large percentage is I just stay in the seat and show up every day and podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Welcome to another episode of Empower and Elevate Podcast. Today we're diving into a topic that's often overlooked but incredibly important for entrepreneurs life after the sale. Joining us is Michael McKean, a seasoned business leader who successfully navigated the sale of his business. He'll be sharing his insights into the process of deciding to sell, managing the transition and well what life looks like after you've let go of that business you worked so hard to build. If you're thinking about selling a business or just curious about the journey, stick around. You're in for a treat. Welcome, mike.

Speaker 1: 1:04

Hey Mark, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 1:05

I'm doing very, very, very well, thank you. Thanks for joining us today. So let's just jump right in. Tell me about the moment that you started to seriously think about selling your business.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Yeah, that's a tough one because the reality is I didn't put a ton of thought into it. To be honest with you. You know, when you're a business owner especially if you're making some sort of headway, some progress, just and just being listed as a business people are going to reach out to you. So we got calls through the years of, hey, do you want to sell? And I took all of those calls because I saw them as educational. They're learning opportunities, right, what is my company worth? What do other companies see in my business that is purchase worthy? So I took all of those calls but I never really thought that, oh, hey, I should actually entertain one of these and actually sell.

Speaker 1: 2:12

We had an opportunity in 2018. They reached out and said, hey, we're interested in buying you. We were off by a small number, but it was enough that me and my business partner decided that, nah, that's not going to work for us. So we told them no and, for whatever reason, I just felt like I missed an opportunity. Right, it wasn't a hey, I need to get out of here. I just felt like I had missed an opportunity.

Speaker 2: 2:47

What type of opportunity do you?

Speaker 1: 2:48

feel you missed. I don't know. There's all kinds of different people in the world. If you're familiar with disk profiles, there's the high Ds. Those people tend to have a strong drive, they're very data-driven, they can make decisions quickly on the fly and I think I have some of those qualities. But I'm not that data-driven guy right.

Speaker 1: 3:16

For me, a lot of the things are gut feel. How did this conversation feel? How did whatever Could be with my wife know? How did I piss her off last night? Yeah, I joke, but you know I mean like, yeah, you can feel about these things. Women would call it women's intuition. I'll take that. So I just kind of had this feeling like we missed an opportunity. So I what it wasn't really a I can't wait to have the dollars in my account, or I need these dollars or I need to move on with my life. It was just I kind of took a sense of where I was at in life and what we were doing in the business and the progress we were making and I just felt like, hey, this was an opportunity to do something different, go in a different direction that we weren't planning on. So I think it was more than that of where I was at in my life and me needing some version of change. Okay.

Speaker 2: 4:19

So when you said where you were at in life and that decision, or the feeling, the need to change, you said you had a business partner. Now, did your partner was? Was he having the same type of feelings, and what kind of? I guess what did that discussion look like between the two of you?

Speaker 1: 4:34

yeah, and that is the so, all of these conversations. Whenever somebody would call, we would take it and or, generally speaking, it was me that was taking the call because I was on the sales side. He's more technical, so he was more in the background, certainly in front of customers, right, so he's not like the wizard behind the curtain type of thing, but so we would always have these conversation. I'd say, hey, adam so and so called, and this is what they were talking about, and we'd have those conversations and it was just more dialogue about what's going on. And in this one, for whatever reason, the dialogue went a lot further, uh, with the purchasing party, and so those conversations with adam were different.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Um, he, he wasn't actually wanting to sell, um, and I think, think that when the first time came around that they gave us an offer, it was a lot easier to say no.

Speaker 1: 5:30

He wasn't directly interested in selling and I wasn't certain either. I was just entertaining the phone call, like all the other ones that we had before, and so it was after that we turned them down where I started feeling this, something needs to change and I just kind of verbalized that with him and he's like look, man, if you don't want to do this, I don't want to hold you hostage. So he was more supportive of me and what my life trajectory was, rather than what the business is or you know. Frankly, what was best for him, right? I think that if we were to go back and ask him today, he would probably say I would have loved to kept that business and love to be operating it today. Business and love to be operating it today. So it was more of a. This is where I'm at and this is kind of what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling about things, and he was supportive of that.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Good, and so when you talked about how you took these calls and you learned something from every one of those, right, what are some of the things you were learning along the way by taking those calls?

Speaker 1: 6:56

A lot of you know it's really about business negotiation, or what are the people that are buying a company looking for Right? Are we a good fit in the MSP space space? A lot of conversation around target client profile, because a lot of times when we start MSP businesses frankly, any business we take whatever opportunities come to us because the dollars are important, and so that's how we tend to build our business, and it's not just IT businesses right, it's freight brokerages and financial planners and whatever else. We just take the money that comes to us because we want some sort of income right. But at the end of the day, ultimately we need to be looking at who's the right fit for us, and so part of that conversation is is this a person that I would want to work with? Is this person that's on the other side of the line going to provide the same service that we're providing our customers now? So their customer experience doesn't change. What are they looking for? From a documentation perspective? What are they seeing in my business? That's a detriment that they wouldn't want to buy it.

Speaker 1: 8:03

You know there's a lot of talk about contracted revenue versus time and materials revenue when it comes to M&A in the MSP space and the reality is both of those businesses are saleable, but you know, if they are 100% time and materials and I was almost 100% recurring revenue that's not a good fit for the customer right, and I was almost 100% recurring revenue that's not a good fit for the customer right. These are two different models, two different directions, and so the customers are going to get a different experience after the sale. So Mario is really trying to figure out what are the questions they're asking. Do I like this person? Because if I don't like them, how do I expect any of my clients to like them either? Right? So it's really just trying to flip the script on them.

Speaker 1: 8:48

They're asking questions about my business, but I'm actually interviewing them to make sure that they're a fit for my clients.

Speaker 2: 8:56

Definitely so. In a sense and just like that, we were talking about the relationship aspect right, providing, continue to provide the service that you have built, and, in a sense, kind of like dating, right, you're going back to seeing and going, hey, is this a good fit, right? Even though chances are, whether you stay on after the sale or you immediately exit, or a period of time and then exit, is it a good fit for your client base and is it a good fit for your organization and the culture and those things? How does it align?

Speaker 1: 9:29

That makes a huge difference. A lot of times when people are selling, they're selling for the purposes of getting out of work. The thought in a lot of cases is retirement or it's how do I free up these dollars because I want to go do something else. But I think ultimately a lot of businesses when they're selling, it's just a I'm looking for the payday and, given where I'm at in life, at the time that I sold, I still had kids in school, in primary school, right. So I wasn't at a place where I was like, oh, I'm ready to throw in the towel and just go goof off, right.

Speaker 2: 10:11

Sale the world.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Yeah, exactly, and we don't think about those things of what the sell is right, because it's just I'm trying to get these dollars. I think that that's the average conversation or the average sale that happens. I'm just trying to get the dollars. So there's not that many people that sell and stay on with that business and the time that they stay on if they stay on tends to be pretty short in a lot of cases, excuse me, less than 30 days, less than 90 days. In a lot of cases, excuse me, less than 30 days, less than 90 days.

Speaker 1: 10:46

I stayed on for 14 months and when I was talking to another friend who was in the industry that has regular M&A types of conversations, he was amazed Like wow, nobody stays on that long. And don't get me wrong, some people specifically sell because they're tired of being that leader and they just want to stop making those decisions Right. Like I was a great technician and I used to do server projects that I love, I want to get doing that again and not have to deal with P&L or whining employees or whatever that problem is. So there are a number of businesses that, when I sell, the intention is give me a job that I have less responsibility and we'll keep moving forward together, but those, I think, are few and far between, so it's like we need to figure out that. What is the path and, um, you know, really, what is that motivation?

Speaker 2: 11:41

yeah. So when you I guess when you got into business um, in the business that you've sold, when you started that um was M and a, a topic that was discussed in the very beginning he sort of was, hey, like what does this look like down the road for us, uh, you and your partner, and for the business, or at what point did that really become a thought?

Speaker 1: 12:01

I would say, there's kind of two milestones. Uh, to answer your question directly, no, not at all. Right, you're so gung-ho about starting this new thing and, you know, going out on your own right the Oregon Trail, you know it's kind of like this is fun and exciting. So you're not thinking with the end in mind. And I would say the more business owners that I've talked to that's a very common theme, right, we just want to keep, we want to build something and we want to have an impact, whatever that impact means. So we're not thinking with the end of my.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Don't be wrong, there's just as many of those High D disc profile people that are like I need to sell this business for five million dollars and I need to do it by this age, right, so when they start, they've got a goal in mind. Yeah, and those are the people I love meeting now, right, because they're very goal focused and they're trying to get somewhere. I was just trying to build something. Sure, a sale at all, no, no, I said sure. There were two milestones, though the first one was as you start to mature, you start realizing that this business is more than just me and my trunk fixing computers. You know what I mean. Now, we've got an office, we've got employees. Those employees have children.

Speaker 1: 13:24

You got all of these things going. And then there's kind of a we probably need to make sure that if I get hit by a bus today, that we've got things in place. So one of the milestones I would say is the buy-sell. Again, I had a business partner and we were just doing something good together, right. So? And we're not thinking of the breakup, we're not thinking of the divorce or whatever, you're too busy living in the moment.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Yeah, exactly, and it's fun and exciting, right? So you're just kind of out there doing it and and this. In this scenario, we just felt like we had to have something in place in case there was something broken, right? I think at that point I was starting to work myself. I was certainly doing the vast majority of the sales, but I was working myself more towards doing just sales. And he's a fabulous technician, right. So he spent a lot of time building up the service team. So good split between the two of us. But if something happened to me, what happens to the sales? Or if something happens to him, if you have ever been in technology, if you don't use it, you lose it. It's like working out If you don't use it, you lose it. So, yeah, so if I'm not doing these whatever server network projects on a regular basis, and five seconds later.

Speaker 1: 14:49

That technology has changed, and it's not because I lost the skill set there's definitely some of that but it's also the technology changed.

Speaker 2: 14:59

It's different.

Speaker 1: 14:59

It's different than what it was when you last touched it, right, I mean it's always evolving and changing Absolutely, so you've got to it's absolutely different in order to go forward with some sort of fix right, so that was one milestone is the buy sale of hey, we need to just put some things in place. And then the other was um, I was a part of a networking group, um, that was part of the chamber of commerce, and in the chamber of Commerce they have a thing called business owners roundtable, and so this particular chamber had two different business owner roundtables, and the group that I was in we just met at a coffee shop and we, for several weeks, we were just meeting and it was just getting together and I was like this is dumb. We need to be doing something productive if we're going to be here. Right, it was not just a social hour.

Speaker 2: 15:51

There's actually a goal in terms of like.

Speaker 1: 15:55

Part of that is I like being in front of business owners because those are my prospects, those are the people that I'm targeting when I'm trying to sell my IT services. That I'm targeting when I'm trying to sell my IT services. So I figured just the more business owners that I meet and have a social connection with, it's easier to parlay into a business relationship. But I was just, it was just spinning wheels, right, we were just going there and, like you said, social hour. So we started becoming more formal, started talking about what our problems are in our business and solving some solutions. But again, that didn't really have a plan, it didn't really have a path, it didn't really have a destination. So, as a group, we hired a business coach and the business coach he had his challenges because we were completely different businesses. I was in it. We had a guy that was um commercial insurance. We had a gal that ran, um, I guess you'd call it a physical therapy office, um in town, right, just completely different businesses.

Speaker 2: 17:01

All in business is different. Different obviously focus or a hundred percent focus, 100.

Speaker 1: 17:05

So yeah, and so typically, when you think business coach, it's like business coach with mark, business coach with mike right, it's kind of a one-to-one and I'm tailoring my conversation to that business. And this guy had multiple businesses that were at different stages of growth, different types of problems. So one of the early exercises he had us do was create an accountability chart for our businesses, and he's like, just throw names on it. I get it that you guys don't have hundreds of employees. So, regardless, though, every business has these different roles. We got finance, admin, we got HR, we've got service, we've got whatever else All these businesses have these same roles. Your name might be on all of the roles, but the bigger you get, you're going to have to figure out who to put into that seat.

Speaker 1: 18:00

One of the guys in the group, he does product design. When he brought his back, he drew a line up from the accountability chart and wrote shareholder and circled that, and that one line and circle blew my mind Right. It was like holy smokes, this thing is its own living breathing entity, right. Like early on when I was a kid, my dad was into technology, um, and so I was interested in it, and so he was also interested in stocks and so I had intel stock when I was a kid.

Speaker 1: 18:38

Um, right, and it didn't. It didn't even dawn on me that I owned a piece of a business when I was a kid and now I'm a business owner, I own all of the business, but there's still this thing called shareholder that Intel is doing that, this private business, I'm not doing so. Just having that mentality of there's this thing above the accountability chart, above the org chart, called shareholder, that thing just kind of made me think differently about the business, and it really changed the conversations that adam and I had, you know. Shortly thereafter, um, him and I started meeting with a financial planner, an income attorney, attorney and our accountant. All five of us were in a meeting every single month looking at the finances of the business and how we can improve it.

Speaker 2: 19:33

Wow, that's impressive yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:38

I don't know about impressive, but it just Most small businesses, and I say small right, we get.

Speaker 2: 19:42

First category is a small business and most everyone I know is in a small business right. So for most small businesses they're not meeting with that, let alone that regular, but with those type of three individuals on a monthly basis. Most are lucky to talk to a CPA once a year when they talk about financial side of the business right, let alone a planner and legal, and that's just something you just don't hear at our size.

Speaker 1: 20:08

And all it took was that lineup to shareholder to kind of start that snowball to start thinking about it. And the income attorney. He gave us a book. Try and remember the name. It's something about private equity. I'll come up with it. I'll come up with the. I'll come up with the name, I'll send it to you. But, um, that book is really talking to small business owners that that business is their baby.

Speaker 1: 20:37

Right, you have to do something with this business. At some point you can die in that seat and then it's 100, somebody else's problem. But that's the only uh instance where you don't deal with it. Every other instance you've got to do something. Right, it might be poor health, right, if I'm in poor health and I can't come to work, that business still needs to operate and the people that are getting W-2 wages from you still need to keep a roof over their head and still need to feed their kids. And a lot of these small business owners, their net worth is tied up in this business. So at some point you can have this business until you die for sure. But at some point you have to realize that I need to get this money out of the business in order to be able to retire. So how am I going to go about doing that? And unfortunately, it seems like a large percentage is I just stay in the seat and show up every day until I pass Right right.

Speaker 1: 21:49

And you see that frequently. Well, yeah, I think a lot of times it's because we don't know how to get the dollars out of the business, either while we're doing it or planning for when we're going to do it. And so that book really helped me realize that there are multiple paths to get your net worth to where it needs to be so that the business can live on without you.

Speaker 2: 22:14

You know and that's a great point, and it's something that I hear more and more as I talk to those business owners that have built, maybe sold or built, and you know they're at a point where it's all about pulling the money out of the business and reinvesting that in other things, right. So the business becomes the means of doing these other things. It gives the diversity additional income and in a sense, they're building their wealth and using the business as the source of funding all that. So even yesterday a gentleman was talking about building his to 10 million and selling and doing these things and just seeing what he's done with it since. But more and more we hear that, yes, you and I both know we have peers that we watched whether they sold because they were forced to, whether that was a change in relationship, a marriage, a change with their business partner, health. Maybe they thought it was retirement time, right, and they sold the business because they were, hey, I'm done working, I'm ready to retire. Because they were, hey, I'm done working, I'm ready to retire.

Speaker 2: 23:28

There's different avenues I guess we've seen, or different scenarios we've seen, play out over the years. You and I have been in peer groups in the past together and we saw changes over in those times and we see them post those groups and seeing what's happening today with those we know and in the industry and all. We talk about private equity and how the huge impact it's having in our space along with other spaces, but a lot of consolidation going on, a lot of acquisitions going on and it definitely changes. A lot of it changes the landscape. So when you were having these conversations and then decided to sell, what did you do or how did you start preparing your business for that transition?

Speaker 1: 24:10

Honestly, the preparation it was in the training prior to those phone calls. And by training I'm going to go in two different aspects getting previous phone calls of saying hey, would you be interested in selling, and kind of hearing those conversations and things that they were looking for. So that was a little bit of it. But more than anything, believe it or not, the peer group that you mentioned, that we were both part of. That was a huge part of me getting prepared to sell from the first meeting.

Speaker 1: 24:45

In that peer meeting, having dialed in financials became a prevalent conversation in the peer team. Every time we showed up at a peer team meeting, financials was part of the conversation. And every time we showed up at a peer team meeting there was one guy in the peer team that didn't enter his numbers or had no idea how to explain his numbers or had dollars in the wrong bucket. And I'm just learning from the examples of others. I wanted my stuff tight. I wanted my stuff that this was easily readable, I could explain it to a lay person, of how our business is functioning, how we make money, where our profit is. I wanted to understand those things just for my own mental. You know keeping things straight. So really, that peer group and that focus on the financials. When you see them and you're looking at them on a regular basis you notice the anomalies and when you see those anomalies you can work towards resolving them. It's when we're not looking at these things with any sort of regularity that we can't fix them.

Speaker 1: 26:00

And just by looking at those financials it started cleaning up things on service. Right, its hey, we're not getting enough margin here, or we should be doing I'm more automation with this client, then manual labor. Or why did we do service for this client at all this month? Because we are way over in the time that we agreed to work with this person. Maybe we could. You know it's the 20th of the month and there's a holiday next week. Is there any way that we can do this in december instead of the week of thanksgiving? You know what I mean. You make those decisions because you're looking at the financials and making things tight you have gauges at that point, right?

Speaker 2: 26:41

I mean, if you're, if you're monitoring, tracking and you don't have something to guide you, something to look at, otherwise there's, you're just blind, right which is amazing because earlier in this conversation is that I'm a guy that goes on his gut you know, at one point my brother said I really respect that use.

Speaker 1: 27:01

You analyze this and thought about the different avenues and you had confidence, going into creating this business, that you could just walk away from your second child, who was just born. And I didn't walk away from her, she's still with us. But like uh, when you quit your job two weeks after your your child's born, that's motivation to go out and build business, in my opinion, right. So from that perspective, I've simply had to keep on building. I lost my train of thought. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 27:36

No no, it's okay. So let me ask you, as we talked about how you transitioned and what did you learn? And obviously you said you started in the financials quite early. Right, we, we've you joined it. I said peer group, but we, we've heard through it, but in this group we called them a peer team. You know that was what made us different, right, um, but um, yes, financials was a piece of that and it's also, you know, and I, I know I've learned a lot over the years. You know we're working on our 15th year at current tech solutions today and you know it's there's a lot to learn. We got into business.

Speaker 2: 28:11

I think we, both of us we didn't get into business as business-minded individuals. We got into business as technical-minded individuals and hey, you know we can do this thing and and we knew nothing about finances, right, when it comes to a business, and so, yeah, we figured it out as we go, or we, you know, whatever, I mean, it worked. But as far as really paying attention to that, I think that's where the financial piece you and I learned in the peer team together and in the group setting today is, you know, not only learning but understanding and then having to use that to guide you and help base decisions based off of these metrics, these financial metrics it changed the target of our or the trajectory of our business, right?

Speaker 1: 28:54

because, again, when you're just going by gut and making decisions, uh, based on they said yes and so I'll be happy to take the dollar, they said yes, and this is what.

Speaker 2: 29:05

How much in my bank account, and that's a gut feeling of how comfortable I feel with what's in the bank versus you know like, oh no, like we need to sell more.

Speaker 1: 29:12

You know what right I mean absolutely right, we need to keep the ledger in the black and we need to keep it that number as high as we can, and so let's just do whatever we can to do that. Um, but when you start digging into those financials and understanding them and using them as a tool, it changes the trajectory. Right, if I get 80 percent margin on a service and get 20 percent margin on a different service, as a business leader, as a salesperson, where should you be spending your time? As a business leader, as a salesperson, where should you be spending your time? To me, it seems pretty obvious that we should be spending our time on the thing that generates more margin, so it helps. And when we do spend more time on that thing that makes more margin, it makes all the other numbers even better. So you've got to understand the numbers. You've got to understand what your trajectory is. Matter of fact, I use you in a lot of the examples when I'm talking to business owners. Oh no, oh no.

Speaker 1: 30:11

Early on, when we worked together, if I recall correctly, your business was very heavy in hardware sales, correct, correct? Sure, there was service that went along with those hardware sales and so there that had its own version of margin, which was probably better than the product. Um, but at that point I was very heavy into pushing uh, recurring service, um, and part of the conversation is there's nothing wrong with either one of our businesses, right? If my business is selling hardware and services that go along with that, fantastic, let's go be great at that and be and get the best business that we can with that. But if our business is service and we need this recurring revenue, great, go for that thing too. You got to decide what your North Star is, that you're going to go after, and there's nothing wrong with these things in. In the same vein, I think that having these conversations collectively as a group, mark maybe, has seen the light, and I'm guessing today that the volume of hardware sales that you do is quite a bit different than back in the early 2000s when we met.

Speaker 2: 31:20

Oh, 100%, I mean, it's just probably just the opposite of what it was before. If we were to at percentages, which is, uh, yeah, I may say that now we're service dominant and and hardware becomes, you know a piece of that, right, but, um, yeah, more service focused, most recurring revenue focused, and you know, hardware is still a chunk of that. And we, we also see some variation there based off of the life cycle of equipment. Right, I mean, we're not, we didn't just say hey, but that wasn't become our focus. It wasn't about, hey, we can go sell this 150 000 of of network gear and, um, there you go.

Speaker 2: 31:58

You know, hey, we get some margin on it and move on to the next thing. But you know that doesn't happen every year with that, that client or that customer, right, I mean, there's a life cycle to it. So, um, obviously we get a lot more. You know, with the service and recurring, we know everything's a little bit more level, right, we don't have those extreme peaks and those extreme valleys, it's a little bit more even, um, by transitioning that way, and more predictable.

Speaker 1: 32:24

Honestly, that was the big reason why we went to managed services the summer months. I live in Minnesota and they say we're the land of 10,000 lakes and Minnesotans love their lakes. We leave early on Friday, we come in late on Monday, sometimes we leave on Thursday, right, and it's a lot of times because I'm going up to the cabin or I'm going to the lake or whatever it is. So in the IT business, when we were doing time and materials, the summertime's dried up and I'm like calling everybody saying hey, how can I help? How can I help? And they're like I'm not here, I'm going to have fun, right. And they're like I'm not here, I'm going to have fun, right. And so really, the managed service piece was I need to be able to feed my family the whole year and not just during the winter months when people are actually working.

Speaker 1: 33:14

So it wasn't a difficult transition. I just went to Mark and said hey, mark, last year you spent $6,000 with us. How about we make that $500 a month? And then we'll talk about it in six months or nine months or 12 months and make sure that neither one of us is taking advantage of the other. Um, and as long as we're good, we'll keep rolling with that price and if there needs to be a discrepancy or a change, then then we'll fix that. But, boy, cash flow changed completely after that. Right, because, uh, every month, you know, now I've got 500 a month every month, at least for the next year. Um, so it just made life a lot easier.

Speaker 2: 33:55

Yeah, and we all know the benefits there, and not only that, but as far as budgeting and and knowing how to staff right based off of this, this revenue and the consistency of that revenue, before we get too down the path of recurring revenue and things. Let's come back a little bit more to the sale process. We talk about the sale and you decided to sell and you're preparing for the transition. What was the most challenging part of actually selling your business?

Speaker 1: 34:27

Honestly, it was the documentation, the due diligence process. Depending on the company that's purchasing, you can be fairly detailed and the company that we were selling to, company that we were selling to they were very motivated based on time. At the time they were acquiring an MSP once a month, so they were trying to hit those goals and so they were pushing the needle to get these things over the finish line pretty quickly. So trying to dig up all the due diligence information and making sure of course we want to make our company look good or put ourselves in the best light when we're selling, but at the same time you also have to be honest and you got to put out your dirty laundry because if you don't do that that's gonna affect the sale, right? So you're trying to dig this stuff up and meet deadlines.

Speaker 1: 35:23

I think more than anything it was, it was really digging up the, the paperwork. Now I'll put a little bit of asterisk on that and that was only because that's the company that was purchasing us had a bunch of requirements. Not every business is going to have the same level of requirements when it comes to that due diligence, because there's different levels of maturity when it comes to acquisitions diligence, because there's different levels of maturity when it comes to acquisitions. When you're doing your first one, you don't know what you don't know, so you ask a million questions and realize, oh crap, I should have asked 10 million questions. You know what I mean. And in these guys, because they were doing one a month, it was a well-oiled machine. I need these hundred documents and I need them with this level of detail and I need them by this date because they had they got a machine going in that regard.

Speaker 1: 36:11

But the ash I'm going to put on there is if anybody's looking at selling, it's no different than selling your house. Every house will sell, no matter what the condition is. The caveat is what are you going to get in return? So the more messy it is, the more hoarding you did, the less maintenance that you did, the less dollars you're going to get, but you're still going to sell.

Speaker 1: 36:43

The more time we spent on our financials and making sure our net profit was where it would needed to be and our agreements profits would meet where, where they needed to be, it just made it easier to get a fair price or above market price to get where we're going. So you can sell your business at any time, at any state. Whether your books are in great condition or bad condition, it's just a matter of what do you want to get out of it? Right, if you, if this is actually your retirement plan, you probably should spend some time cleaning up the books and cleaning up these contracts and cleaning up the relationships and actually doing business reviews with your clients, right? So when you're doing these things, the more streamlined your business is, the more dollars you're going to get at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: 37:33

And talk to me about the. You know, when you talk about the difficult part, the challenging part of selling the business once you decided, how did, I guess, emotions come into play? What was some of the emotional side of once you decided to sell a business, and what kind of challenges did you face there?

Speaker 1: 37:51

Yeah, I would say that that's a tough question to answer, specifically because of what I was just mentioning, that they were pushing this thing quickly. Not to mention, I was taking my daughter to a trip in California, so I was out of town for a week when they were trying to get this thing wrapped up in 30 days and that time took away from it. So the speed of the acquisition didn't give me time to process the emotions. It was a hey, we had this conversation. I felt like we missed out. So those emotions are now washed away because now we're back in the seat of having this conversation. And then it was just the what is the emotion afterwards? Because you didn't have time to process it and in my scenario.

Speaker 1: 38:42

So the emotions afterwards were more like there's a bit of relief. Man, if something happens to one of my client's backups, or they get hacked or whatever, an employee can't do their job for extended periods of time that stress just washed off. That's not my responsibility anymore, I gave this responsibility to somebody else. That stress just washed off, right, that's not my responsibility anymore. I gave this responsibility to somebody else. So there was relief in that regard. But then there's also the trepidation of oh, what the heck now, where do we?

Speaker 2: 39:16

go here.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Where do we go from here?

Speaker 2: 39:19

Yeah, and that says kind of getting into. Now is we talk about, let's talk about the post-sale life, right? So how did?

Speaker 1: 39:32

you adjust to life after the sale, yeah, so what I would encourage everybody to do, um regardless if this is your personality or not, um is to really spend some time thinking about what you want things to look like afterwards. The more time you spend thinking about that and looking at that, the more opportunity you have to prepare and the more opportunity is for that vision to come into fruition. Now me specifically, whatever. Some of my earliest IT clients were financial planners, and so financial planning was always part of the conversation, because I was at their offices every single week and hearing their conversations and knowing what they're talking to their clients about. So I had a vision of what the dollars look like. I had a vision of what life looked like. I always knew that I wanted to retire early and just go goof around right, like there's enough money in the bank. If I want to get on my bike and go for 50 miles today, great, go, do that. If I want to get on my bike and ride to Ohio and see Mark, great. It might take me a couple days, but who cares, because I got time.

Speaker 1: 40:52

It changed for me after that transition, though, because the reality is I lost the transparency with my wife early in the child rearing phases. You get just caught up in life and going by the day-to-day and hitting the soccer games and going to gymnastics meet and just trying to get new business at the office and whatever else. You just get caught up in the day-to-day. So her and I didn't have a lot of conversations about what life would look like for either one of us at retirement. And this opportunity came up and I just, more than anything we had a conversation about I don't know this is not the right word, but I'm going to say permission. Hey, wife, do I have permission to sell this business? It's not that at all, but it was more like, hey, I'm thinking of have permission to sell this business. It's not that at all, but it was more like, hey, I'm thinking of this major lifestyle change for myself, what do you think of this? And she was supportive.

Speaker 1: 41:57

But we didn't do a good job of having that conversation of well, when you're done with the sale, what does life look like? We had lost that easily ten years ago and, for whatever reason, it just didn't come up in the conversation. So we got past the sale, my life changed and then we had the conversation and, more than anything. Let's be real. She was right and I was wrong. I should have the responsibilities right.

Speaker 1: 42:29

We're young enough that we got a lot of life ahead of us, right, and we still had kids in the house, right. So we had to figure out how is that going to be maintained. And we had always done things as a partnership and because I had all this free time, it was hey, partner, I need you to pick up a lot more of the weight. And the reality is, for me, that extra weight was not stuff that was exciting or motivated me, so we had to work together to figure out what was going to work for us and the reality was, the best solution was for me to get back to work, okay, well, so before you get to that reality, I guess I'm curious too.

Speaker 2: 43:25

There was obviously a gap in there. So obviously your day-to-day life was drastically different. Because now you're saying, hey, you're not going to the office, you're not doing this thing anymore, I'm sitting by the pool, I'm doing my thing, I'm picking up some domestic responsibilities, because now I'm available and before I was not, or whatever, because I was working at the office. With that time, once you sold, did that allow you to focus on any new ventures or any personal projects?

Speaker 1: 43:58

I guess in between time, Honestly, I think that a lot of people, when they get to retirement and didn't have a specific plan of what they were going to, just because they didn't have that plan, they didn't know what to do, and so I was in a similar boat. My plan was to goof off all day, every day, and so I did a lot of that I didn't set an alarm.

Speaker 1: 44:25

Um, and don't get me wrong, it's not. You know, after years of getting up early and being at the office it's not like I slept until 10 am or whatever um, so I just did a lot of goofing off and you just, at the end of the day, you needed to have a better plan of what it needs to be.

Speaker 2: 44:43

So with that, do you, would you take that? That, I guess, would you say the biggest surprise to you Was that, I guess, that feeling of how I should have maybe thought this through a little bit more. Were you surprised by that when you found yourself going well, geez, I didn't plan this piece out. I thought goofing off was you know, the rest of my life, but obviously that isn't, wasn't working out for you.

Speaker 1: 45:11

The reality is it wasn't that that wasn't working out for me. It was me and my wife weren't on the same page I and that's the reality of what it was right. She just had ideas of what this thing looked like and I had ideas of what this thing looked like, and they just didn't align. It's not like we were completely off and it didn't create a bunch of arguments or anything else, but it certainly was. It was not the same path, right? And so I just had to readjust Um, and, frankly, it gave me time to better um digest what I just did.

Speaker 1: 45:53

Hey, this thing that you spent over a decade building from absolutely nothing to seven figures, um, that's something right. And what sort of legacy or what sort of um example are you going to be giving to? I was thinking about, what am I doing for my kids, what about their kids, and how are people going to see grandpa or whatever else, right? So it gave me that uh motivation to really um, because I had the time and because the wife and I were not in alignment of what uh, life looked like at that point, it gave me a lot of time to to reflect on that after the fact, um, and just re reset my my path forward.

Speaker 1: 46:42

I really wanted to. I changed my thinking into uh, you know, I don't want to be doing domestic responsibilities all day, every day, so how do I take care of my time? And it was um, look, you've made time and money for yourself, but that doesn't cover everything else, right? What happens when kid number one wants to get married? What happens when kid number two goes to jail? What happens when, well, you know, whatever it is, I had a friend that his daughter was in the hospital for I don't know, three or four years.

Speaker 1: 47:16

Oh my goodness, that's a huge financial impact on your life.

Speaker 2: 47:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:20

Right. So we've been fortunate. We haven't had those types of medical issues. But we're all young, right? Who knows if and when these things could happen? And while I was financially prepared for retirement for myself, I wasn't prepared for all of those other things. Right? And if something does happen to one of my kids, I want to make sure to be there to help them out, right? If something happens to my wife, if something happens to me, I don't want to just be able to have the dollars to cover that retirement, I want to be able to cover that illness and still have money for retirement afterwards. You know what I mean yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:01

So looking back, you know you talked about obviously some of that, the transparency with the wife, as being something kind of a lesson learned right, like if I go back in time, I probably, would, probably, would have done this a little bit differently. Um, is there, is there anything else you would have done differently, purposely, and better, better prepared for that transition?

Speaker 1: 48:26

after the sale yeah, the spousal conversation is 100 necessary and it just seems foolish to me, looking back on it, that we weren't there yet. Right, we had these conversations early, when the kids were young and we had a you know a few conversations along the way, but it wasn't in depth. So I honestly, that's the biggest thing is making sure that you're on the same page with um, your spousal unit. Um, I would say, if there was anything else, it would be that conversation with my business partner. Right, when we talked about the buy-sell, it was more so we were young and we thought, hey, if something happens, it's because there was a tragic accident. You know what I mean and we're covering bases to put this thing in place.

Speaker 1: 49:18

But what we really should have been talking about is what are your hopes and dreams? Right, it's so weird to me. We talk about career development with our employees and try to get them. You know you came in at the help desk as the person that's green out of college and how do we get you to a top level engineer and what's the timeframe and certifications and what's the path to get there, and yet me and my business partner didn't talk about what do you want to do with your life? What do you want to do with this business? We didn't have enough of those conversations. The conversations, primarily, were bigger, better, more. How do we make tomorrow better?

Speaker 2: 50:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 50:01

I think we talked about.

Speaker 2: 50:02

We're in the moment now, right, we're focused on all the fires and the problems of today and whatever. Maybe that month, that quarter, that week, whatever type of scenario right, we're not looking at that. I don't think we're looking at zoomed out, looking at this giant picture of what it could be or where we might want to be later. I know I'm guilty of that.

Speaker 1: 50:21

Well, and it's very prevalent in the MSP business because there's so much chaos, right? That's why help desks exist, because I'm having this problem and I'd like it fixed now. It wasn't here yesterday, it wasn't here last month, but all of a sudden it showed up and now I need this thing resolved.

Speaker 2: 50:39

We're running an emergency room.

Speaker 1: 50:42

Yeah right. In both cases, you have no idea what's coming in the door or what level of tragedy it is. Yeah Right, so your day-to-day is ruled by chaos, and so I very much encourage businesses to put discipline as part of their practice. And where we put the discipline, it's not in all the places that we need to, and that's definitely not the place that me and my partner put it right, we should have had some discipline of. Are you making the money that you want? Is this business what you want? Is this getting you to where you need to be from a retirement perspective? Is this getting you where you need to be from a fulfillment of happiness perspective? We should have just had regular conversations around that thing once a quarter, twice a year, once a year, something like that.

Speaker 1: 51:35

That is not completely work-related. It's how does this tool that we have together get you individually where you need to be? And we didn't really have a lot of those conversations, which is why, when it came to the sale time, my partner was supportive of how I was feeling about things. But had we had more of those conversations, maybe we wouldn't have got there at that point. Because we had a. We both had a clear picture of what where each person was going and, hey, I haven't got Adam where he needs to be, so I need to stick around longer, right, to get this thing going.

Speaker 2: 52:13

Now, in this case, you had a business partner right and you had this conversation with your business partner as far as selling. Obviously, your story could have been a lot different if your business partner was not interested in selling at that time.

Speaker 1: 52:27

Yeah, absolutely, and technically he wasn't. He very much was leaning on me and saying look man, if this is not your thing, I don't want to hold you hostage, right? So he was extremely supportive of me and I look man, if this is not your thing, I don't want to hold you hostage, right? So he was extremely supportive of me and I think I mentioned this he, if we asked him today if he would rather be doing what he's doing now or he'd still be doing that business, I feel extremely confident he would rather be doing that business.

Speaker 2: 52:54

So that was him he used to be all confident him. But for you I mean post sale and looking back, I back do you have any type of in a sense I don't know, maybe look at it kind of regrets, in a sense of going, hey, where I could have been with that business if I would have held on to it, maybe for another five, 10 years, or where your life could have been looked differently.

Speaker 1: 53:24

Yeah, so I don't know if regret is the correct word, but the reality is because I have the benefit now of hindsight, taking that example earlier of the shareholder. We had conversations about that, but I probably would have pushed that a lot harder. The thing that I was struggling in the last few years of running that business was I was very much wanting and working towards that shareholder piece and my business partner I felt was working very hard in the trenches, in the day-to-day grind, and I didn't feel like my effort and his effort were commiserate. I felt like I was really slacking. So I was coming to the office to work, when the reality is I wanted to be that shareholder and wanted to have more time and it just didn't feel right to me. I feel like if I got a business partner, I got to put in at least that sort of effort or better, otherwise this partnership doesn't work.

Speaker 2: 54:26

So with any type of partnership, right, even with you. You're talking about your partnership with your wife, right? I would assume there's times that someone is putting more effort or doing something that the other one isn't right. We all have our times where we maybe slack a little bit, and there's other times that you know that they were being pulled long enough time. We're pulling somebody right, um, in your business. You said you were at a point where you're going hey, I want to be the shareholder, I really don't want to do that. Putting in the effort he's busting his butt over here or whatever, and I'm not um, you know that I'm assuming there's probably over that time period, there was times where maybe he wasn't necessarily putting in as much effort as you were.

Speaker 1: 55:09

Yeah, it's really hard, right, Because we worked so differently and we were hardly in the office together. Most of the time that he and I spent together was sitting at. Well, let's be honest, we're sitting at the bar talking about work, going over the financials or whatever it is. We just spent so much time talking about work and we didn't really talk about that piece of it. So my impression was always this guy's always on the grind. When you're a business owner, it's so hard to turn it off anyways yeah even the one working towards that shareholder.

Speaker 1: 55:43

You can't turn it off, right. You go lay down and you're like, oh my goodness, this guy's uh backup is running and I don't know if it's gonna finish or it's gonna fail. And what am I gonna wake up to in the morning? Or I sent this collections invoice to a customer. Are they actually going to respond this time? Or do sent this collections invoice to a customer. Are they actually going to respond this time? Or do I'm not gonna have to go out there and actually ask for the money? You know, there's always something yeah, yeah can't get away from it.

Speaker 1: 56:07

There's no punching a clock when you're a business owner very true so even though, even though it was on my mind and taxing me, from that perspective, I just I never felt like we were 100% commiserate. I always felt like he was, because he's the guy with the tax, that we're doing the service that is making us the money. I always felt like he was doing way more than me. Now, because we weren't in the same room for all I know, he was off, goofing off. I don't think that's his personality by any means, which is why I felt like he was always working more than me.

Speaker 1: 56:48

That was not comfortable for me. I either need to start showing up and start doing work or I need to figure this thing out. When we had those shareholder conversations, he was in alignment with me. I just didn't push very hard, and so part of that not pushing very hard was I'm not getting him close to a shareholder and I'm not letting off the gas on my side to become closer to the shareholder, because I'm trying to keep up. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 57:16

Yeah, yeah. So I want to. I'd like to kind of go back in time a little bit here so we get a very good picture of, obviously, prior to selling that business, you had to start the business. Um, take us on that journey. What, what got you, what got you started? And you know, what are some of the things that you learned along the way. I'm getting that sell, and then I'm going to talk about post sell, uh, post sale, and where that led you. So how did you start? Uh, what got you into starting your own business?

Speaker 1: 57:51

I I'm going to go back just a step further and I'm trying okay too long, don't read. Read version.

Speaker 2: 57:57

Is this a paper?

Speaker 1: 57:58

You were a paper boy and you thought I was definitely a paper boy right, but that's an important piece to the puzzle, right? Because when you have a job before you're 16, it says something about you, right? I don't know this is just my impression, but a lot of the kids today don't work when they're in high school. A lot of them go on to college and still don't work. They don't get their first job whether that was a paper boy or McDonald's or whatever it was until after they've graduated. And then they expect that oh hey, I got all this education. Please pay me six figures to do this thing that I'm trained in and you're like you haven't even worked a day in your life and I'm going to go give you all this money to do this job. How about we get some experience first? So the paperboy thing is relevant, because I feel like a lot of the people that are business owners didn't start working after they were in college, right? They started on the grind before the average person or or whatever is.

Speaker 2: 59:03

I don't know about you, but I know I am. I had a paper out when I was a sixth grade yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 1: 59:10

And here we are, uh, business owners, and we're off to the races, I think six.

Speaker 2: 59:14

Great, try to think back to sixth graders paper route. And then, uh, when I was in eighth, I started working at a restaurant, in the kitchen, you know, like washing dishes, busing you know, whatever helping out. So, yeah, I mean it went back and that was in between. You know, during wrestling season I was still. You know, once again you get a wrestling practice and then you go to work and go work at the restaurant, right?

Speaker 1: 59:41

We could be mirrored here like uh, I, I wasn't washing dishes. I did work at a mcdonald's. I did have to wash dishes, but generally I was a punishment for goofing off. But restaurants, uh, I think that anybody who works in some version of restaurant, that's a huge skill, a huge thing for understanding sympathy and empathy, and it it translates to all of your different roles. Customer service is important in restaurant businesses, right? So I love that. You've got that part of it, your experience, right. And then you brought up wrestling. Yet another thing. Look, I participated in all the different sports. I was the FOMO guy. I didn't want to miss out. My buddies were participating in something. I wanted to do it too, no matter what it was. Taekwondo I didn't really get my feet too wet in that one, but my parents wouldn't pay for it. But all of the things, right Baseball, wrestling, football, all of these things. Wrestling I think that that has a different feel to it. Right, you are busting your butt as an individual for an individual win, but there's this team component.

Speaker 2: 1:00:52

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:00:52

I don't win, I'm not helping the team get to where we need to be. So you get to learn, hard work, own personal bests and you're benefiting a team. I think it's a little bit different than in football, right, because it's all sure you want to get your personal best and if you're in the nfl and a wide receiver, whatever, getting those personal accolades are important to you. But generally speaking it's about the team effort and you're trying to move that thing forward. You don't get the same level of grind that you do in wrestling that. I like asking questions about sports in interviews because I think that people that put the effort in that sports understand that team aspect. They understand that push for their own personal growth, especially if they played in college or professional. That's another level, right. If you played baseball when you're in fifth grade, you probably got something out of that, but not quite the same as if you were on the wrestling team in college. It's just a different level of effort. Certainly it's just a different level of effort, certainly.

Speaker 1: 1:02:01

Bringing this back full circle, my dad was in technology. He had a computer. We had a computer in the house before all of my buddies because of my dad's background. He was an electrical engineer for Kellogg's, so he just had this interest in it. It wasn't his day-to-day job but because it was in the house I got this interest in it. It wasn't his day-to-day job, but because it was in the house I got an interest in it and I just wanted to play with these toys. Right?

Speaker 1: 1:02:27

I never intended to become a business owner. I remembered I left, I grew up in Michigan and I moved to Minnesota for school and I remember having a conversation. My aunt said something about me being a business owner and I'm like how the heck did you get that? Like I'm just going off to school to get trained in this technology thing that I got had an interest in, right, and I'm like I have no interest in doing that. But what had happened was I was working for a company. They had enterprise faxing as their main line of business and they were also doing this small business. It helped us support to kind of start the business and generate some revenue, but the faxing was the primary bread and butter. So when I was in that company, after a couple career jumps to get there, they decided to get rid of the small business stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:03:32

And I don't know about you, but we all keep saying fax is dead and here it's still a functioning thing. But I was saying, look, you guys are putting all your eggs in one basket with faxing and the technology that you are choosing is diminishing. If you're a new small business, the first thing you do is not sign up for a fax machine, it's go get a website or an email or some other means of communication a cell phone, for goodness sakes, rather than fax. So I saw this as you're putting all your eggs in one basket in a dying technology.

Speaker 1: 1:04:14

I don't understand that trajectory. And you're getting rid of all of this small business IT support. So how about I just stay with the small business IT support, which is diversified, and so let's go in that direction. So I first, in that regard, I kind of fell into business ownership only because I didn't agree with the direction of the the business. Now they went on just fine. They ended up selling their fax business and did just fine, right, but at the same time I I didn't see that trajectory coming to fruition.

Speaker 2: 1:04:51

So so you have an agreement with your employer then, or is that, I guess, some type of acknowledgement? Maybe acknowledgement, maybe a discussion, as far as this is what they weren't interested in pursuing, so that allowed you to pursue that, or how did that work?

Speaker 1: 1:05:04

well. So when I interviewed with that company, um, during the interview there was a conversation about potential equity. Sweet, not only am I getting a new job with a raise and a startup business, but there's potential for me to become a business owner and be a business owner in the regard of these guys are doing the heavy lifting and I'm kind of that shareholder right. So that was very enticing to me during the interview process that, hey, this is a place where I could be here for a really long time and six, seven, eight years go by and no other conversations about equity. I pushed the conversation and it was around the same time that they were.

Speaker 1: 1:05:57

This was shortly before they started getting rid of these IT small business support, so we couldn't come to terms of what that equity piece looked like. There were different ownership pieces at this point then, when we first sat down and we couldn't come to terms with what that thing looked like, and then they made the decision to just call these customers and say, hey, we're not doing help desk support anymore, good luck to you. They didn't give them any recommendations for somebody else to go with. No referrals, no handoffs, no, nothing. They just said that as of this date we're done. Good luck to you.

Speaker 2: 1:06:39

Okay then.

Speaker 1: 1:06:40

Yeah, that equity conversation, the hey, we're done with this service. That was the opportunity to say, hey, look, here's a way for me to become a business owner, do this thing that I enjoy doing. I don't have to feel like we're driving down a dead end road. And so I made the decision without them, without a conversation with them. I told them that, hey, I'm going to leave and I'm going to start my own business doing this thing that you're not doing, right, so it's not a not compete issue. One of the business owners wasn't happy with it. The other business owner started calling those small businesses hey, mike's going out on his own, you should probably work with him so nice.

Speaker 1: 1:07:30

I had already talked to you I don't know 75% of the customers and those were the easiest sales call ever, mark. Hey, mark, I've known you for two years. I've been doing your support for two years. We're pretty good. Yeah, yeah, do you want to work with me moving forward? Yes, okay, let me know when you have an issue. Right, here's the number. Best sales calls ever. And then that previous owner went behind me and endorsed me. It just made it that much easier. Knowing that I got his blessing and knowing that he supported me in a different direction, even though it wasn't supporting his vision and his business, it really meant a lot to have that sort of support.

Speaker 2: 1:08:14

No, it's great. I mean it's unfortunate. He obviously has had one partner and now you're saying another business that didn't like it for whatever reason. But no, it was good that you had some support to help boost you along that. I'm sure it could have been a little bit different scenario if you wouldn't have had that.

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

Every business has its challenges, especially early on. Right, you either have that whale of a client that you can latch on to and that's going to cover your bills. Like I mentioned earlier, I had motivation of having my second child just born and I've got them all at the feet, so that was plenty of motivation for me.

Speaker 2: 1:08:53

So at what point did you pick up a business partner? Was that very early?

Speaker 1: 1:08:59

When I decided to do this thing before I called any of the customers. I'm a people person and so I just knew instinctively that I didn't want to do this thing alone. So I called three of my buddies and we went and had breakfast at a Perkins here in town and I just said, look, this is the thing that I'm going to do. And we just chewed it over and had the conversation. This is the thing that I'm going to do. And we just chewed it over and had the conversation. And when we left, one of the guys grabbed me before we jumped in the car and he's like I really appreciate the opportunity, I really appreciate you thinking of me and bringing this thing in here.

Speaker 1: 1:09:37

He's like look, my family has a business and as a family we go to therapy specifically so that we don't get into problems. Because when you work together and you have Thanksgiving together and you got to be there for the grandkids birthday parties, that's not easy. I have a lot of respect for business owners that have their spouse in the business, that's hard. And then you got to bring in mom also and the kids, right. And when you have this generational business, that's not. I don't think that that's easy. So he's like look, that thing's not easy and you're one of my best friends. I don't want to make this thing more difficult than what it is, so for that reason I'm out. So it was down to two other guys and they both said yes.

Speaker 1: 1:10:27

Adam was one of those guys. The third guy he had a financial background. He was a bookkeeper at a mortgage company and, yeah, he said yes as well. So from day one I had partners. From day one, Um, it was just me doing the work. Um, I think I got the bookkeeper involved pretty quick. Right, I can, I can put my stuff in a ledger. Right, I bought this, I sold this. I wasn't that big a deal, Um.

Speaker 1: 1:10:59

But when we I got to my first tax season, I'm like hey, look, I need you to step in here because I don't know what the hell I did. Right, so he got involved pretty early. And then I want to say it was about nine months, Maybe it was about six months, after I started. Adam said look, man, I know that you are off doing this business thing. I don't want, how do I put this? He basically said I don't want. How do I put this? He basically said I don't want to be where I'm at anymore. What is it going to take for me to actually come join you? And at that point I had enough billable hours. Heck, yeah, come on. And of course this was early days in time of materials billing, and this was like a May or Juneune, and so he puts in his notice he comes over and the work dries up, just like that oh no yeah, that very first summer, uh, he came over.

Speaker 1: 1:11:56

I mean it was summertime in minnesota so everybody was off working and we were just time of materials, and so the two of us we had to scrape, uh for that first, or for his first summer, uh, just to be able to eat. You know what I mean yeah, definitely so you.

Speaker 2: 1:12:13

You brought adam in. He's working full time with you. You guys make it through that first summer from there. You just keep rolling. For how many years?

Speaker 1: 1:12:25

yeah, so uh, when we left, we had operated it for 13 years 13 years yeah, we sold in um 19 and we got out in 2020 okay, gotcha.

Speaker 2: 1:12:41

so, and once again, that's impressive in itself if you look at statistically. You know, as far as business successes and years in business and things, I mean you broke that 10-year mark, which is impressive in itself and and then you know that but then exited at a time where, by choice and and not, you know, because you had no other option you we see I've seen here that quite frequently right, and that's super, super cool that you're able to do it on your because you had no other option. We see, obviously and hear that quite frequently right, and that's super, super cool that you're able to do it on your terms. And you spent some time obviously finding the right fit or the right suitor, right, and you had some lesson learned along the way there. But then you transitioned after the sale and we talked about that. And then eventually you're like, hey, I got to go back to work, I got to do this thing. What did you decide to do at that point?

Speaker 1: 1:13:34

I was trying to take the path of least resistance, of how do we keep mama happy and how do I keep myself sane. So I started doing consulting with IT business owners. I had been in the trenches for over a decade. I went through a successful sale. I felt like that I had things to offer, definitely, and I had this unique experience. All I had ever done at that point was technology.

Speaker 1: 1:14:02

I went to school for technology, all my jobs were somehow technology related, despite McDonald's, of course, but that was my whole life, and so staying in the MSP space, the IT services space, it made a lot of sense to me. That's really hard, though, because what I found was a lot of those business owners that I was consulting with and still am today. They weren't any different than me at the beginning ages of my business it's I don't really know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm just happy that I'm getting a paycheck that I'm comfortable with.

Speaker 1: 1:14:46

I've got a comfortable more than anything, I guess we'll call it a lifestyle business and I don't have a clear direction of what I want to do, and so the consulting piece is difficult because people so many of them don't really know what they want to do. They don't really know where they want to go, so you lead a lot of horses to water and they don't drink. So where I'm at today you can see the Williams Logistics logo here. I had another buddy that I met through technology and he got into the logistics freight brokerage business. He had been doing that for over a decade and I got back in to start a new business.

Speaker 2: 1:15:32

Really. So I guess, what are you doing? You said what are you doing with that now? Then what kind of business is that?

Speaker 1: 1:15:39

So it's a freight brokerage being a brokerage, we're basically the middle person. So if you manufacture goods, hp servers right, hp is not a transportation company, they're a technology company. So they build this technology and they need to get that technology out into the world, and the easiest way to do that is to hire somebody that can do that shipping piece for you. Okay, um, so, um, you can go out and find a company that can deliver goods, but does that company deliver everywhere you need to go? And chances are likely the answer is no. So even if you found a company that can do some delivering, you kind of got to spread a wider net in order to reach the audience that you're trying to reach, the audience that you're trying to reach.

Speaker 1: 1:16:25

So we act as the middle person. It doesn't matter where you need to go. I'll find you a truck and we'll get it to where you need to go when you need it to be there.

Speaker 2: 1:16:35

Interesting, interesting. So obviously a total different line of business than what you were obviously spent 13 years involved with. So how has your perspective on business and entrepreneurship changed or evolved by going into a different type of business.

Speaker 1: 1:16:55

I don't think it's changed a whole lot. I think that I have continued to build on the things that we were doing in the IT business. In the IT business, we had gotten to a point where we were meeting with the financial planner every single month, meeting with the accountant every single month, making important decisions about the business based on these meetings. We had financial targets for the year, we had margin targets for the year, we had margin targets for the year. Technicians had targets for time to bill tickets closed, yada, yada, yada. Right, we had a lot of these things going. All we did was translate those same sort of ideas into this business. Right, it just. We're just providing a different service these days.

Speaker 1: 1:17:39

So I guess I would say we have stepped it up even further. There's a system called Enterprise Operating System. They come out of a book, traction from Gina Wickman. We loosely followed that in my IT business. We read the traction book and we started doing the meetings that were in there. My partner in this business actually had a hired EOS implementer, and so he had that formal piece of how these things are supposed to go and how the meetings are going, what the questions are, and so that took us from a. This is what we're doing. We've got these meetings, we've got this plan and we're working towards that plan up here, because now we're following the process even more, with more detail and doing a better job of it. So we just continued building on the education that we got from that last business.

Speaker 2: 1:18:41

And since you brought it up, let's talk a little bit about this. So you mentioned EOS and, obviously, the interaction, but let's just talk from a step back. When we talk about a business operating system, do you feel that, with your experience and knowledge and his experience and knowledge of EOS, do you feel that's allowed you to put the foot on the accelerator much harder by having a business operating system in place or to guide you, and what other benefits would you see from that?

Speaker 1: 1:19:15

So the short answer is yes, absolutely. The longer answer is you see, people create these things, these vision boards, right? Oh, cut out clippings from magazines of things that you like and want, and someday I'm going to get that Corvette, and someday I'm going to get that mansion, and someday I'm going to get that land up north or the land on the lake or whatever it is. So we put these vision boards out there. So there's just ideas that float around on our head and things that we want to accomplish at some point, and I feel like that's how the vast majority of business owners operate. I have this idea, it's something that I want, um, and that's the thing that I'm working for. And so we show up at every uh, at, we work hard and, frankly, we hope that we're going to get those things that are on the vision board by doing the grind and working hard and making decisions that are going to go there.

Speaker 1: 1:20:18

Implementing an EOS system says I'm getting this Corvette at this dollar amount on this date. Now that I've got that information, let's just chop that up into whatever. Let's say, my date is three years from now. All right, over 36 months. What do I have to do to have the dollars to afford that Corvette on that date in three years, and so every month we're looking at how close are we to that target. So just by having that on the vision board, it's likely that that thing will become a reality for you, but there's a pretty good chance that it's not, because all it is is a dream and a vision and not a direct path to get there and I feel like you're taking this thing and then we're reverse engineering.

Speaker 2: 1:21:09

How are we going to get to there, right like? And we're laying that out. So we have a clear path and we have steps and progress markers along the way in reaching whatever that thing is yeah, I think it takes it from being a dream to forcing the reality.

Speaker 1: 1:21:27

Do I really want this corvette? If I put on my vision board, maybe not because it's just something that I'm hoping for. It's just something I'm thinking about and maybe I'll be successful enough to get there. But if I put a very famous example, jim Carrey wrote himself a million dollar check and I don't remember the whole story, but basically I'm gonna. I'm gonna cash this check on January 1st of 2025. And he went out and he found the roles that he could literally cash that million dollar check onuary 1st 2025.

Speaker 1: 1:22:02

Right, but because he used I don't know if he used this system or not um, but it was the same sort of thing, right. It's not just I have this idea that I need a million dollars in the bank, it's here's the date and time when I'm going to get there. And eos is the piece that has helped us say this is exactly how we're going to get there and you can see when you're off track because you're looking at it every month, and so if we're off track, we can make the changes, whereas if we just have that dream, I'm off track but I'm not going to be able to pick up a new client the way I want to right. We have come up with all these excuses, so I just think that it gives you that burst of energy to make whatever those dreams and aspirations are come to fruition.

Speaker 2: 1:22:49

When we talk about tracking, obviously we can't track what we don't monitor. So if we're monitoring, our progress allows us to track and see where we're at and how we're getting there and maybe what we need to do to shift or adjust. So for and for a small business and I know that we talk about EOS and we talk about what it takes to do a full-blown EOS implementation and a lot of the S of the SMB right Like going a little bit more of a struggle and maybe need to implement pieces of it, but what just throw out there? Do you have any kind of tips in regards to implementing a business operating system in your business that you would suggest to someone that hasn't implemented or considered implementing one?

Speaker 1: 1:23:33

Yeah, I got two things on that. One of them is in my IT business. I had met several EOS implementers and the price tag scared me. It's a five-figure investment and it seemed like the dollars weren't anywhere commiserate to what we were doing in our IT business. It's like, okay, we're down here and this EOS person's way up here from a dollar perspective and they're just out of reach. Right, I can't afford to pay this. So that's the first one is you're wrong. Find the money, spend the money, follow the system and it will pay for itself. Right, there is a return on the investment as long as you stick to the system. And that's the second piece of the advice that I have, and this is related to any business in general.

Speaker 1: 1:24:29

Discipline has become such an important part of my vernacular. I'm a runner and so my thing is I try to get an hour every single day rain, snow, sunshine, whatever, we just have this discipline right. The example I'll give in that one is brushing your teeth. We don't think about brushing our teeth, it's just something that we do. Hey, I'm leaving my house for the first time today. I need to brush my teeth before I go. Hey, I'm going to bed. I need to brush my teeth before I go to bed. Whatever your pattern is, it's just something that you do, it's a habit. Yes, and we need to put those things in place with all of the different pieces of your life. Right For my training, you got to have that discipline, otherwise you're not going to reach the goals that you're trying to meet, whether it's speed or distance or whatever else.

Speaker 1: 1:25:22

And the same thing thing for business. Going back to what we talked about a little bit earlier in the IT space, we talked so much about how much chaos there is and we're always jumping from one to thing to the other or we're very poorly multitasking. I'm doing one thing here and one thing here and one thing here, not doing any of them very well. Um, but when we put in discipline, when we start meeting with that accountant every single month, when we start looking at, hey, we're not on target to make our whatever 10 million dollar top line revenue, um, and it's february, um, I've got some time to change, to adjust, to hit that goal of 10 million by the end of the year. But EOS doesn't work without discipline, right? If you don't show up, you don't respect the meeting, you're not going to get where you need to be. So the two things are spend the damn money and discipline. Show up, do the work.

Speaker 2: 1:26:27

No, I love it, great, great. Two tips. And when you talk about the implementer, and obviously talk about the healthy chunk of change that comes along with bringing in someone like that, how difficult is it to find an implementer that aligns with your business or your personality or your goals? And I guess what was your experience there?

Speaker 1: 1:26:55

I'll just use a tool from the traction book the right person in the right seat right.

Speaker 1: 1:27:03

They talk about that from when you're hiring people, right, and so I don't think that's any different with any consultant, whether it's a US implementer, a business coach whatever your consultant is, you need to make sure that this is a person that you're going to be compatible with. I'll give you an example. At one point, I hired a business coach and in the first meeting I said I need somebody to kick compatible with. I'll give you an example. At one point, I hired a business coach and in the first meeting I said I need somebody to kick my ass. I'm not good at personal accountability and I need somebody to help me with that. Right, if I'm off track or if I say I'm going to do something and don't do it, I need somebody who's going to call me on my stuff. Yeah, oh yeah, I got you.

Speaker 1: 1:27:41

I was in the military. I understand discipline and guess what? This guy he was just as much of a pushover as I am right, it's the. Here's the shiny thing. I'm going to go spend my time on that instead, and so I didn't spend enough time with him. I took him at face value of him saying I'll kick your ass. I took him at face value of him saying I'll kick your ass and not getting a good understanding of where he's at in his life and his business and his practice to know that that's not his personality. I don't think it's different than anything else. There's a ton of EOS implementers. Nowadays since 2020, we do so much stuff online they don't even have to be in your town. I think there's a ton of value in face-to-face and shaking hands. You can't give that up by any means, but you can find an EOS implementer anywhere that's going to fit your business and that's going to push you and push you in a place where you don't want to murder them and do better. You know what I mean well, I'm happy.

Speaker 2: 1:28:49

So you talk about the chaos and, yes, obviously you and I both are very familiar with the, the msp type of business, it business and you know, living in the day-to-day chaos. Right, I said talk about that emergency room, right, like we're always doing this emergency and we're every something's always on fire and I, I think we get personally something my pro self my experience is we get so caught up in all that to focusing on the business doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 1:29:18

Or it's best effort, or at times you think you know you plan this but it doesn't happen. And I know that I am trying to set aside some dedicated time where I know that, hey, you know, this day of this week or whether it's 100 focused on nothing more than my business and not the fire right, because we're gonna have the fires every day is it gonna happen? And we get, we get, we get sucked into them in a sense, right, and then we get. So we get so involved and deep in that that, um, yeah, we're not working on the business, we're just working in the business, and we hear that over and over again. Um, and you talked about up here this, this right, the shareholder, right, we don't spend any time up here as a visionary or as a shareholder because we're so busy doing the thing.

Speaker 1: 1:30:08

Yeah, it amazes me the more small business owners that you talk to and you bring up the book E-Myth or E-Myth Revisited, whatever your favorite almost all of them have read it right, or at least know what it is or understand the concept of what they're talking about, and yet we don't put the discipline in place to do that right. And the thing that is hard to wrap my head around is why we don't do that when it doesn't even have to impact our business, and what I mean by that is I can spend four hours on a saturday where my eight to five clients are not working not calling me, not blowing up my email, not blowing up my cell phone and I can go spend time working on the business. Um, and it doesn't. We can always find time for that, we can. Let's, let's reword that. We can always make time for that, right, because it doesn't have to be four hours on a saturday, it can be.

Speaker 1: 1:31:12

Let's set my alarm for 4 am, and I'm going to do that for this week. This week, I'm going to get up at 4. I'm going to work on the business. Make some plans, look at my numbers. And I'm going to work on the business. Make some plans. Look at my numbers and I'm going to do that for 90 minutes for the next five days. You took time out of your life to work on the business rather than in the business, and that time is going to be extremely valuable towards moving things forward in a better direction than where you are today. But the thing that's baffling is we all know this. We've all read the e-myth, we all know we're supposed to work on it and we don't do it.

Speaker 2: 1:31:51

Yeah, well, I mean, and we have the best intention. I think a lot of times, right, we've had the best intentions, or we get this, we, we, how do we say this? We get the fire lit underneath of us, right, or in us, and we're going to do this thing and but eventually same thing happens. Right, we get pulled into this problem or this thing, and next thing, you know, we're like days have passed, weeks have passed, months have passed, and you know, we never got back to working on things.

Speaker 1: 1:32:18

And that's probably the biggest example or or case to paying for an EOS implementer. Right? Because when it's painful to write out that check because you know that it's not in line with what I'm supposed to be paying for, you better believe I'm going to show up to that meeting. Right? I'm paying money that I don't have to get a result that is going to you know Well, well, you've got financial skin in the game at that point.

Speaker 2: 1:32:44

Right, you know right now you're feeling the pain from that, right, and you need to see, um, I guess if you're, if you're paying, that you need to see a return. Right, you're making that investment, we say in our business. It's not just an expense, we're investing in it to improve things. You know, obviously, whether we talk about in the or whether our goal is to sell the business, whether it's just to really become just a shareholder and as you hire your replacements to manage the operations.

Speaker 1: 1:33:17

And to the relevance of this conversation. Now you're outsourcing that accountability. Now I can get caught in the minutia of the day-to-day, but somebody else is making me show up to this meeting on a Friday at 4 o'clock so that I can get my weekly numbers in or I can report whatever my quarterly goals are right. So, um, funny story, there's these little free libraries that are in neighborhoods. Now, uh, it's just a bookshare. Uh, my wife and I are out walking the dog and in there there was a book called personal accountability and I'm like I need that. I'm not very good at this, let's get some tips. And, um, long story short, the bookmark is about halfway through and it's sitting in my bookshelf for the last two years. Right, because personal accountability is hard, everything that you say in this book. Honestly, mark, if you read this book, you'd be like oh, I know that, or I could have even told you, I could have even wrote this book, but the personal accountability is just hard, it's hard to practice right.

Speaker 2: 1:34:21

I mean to put physically put into practice and maintain that.

Speaker 1: 1:34:24

Yeah, and this one. This is your livelihood, right? This could, like you said earlier, so many business owners net worth is completely tied up in this small business. Therefore, this thing is important. So, because it's so darn important, pay the money to have somebody else hold you accountable. You know it's your business at the. At the end of the day, it's your baby and your mistakes and your failures or whatever that ends up being. Um, but if we can outsource some of the things that we're not good at we talk about time quartiles, right, I want to spend time on things that I like and things that I'm good at, not things I don't like and not that I'm not good at right. So if I'm not good at that personal accountability piece, boom, I put somebody else in that seat and they hold me accountable. I get to spend my time here. He dragged me down to this thing I don't like, but it moves me forward and ultimately makes things better. Love it, love it.

Speaker 2: 1:35:23

No, yeah. So, as we kind of bring this home, mike moving forward, you've got this business that you're working with in logistics right and in building this, what's next? As you continue to build this out, do you already have it laid out, with the end goal and as far as hey, we're going to in 10 years. We're doing this and we're selling this off and I'm moving on to this next thing. I mean, what's that look like for Mike moving forward? What's the future?

Speaker 1: 1:35:53

Yeah, I guess it's two things. I'll start with the business piece. This business is so different in how it operates compared to my previous IT business. In the IT business you can carve off a bunch of slices right, you can be just the security company. You can be just the monitoring company. You can be just the help desk company right, you can be all these pieces or you can be all of them at once.

Speaker 1: 1:36:17

Right In my IT business we stay pretty focused on doing just the help desk piece and the things we're associated on those things.

Speaker 1: 1:36:26

Right now the logistics business is moving freight and getting things where they need to be. But that one, the intention of this one, is to build this thing out, and by build it out, I mean we've got large revenue goals, um, and ultimately, um, the intention is to start carving these things out. Um, we have a tool that is a bi tool. Here's all your data about all of your shipments and here's where you're spending too much money, here's where you're getting a great rate, here's where you have a bad truck driver. Right, you have this business intelligence tool that could be its own separate business.

Speaker 1: 1:37:11

Right now it's under the same roof, same umbrella but, that thing can go run with its own wings all by itself and do fantastic right. These things could all die and this thing could soar. And we want to start, we want to build this thing up. So we've got a handful of different businesses that each have their own um, probably the same target client, um, maybe the same type of client, but they each have their own place in the world and we're working them individually, collectively, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 1:37:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:37:43

And the second part of that is that kind of parlays into my personal stuff is I did a good job from a financial perspective of getting me where I needed to be, from a financial independence perspective, but now it's like what's the future, what's the legacy, where are we from here? I'll give you one example we recently moved and we kept our house that we lived in for over 20 years and we're renting that thing out so that one property is technically a business, technically its own revenue generating thing. I would love to be able to just give this house to my kids. Or here's one house for that kid, here's another house for that kid.

Speaker 1: 1:38:32

Or we bring this thing full circle to the business goals, where now we've created ten companies in the transportation industry and you get a business, and you get a business, and you get a business right. So it's um, how do we build from here? Um, what's the legacy? Uh, and how do we keep moving forward? So, my kids, that's number one, yeah, that's the big goal. And potentially leveraging these businesses to to help that uh, familial, uh family tree going down. That's where we're headed.

Speaker 2: 1:39:11

Yeah. So, and I just real quick, when you talk about legacy um, cause we didn't really touch on a lot of the legacy piece moving through right Um, do you think that legacy has become more of a focal point for you as the older you've gotten and knowing what you've been through, and as you look at your children now that are not teenagers anymore, or at least not in the house, or maybe they're in college or moved on, has that shifted your focus when it comes to legacy? Is that shifted your focus when it comes to legacy?

Speaker 1: 1:39:46

A hundred percent. It wasn't intentionally selfish, building my net worth to a point where I had financial independence. It was just a motivation. But once I got there and both of my kids graduated high school and they both have jobs and they're both on their way to whatever they're going to be and do, I didn't know where I was at and who I was and what I wanted for things. Right, am I just going to go be this dirt bag that goes off and goofs around all the time, all day, every day? And that's when I really realized that legacy was something that was actually important to me. I don't care if I'm remembered. I don't care if there's whatever. What I care about is that I've set up at least the next generation for success. Care about is that I've set up at least the next generation for success. Anything that we can do to help give them a leg up makes a difference. Right, if I can get them a leg up, then that's going to have a trickle effect down the line, so very much.

Speaker 1: 1:40:56

It was a complete transition. It was a I've reached my goals. I have reached where I want it to be and what my expectations of where I'm at in life and what am I doing? I've got two kids. I should be, everything should be about them and ultimately it was about them along the journey, but now it's only about them. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 1:41:21

Yeah, no, no, it really does, especially more and more conversations I have with others that kind of about the same topic and seeing that transition or and how that shifted with time. So, and that's kind of the reason why I asked it, not that we've touched on it more or much on the podcast, but I've had a lot of our, obviously, conversations outside of this that we've touched on. So we kind of since you, I'm going to want to bring that a little more focus and kind of see what your thoughts were on that.

Speaker 1: 1:41:49

yeah, there's just so much craziness in the world today. We can only have so much impact, and I can definitely impact my kids and anything that we can do to help them and their futures. Uh, I definitely want to work in that direction. Right, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, they're going to do just fine. Hopefully we can set them up from a business perspective as we go on the next whatever 5, 10, 20 years.

Speaker 2: 1:42:13

Definitely I don't want to see you get hit by a bus tomorrow or any foreseeable future, but I do wish you absolute best of luck on your new venture and what you're doing with logistics. I'm definitely excited to see foreseeable future, but I do wish you absolute best of luck on your new venture, right in what you're doing with logistics. I'm definitely excited to see that progress with time and I want to thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate you sharing your story, Mike.

Speaker 1: 1:42:36

Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun, Mark.

Speaker 2: 1:42:38

Thanks, we'll talk soon. Hi, I'm Mark Thomas, founder and CEO of Current Tech Solutions and CyberGuardians. If you or someone you know could benefit from our cutting edge IT and cybersecurity services, we'd love to help. Our expertise in securing your business with AI precision ensures that you're protected and empowered to thrive. Reach out to us today to learn how we can secure and elevate your business.