041: From Paper Routes to CEO: Building Success From the Ground Up

Ever wonder how early life experiences can shape your business destiny? From the humble beginnings of paper routes and restaurant gigs, find out how these formative roles laid the groundwork for a career in entrepreneurship and technology. We share stories of how sports like wrestling fostered determination and teamwork, and explore the unexpected twists that transformed early tech interests into a thriving career. This episode promises valuable insights into how foundational experiences can ignite entrepreneurial passions and carve out unforeseen paths to business ownership.

When faced with challenges in equity and ownership, how do you leverage existing relationships to launch a business? Discover the motivating factors behind such bold decisions, including family milestones and the importance of choosing the right partners. We delve into the strategic implementation of the Enterprise Operating System (EOS) for business growth, highlighting how structured planning and the right team can elevate service offerings. Join us as we unpack the journey from IT support roles to pioneering a new venture, underscoring the indispensable role of teamwork and strategic foresight in achieving sustained success.

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

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Early Job Experience and Business Ownership
• 8:51 Transition to New Business Venture
• 20:34 Implementing Traction for Business Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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 paperboy or McDonald's or whatever it was until after that 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. Like, how about we get some experience for sure?

Speaker 2: 0:41

How did you start? What got you into starting your own business?

Speaker 1: 0:45

How did you start? What got you into starting your own business? I'm going to go back just a step further and I'm trying to get too long, don't read version. You were a paper boy and you thought I was definitely a paper boy.

Speaker 1: 0:59

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. Like, how about we get some experience? For? 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?

Speaker 2: 1:53

they started on the grind before the average person or or whatever is I heard about you, but I know I am. I had a paper out when I was in sixth grade.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Yeah, exactly Right. And here we are, business owners and we're off to the races. I think sixth grade.

Speaker 2: 2:09

I'm trying to think back to sixth grade. It was paper route. And then, when I was in eighth grade, I started working at a restaurant in the kitchen, you know, like washing dishes, bussing, you know, whatever helping out. So, yeah, I mean going 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: 2:29

We could be mirrored here. Like 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 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 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. If 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 because my parents wouldn't pay for it. But all of the things right baseball, wrestling, football, all of these things wrestling um, I think that that has a different um feel to it. Right, you are busting your butt as an individual for an individual win. But there's this team component.

Speaker 2: 3:46

Yes.

Speaker 1: 3:47

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. I like asking questions about sports in interviews because I think that people that put the effort into 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.

Speaker 1: 4:55

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 an interest in it and I just wanted to play with these toys. Right, I never intended to become a business owner, right? Um, I never intended to become a business owner, um, I remember, um I let.

Speaker 1: 5:30

I grew up in michigan and I moved to minnesota for school and I remember, um 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 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 help, desk support to kind of start the business and generate some revenue.

Speaker 1: 6:11

But the faxing was the primary bread and butter. So when I was in that company, after a couple career jumps to get there, um, they decided to get rid of the small business stuff. 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. I was saying, look, you guys are getting. You guys are putting all your eggs in one basket with faxing and the technology that you are choosing is diminishing right like not. 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 right right rather than fax, right.

Speaker 1: 7:01

So I saw this as you're putting all your eggs in one basket in a dying technology. I don't understand that trajectory. Um, 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, um, and so let's go in that direction. So I, I, in that regard I kind of fell into business ownership, only because I didn't agree with the direction of 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: 7:47

So you had an agreement with your employer then, or is that, I guess, some type of acknowledgement? Maybe it was 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: 7:59

Well. So when I interviewed with that company, 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, 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: 8:51

This was shortly before they started getting rid of the 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 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 Okay then.

Speaker 1: 9:35

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 gonna 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.

Speaker 2: 10:23

You should probably work with him Nice.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I had already talked to I don't know 75% of the customers, and those were the easiest sales calls 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.

Speaker 2: 10:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:45

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: 11:08

No, it's great. I mean it's unfortunate. You obviously 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: 11:27

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 off the feet, so that was plenty of motivation.

Speaker 2: 11:48

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

Speaker 1: 11:53

When I decided to do this thing before I called any of the customers.

Speaker 1: 12:00

I'm a people, person, 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 and when we left, uh, one of the guys, um, 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. He's like look, um, my family has a business and as a family, we go to therapy specifically so that we don't get into problems. Right, 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, right, 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, when you have this generational business yeah that's not.

Speaker 1: 13:06

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, adam was one of those guys.

Speaker 2: 13:21

Okay.

Speaker 1: 13:23

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 it was just me doing the work. I think I got the bookkeeper involved pretty quick. I can put my stuff in a ledger. I bought this, I sold this. I wasn't that big a deal. But when 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.

Speaker 1: 14:01

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 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 was, 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 June. And so he puts in his notice, he comes over and the work dries up, just like that.

Speaker 2: 14:45

Oh no.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Yeah, that very first summer, uh, he came over. I mean it was summertime in Minnesota. So everybody was off working and we were just timing materials, and so the two of us we had to scrape for his first summer just to be able to eat. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 15:05

Yeah, definitely. So 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: 15:20

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

Speaker 2: 15:34

Okay, gotcha. So 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 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 um, you we see, obviously hear that quite frequently right, and that's super, super cool that you're able to do it on your terms. And, uh, you spent some time obviously finding the, the right fit, or the suit right, suitor right, um, and you had some lesson learned along the way there. But then you, um, you transitioned after the sale and we talked about that. And then eventually you're like, hey, I gotta, I gotta go back to work, I gotta do this thing. Um, what did you decide to do at that point?

Speaker 1: 16:28

I was trying to take the path of least resistance of uh, how do we keep mama happy? And, um, 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 right Like all I had ever done at that point was technology. 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.

Speaker 1: 17:16

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. Right, I've got a comfortable.

Speaker 1: 17:43

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, they, they, 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 leave 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 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: 18:26

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: 18:34

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, 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.

Speaker 2: 19:19

So we act, act as the middle person.

Speaker 1: 19:22

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: 19:30

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: 19:50

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. 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. So I guess I would say we have stepped it up even further.

Speaker 1: 20:40

There's a system called Enterprise Operating System. They come out of a book, traction from Gina Wickman Traction. Yeah, 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. He had that formal piece of how these things are supposed to go and how the meetings are going and what the questions are. That took us from a. This is what we're doing.

Speaker 1: 21:17

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.

Speaker 2: 21:28

Hi, I'm Mark Thomas, founder and CEO of Current Tech Solutions and CyberGuardians. If you or somebody 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. Outro Music.