Buying an Existing Business

Eric Grotenhuis, CEO and partner of Page Design Group, shares his journey in purchasing a design firm while raising two sons, emphasizing the significance of trust within teams and the value of involving family in creative processes. 

Eric shares the importance of work-life balance and how it can help you build trust both at home and within the workplace. He also discusses the importance of communication in relationships, the need for structured time management, and the strategies that help maintain a healthy work-life balance. The conversation also touches on the importance of listening and supporting children as they navigate their own paths.

About Eric Grotenhuis 

Eric hails from the upper Midwest, where he graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 1992. After moving to sunny Sacramento in 2001, he became partner and CEO of Page Design Group, one of the area's most respected boutique design firms. He currently balances his talents between making Page Design a great workplace, hosting their Marketing Team of One podcast, and managing a variety of marketing and branding campaigns. He also currently serves on the board of the Capital Creative Alliance. He has been married for over 31 years and helped raise two wonderful sons, ages 19 and 21.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:00 Eric's Journey: From Designer to Partner
• 4:37 Balancing Work and Family Life
• 8:07 Communication in Relationships
• 10:32 Strategies for Mental Clarity
• 13:03 Building Trust in Teams
• 15:59 Ad: VirtueMFG.com
• 17:06 Advice for New Parents and Entrepreneurs
• 19:35 Family Dreams
• 21:01 Resolving Issues
• 22:30 Conclusion and Resources

Transcript

0:00

We have some projects that we worked on a long time ago that were really fun to think back on that we had collaborated on those things. Same for my kids. I mean, I would put them on projects, client projects in the background. And that was really fun and it made quite an impact on them. And I think what it did was opened up the possibility in their brains that, this is like, this could be a job. I don't have to go to some office or I don't have to. travel or do these other things if I don't want to. I can do this for a job. Welcome to the Bringing Up Business podcast where we talk about business and parenting. I am your host, Kaila Sachse, owner of a marketing and creative agency called Yumari Digital and a mom of a toddler. I'm excited to chat with today's guest, Eric Grotenhuis. He is a creative person with business acumen and has a lot of good stuff to share about what it's like to step into a higher role while supporting a young family. He currently balances his talents between making Page Design a great workplace, hosting their Marketing Team of One podcast, and managing a variety of marketing and branding campaigns. Eric, I am so excited to get to chat with you. Let's dive in. What came first, Page Design or starting your family? Thank you again, it's an honor to be on your podcast. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to everybody about this interesting topic. I started off as a parent first. So I was working at Page Design as a designer, senior level designer, became a parent, and then about a year and a half after my last child was born, I became a partner. So small, small children when I became partner. how old was your youngest? at the time that I became partner, he was less than a year old. So, yeah. What? Okay, so What fueled the decision to step up into partner at that moment? I really wanted to move forward in my career. I had been a designer and been freelancing for many, many years and had gotten a position at this wonderful design firm. was one of those dream roles and The owner at the time was looking to retire and another senior level designer and myself decided that we would make a pitch to basically buy him out and see if he was interested in that. So that's the way that that story went. that sounds like a once in a lifetime opportunity. I understand the timing. I mean, you just can't pass that up. How often does somebody retire from the firm that you love working for? So I get it, I totally get it. And what did your support system look like at that time? So I can imagine you have three kids, right? Two kids, sorry. I'm the one who introduced you, I should know this. You had two children, you had a little tiny guy and a slightly tiny guy, still tiny. And now you're stepping up into this large role. mean, what did your life look like? I'd been married for 10 years before we decided to start our family. And so during that time, uh, I would work late. there was nothing really regulating anything around my timeframe. I did like to spend time with my wife and we would eat dinner together. but we were really trying to, just advance our careers. We had moved from Minneapolis two years prior to me getting that position. And so when I got the position, I kind of threw everything I was into that. so it was kind of a crazy life before we had kids. But once we made the commitment to start a family and baby number two came along, I decided that I would really try to practice a lot more discipline in my time management. Really wanted my wife and I really wanted to have as much time as possible with our boys. And so, I would wake up in the morning early with them go for walks get ready to go to work and then Spend the time at work and try to get home at about 6 6 15 something like that and then we put a lot of emphasis on reading to our children before they go to bed and did that until they were probably about 11 or something like that. So they were pretty old when we were still reading to them. But that was really a great investment in time. So then at nine o'clock at night, the children were down and going to sleep, if I had extra work that I needed to do as a creative, as you know, I like to draw, I like to sketch, I like to kind of ideate or write sometimes. And that was a perfect time for me. I'm kind of a night owl where I was freelancing. I would work a lot of late evenings and So that worked out really well. It allowed me the time I didn't get a lot of sleep back then but you know Kind of roll with that youthful energy and take advantage of it. Yeah. And it also sounds like you were able to structure your life in a way where you had designated work time, designated family time, and then a designated me time, which is important, especially as a creative, you want to be able to be in a flow state. And the only way to do that is with an uninterrupted chunk of time. So okay, fast forward through time. How did your parenting shift along with your career? Did you notice any changes along the way? That's interesting. my wife and I made a big commitment to really be and commit our time as much as possible to raising the boys. We were fortunate enough to where she was able to stay home with them. And so that was critical and we'll never regret that decision. she did all the heavy lifting, let's just say. So through that time, what we did was we established certain roles of what I would do, what she would do, what we would do together, and kept talking and communicating through some of those things. If people got tired or they had issues, maybe they didn't get enough sleep the night before, maybe they were sick, the other person would kind of step in. So it was a lot of work and it was a lot of, it was a fluid, organic. process, but, uh, I think the main thing was respecting each other and respecting the fact that we had committed to this decision to during their waking hours be as available as possible to them. That said, I was away, which, you know, now I look back on it it was, I wish I would have been home like we're able to do now uh, for more of that. But, um, yeah, I think what you said was really poignant. It's like spending time. with your spouse, your partner, spending time with the kids and then having some of that alone time is really important for a creative, well, probably anybody, but for sure for creatives as well. Yep, yep. Speaking for myself and in our household here, that communication within a marriage is everything, or just a general partnership is everything. You you mentioned the sleep deprivation. That can genuinely cause a ruckus in... the way that we regulate our emotions and react to them. it's especially when both parties are sleep deprived, it's really hard to, he shakes his head, exactly. It's really hard to react kindly to someone else's, know, uh lack of uh control for a better way of putting that. Yeah, it definitely pushes you to your limits. That's the thing about not being able to, and the stress of it. Sometimes there's just things that completely stress you out, especially with the deadline driven careers like we all have, that thing is due on Thursday. There's always these situations that are kind of in the back of your head that, especially as you work in higher levels where you're a creative director, you're working with a team and you've got a lot of moving parts and pieces. it's really important to keep that line of communication open with them because then you can kind of relax and take a little bit of the pressure off of your own brain. Yeah, no, 100%. And taking that pressure off of the brain is not only good for our marriages or partnerships, it's also good for our own wellbeing, right? Here at home, my husband and I have a little bit of a hierarchy thing going on. So we have our marriage at the top, and then we have our child rearing. And in ordering it that way, It's not like a literal, the baby's crying, but husband and I are crying, so we're going to focus on ourselves first. Like, no, of course, we're going to attend to the little guy, because he needs us. He actually needs our physical help. But it's more so just the bigger picture. Hey, let's take care of the partnership first. so that that can trickle down to our son and he can see what a partnership looks like. He also feels it too. Children pick up on our emotions and if we are dysregulated all the time because we aren't checking in and re-regulating, he's going to feed off of that. That's interesting. I think, you know, giving the other person a break or, know, kind of taking the pressure off of that. Sometimes, you know, we can get very excitable and Type A in a sense, you know, like we got to do this. Sometimes you just have to take that pressure off because you're right. That pressure melts out into the rest of the family. And then everybody else is kind of on pins and needles. And I think early on, we learned that that's something that, you know, maybe it's time to go for a walk. That would be something that I would end up doing a lot of times is taking the dog out for a walk Everybody's asleep. Everybody's down and then I would go for a late-night walk with the dog and that would kind of be one of those things that would Alright, think about it. Just chill out dude. Don't be so don't be a jerk or you know, give them a break or whatever that whatever it needs, you Yes, yes, I do the same thing, but I don't have a dog, I have a toddler, so I walk my toddler and pop him on his bike and he just, he goes down the street and he's happy, he gets that energy out. I also get an opportunity to just clear my brain, no matter what it is that's aching me. It sounds like not only have you structured your overall time between your work and your personal and your me time, also at work, it sounds like you maybe you are using some sort of time blocking strategy or something else. So we had a large team at that point. We had over 20 people. There were times when we had over 20 people and we had actually three partners in the business. Cause the main, founder was still with us. He wanted to transition out slowly. So he was working less and less. And then I had another partner, which Same structure now, I still have another partner, a different person, having that 50-50 split was really helpful because kind of like in a marriage, you can offload some of those tasks or worries to that other person. They can help problem solve and vice versa. So I always feel like there's such a benefit to working in teams and that team can be two people, but having that back and forth is something that I definitely thrive on. along with the structure. we use that time to role play, you know, conversations or situations, problem solve, but also then delegate and understand, okay, this is my lane. I'm going to stick to this stuff. You're going to stay here. If this surprising little element comes up here, I might have to filter it down to you and have that filtered out to somebody else to problem solve. But yeah, I guess throughout time, we've used many different time tracking or time blocking slash. project management tools to kind of keep that, there's always, know, this is the one of the main computers that holds that info. it's so true. It's so true. it sounds like you have to be in a working relationship that is based on trust, right? You are offloading these tasks that you would normally have control of to your partner. And that's really the only way to keep the engine running. Yep. I was really blessed to have, you know, the teams that we have are amazing and they do great work all the time and that level of trust just grows every day with them. And so that is such a great blessing that I do have in my career. Early on, it was harder to find that, but of course I was kind of finding my way through it and it took years, I would say. It's not something that you just turn on and you know, there's a switch and all of sudden it happens, but. it's an organic process, but you also have to have some discipline in how you're figuring out what that structure is and how it works. You mentioned that it was harder for you to trust your team early on and then over time it became easier. What do you think changed? The interesting thing was I was the doer before. So I was the person who would be the designer and be the contact with the client and maybe help with the estimating and the scoping of the project. And I was in the weeds doing all of the things because when I was brought on as a partner, was a, it was only 35 and I was working on projects and I was bolting on a little bit more of that leadership or, administrative role, guess you could say management role, but it didn't happen overnight. It's not like I woke up the next morning and all of a sudden I had, you know, nothing to do, but just boss people around for lack of a better term. And so I think the hardest thing is as creatives, we want to be the person that does the things, right? We want to be in there getting our hands dirty. And I'm in Photoshop, I'm in InDesign, I'm in all the programs. But you really kind of have to turn off. And I remember our partner, the founder of the business, originally Paul, he didn't have Illustrator or InDesign or any of the Adobe products on his computer. And that really helped kind of separate him from the doing of the things. And that's been probably a multi-year, maybe even 10 year, 15 year process for me to stop doing the things as much as I am. helping other people do the things or guide them or direct them. And so, yeah, that was kind of the process for that. was, a while, doesn't happen over. it's not easy sussing out all of the things that you are doing. First of all, because they just happen. At least for me, things just happen. just do it, I get it done. I don't really think twice about it. And it wasn't until I took on a team that I started to realize, wow, I'm... I'm looking at my tasks in a different way and I'm actually starting to write training videos or training how-to's or whatever and sort of duplicating myself in that way and because of that I've been able to lighten my brain a little bit. There's still a lot in there but at least a little bit. you have to train your basically, you know, as you build your career, you're doing the things. Then you go into this transition where you have to start teaching people to help multiply your efforts. And then there's a point where you have to train people to just take over your job completely. And that's probably where I'm starting to go with my career at this point is just train as many people and multiply myself as much as I can around these tasks, you know, so that it gets handled. So challenging, my goodness. What piece of advice would you give to somebody who is starting a business with a pre-existing family or someone who is looking to start a family and they're running a business? You know what I really love to do is involve my kids in what I do when children are young they're everybody's an artist you know nobody has been turned off to it or talked out of it or whatever so everybody has some level of interest it seems like in doing art and design and having those real conversations with them I think my partner and I really enjoy having conversations with young people and not treating them like children in a sense, like having like, here are the things that we're talking and thinking about, and here's how we are problem solving this, you know, how would you do it? it opens up for some really interesting conversations. you know, we don't work in a coal mine, we don't work in an environment where... uh Small children are not welcome, especially when you're at home. It's really fun to go on a lunch break and talk about, here's my challenges. What do you think of this drawing? I'm always throwing ideas and drawings and illustrations or logo design branding projects to my whole family, really. My wife and I, we're used to design together. She's a great art director and has got a really good eye for design. uh We have some projects that we worked on a long time ago that were really fun to think back on that we had collaborated on those things. Same for my kids. I mean, I would put them on projects, client projects in the background. You know, this was during COVID when everybody was home 100 % of the time. And that was really fun and it made quite an impact on them. And I think what it did was opened up the possibility in their brains that, this is like, this could be a job. I don't have to go to some office or I don't have to. travel or do these other things if I don't want to. I can do this for a job. that is so cool. So sharing your work that you do with your family could possibly open up a whole 'nother world for them. Yeah, they don't see as many limitations maybe. They see a lot of possibilities, which is really what I, my wife and I really want that for our kids, know, is to let them know anything's possible, just keep dreaming, keep pushing on whatever you want to achieve and it's gonna happen. That's beautiful. my goodness. what is a dream that you have for your kids? I would love my kids, and I think they're on this path, to feel comfortable and confident and know that they have support and they can trust their family to be with them in any decision that they make going forward. Yes, we're going to have a lot of conversations, but I really want them to understand that they're in control and we support them. we have a lot, we talk a lot where they... They're all here, you know, they're in college, but they live at home and it's been great because we can help them navigate some of that, which I needed probably when I was that age and didn't get a lot of. But of course I was Generation X and we were rebels and we wanted to move away from home as soon as possible. That was what we wanted to do. I think things have changed a little bit for the better, because I don't know that that was such a great decision to move away when you're 17 and you hey, you can do it all, right? No, it's, I had issues, you know, like anybody who would at that age. But so I think, giving them that confidence and helping them problem solve and helping them navigate, it's tough out there. That's a tough world now. It's different. There's a lot of things that are easier, but there's a lot of things that are a harder. A lot of times I think people want to jump in with a fix when there's problems or issues. People want to problem solve all the time and that's great. mean, we appreciate that, but sometimes it's nice to just listen. And even with our kids, I just like to listen sometimes and not provide an answer for them or guide them or Just ask them questions about their decisions on what they're making and not offer any judgment or any solutions to problems. Just let, be a sounding board for people. Even your partner, your kids. That to me seems like a really valuable skill that can provide a lot of insights for that other person. you know, I appreciate it and sometimes I just need to yell and scream and I'll tell them. just, I just need you as a soundboard to listen to me please. You don't have to tell me anything, just listen and that's really therapeutic, I guess. I love that. And I also love how you flip the script and if you are the one with the issue, you preface what you are about to say to whoever it is that's listening in saying, hey, I just need a vent right now. Let me vent, let me get this out. And that helps the other person understand how to react to you and best hold you. That is such a cool relationship advice. And that's good for work too. It is. that is so cool. Thank you for sharing that. Eric, it has been such a pleasure chatting with you. Where can people find you? I'm at page design.com. That's our website. You can email me at Eric at page design.com if you want to chat. I love getting emails, but you can also listen to and watch our podcast. We have a podcast called the marketing team of one podcast where we try to help solo marketers problem solve, reduce the chaos and make their lives a little bit easier by kind of extending the knowledge that we've learned over the 30 some years I've been in the business along with my business partner. Yes, I guess you're right. I am proud. It is fun. It's exciting. yeah, that's incredible. this has been great. I appreciate the opportunity. been a real treat. I appreciate the time and it's been interesting getting to know you. Same, same,