Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / From Burnout to Buyout: How Chad Ackerman Scaled, Sold, and Now Coaches Other Entrepreneurs

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From Burnout to Buyout: How Chad Ackerman Scaled, Sold, and Now Coaches Other Entrepreneurs · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:05
  And we could help them get to market quicker because we would teach them about the things we learned that we did wrong along the way.
• 0:12
  Today we sit down with Chad Ackerman, a business leader whose journey truly embodies transformation.
• 0:19
  Chad started his career as a financial advisor and HR professional before diving into entrepreneurship, co founding Left Field Investors.
• 0:29
  Under his guidance, the company grew quickly from a local mastermind to a thriving national community of passive real estate investors, ultimately leading to its acquisition by BiggerPockets and the launch of the Passive Pockets platform.
• 0:44
  In this episode, Chad shares candid stories about battling burnout, the pivotal moment that led him to seek business coaching, and the game changing insights that follow.
• 0:55
  You'll hear how Chad navigated the complexities of partnership, scaled a business from scratch, and found his calling as a business coach, helping others gain clarity and take actionable steps towards fulfillment.
• 1:08
  Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, you'll walk away inspired by Chad's practical wisdom and contagious enthusiasm for helping others succeed.
• 1:18
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:23
  All right, Chad Ackerman, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:27
  Thanks Dave.
• 1:28
  I appreciate you having me on.
• 1:29
  Absolutely.
• 1:30
  We appreciate you taking the time to be here.
• 1:33
  So, Chad, let's get right into it.
• 1:35
  How did that initial feeling of being overwhelmed and burnt out after launching your first business actually manifest in your day to day life?
• 1:46
  Yeah, I mean, it's hard to avoid that once you're into the thick of the business.
• 1:51
  And you know, our business was a hobby that turned into a business, so our strategies were not in place when we started out.
• 2:01
  So we got behind the eight ball pretty quickly.
• 2:03
  Once it grew into a business that, that was just, that's kind of where we sat.
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  And we were very retroactive for a lot of what we did, trying to work our way through the day to day.
• 2:16
  We were agile.
• 2:18
  It was kind of a growing thing.
• 2:19
  We didn't feel a lot of pressure to be ahead of the ball, but we definitely operated retroactively for a very long time because we just didn't have strategy in place, a business plan in place.
• 2:31
  When we started out and we kind of knew it, it was just, what do you do about it now when we're in the thick of everything and trying to chase things like crazy.
• 2:40
  So.
• 2:41
  Okay, and what was the pivotal moment or realization that that first made you seek out a business coach?
• 2:50
  It was that it was just that realization of, hey, it's gotta be better than this, there's gotta be a better way.
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  We weren't Entrepreneurs.
• 2:59
  We were financial advisors, life insurance salespeople.
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  I was a career W2 human resources employee.
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  So it wasn't like we had that skill set.
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  To us, that it was.
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  We didn't know what it was called.
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  We weren't exactly sure where to find it, but.
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  But we knew we needed help, and so we started digging in after we'd been in IT for year and a half or so of really trying to scramble and stay ahead of everything.
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  We knew, hey, we've got to find some help.
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  There's got to be people that can coach us along and help kind of straighten the rails here a little bit.
• 3:35
  Okay, so you hit that moment.
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  You know that this isn't working.
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  There's got to be a better way.
• 3:41
  And then what happens next?
• 3:43
  Yeah, then I.
• 3:44
  I mean, the.
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  The way it kind of transpired for us as we start talking to our friends and colleagues about it, like, hey, you know, we're.
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  We're running this business.
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  It's a scramble.
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  We feel like we're behind on everything.
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  And it was one of my buddies that said, hey, you should go talk to Tim.
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  Tim's been coaching people in businesses.
• 4:02
  He's bought and sold businesses.
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  He's grown them.
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  He's done about everything he can.
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  He probably could give you some advice.
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  And that's when it kind of flipped the switch of, okay, yeah, hey, there are people out there that are specifically trying to help small businesses stay afloat, Answer the questions, get strategy, get things organized.
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  That it led to, then conversations with my buddy and Tim and myself trying to say, you know, here's our story.
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  Here's what we're doing.
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  Here's what has gotten us to where we are today and what we're buried in.
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  You know, does that sound familiar to you?
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  Are these things you think you can help with?
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  And he shook his head yes to all of it and said, no, this is exactly the kind of thing we try to help out with nowadays.
• 4:49
  Okay.
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  So you realize you need some help, you find a coach through.
• 4:54
  Through a friend.
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  Sounds like a great fit.
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  And obviously, you proceeded with that.
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  What's.
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  What's the biggest difference you noticed once, you know, once you had this coaching in place and, like, with results, you got.
• 5:10
  Yeah.
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  The biggest thing that in our situation, there were five of us.
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  Business part.
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  Excuse me, six of us that were business partners in this.
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  This company we were running, and we operated very well together, but we all kind of had our fragmented sides of the business that we were kind of responsible for.
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  The hat that we wore.
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  Tim was able to Come in and just take that third party non interest view and help us identify some more efficiencies and just be that sounding board to pressure test things against.
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  Because he, he was taking a clearer look at it than we were.
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  We were had blinders on with a little bit of what our lens was to the company.
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  He was able to take a further step away from what we were used to operating under and, and give us solid feedback that was just eye opening in a lot of cases of oh, I assumed everybody on the
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  team knew what I was thinking and you know, that was wrong to kind of make make that assumption in many cases.
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  So he was really able to just not only take that, that 30,000 foot view and help us, but then give us strategy, you know, lead us into how does all this business work together and what should our goals
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  and strategies really align to that?
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  To me, the more of that we could create and get written down and structure.
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  It took a lot of the emotion out of the business, then of it became a little more black and white.
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  It became a guide for us of you come to a crossroad, you have a decision to make.
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  Go back to your strategy and what does your strategy tell you you're trying to do and then which way on the crossroad leads towards what that strategy is pointing you towards.
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  And it just kind of made our decision making process a lot easier going forward.
• 7:00
  Okay, and why do you think so many entrepreneurs struggle to put that type of structure in place, to have that clarity within their business?
• 7:12
  Yeah, I think it's a few things.
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  I think one, you probably start a business around something you're passionate about and that passion leads to maybe poor decisions sometimes.
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  But a lot of times, you know, you start a business with something you're passionate about, you're really good at the thing you're doing, you may not be good at running a business.
• 7:34
  You know, running a business could be very different than say you're an artist and you're really good at art.
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  Well, you may not be great at running a business.
• 7:43
  So there may just be those deficiencies in the education that lead to some of the problem of what your how your business functions versus how you are selling yourself and working in your business.
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  So working on versus working in your business kind of structure.
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  But I think there could be many reasons why entrepreneurs struggle.
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  But I think those are a couple things that hit top of mind to me anyway.
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  Okay.
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  All right.
• 8:10
  And so let's talk about left field investors and then its acquisition by bigger pockets.
• 8:16
  Yeah.
• 8:17
  Can you tell that story sure, yeah.
• 8:20
  So Left Field Investors was our company that we started up in 2020.
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  It was a pandemic, baby.
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  We would not have gone into or it wouldn't have been created into what it was without the pandemic started.
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  Our intent was to get 10 or 12 people around for a local kind of mastermind.
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  And our first meeting was three days, scheduled for three days after the world shut down.
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  So.
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  So we went on to Zoom, like we're doing right now, and we just started adding people to it that we knew weren't local to Columbus, Ohio, where we were based out of, because we knew they were interested in
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  the space that we were in.
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  Our focus was helping teach people how to passively invest in real estate syndication deals, how to be a limited partner.
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  And so we could start adding people to the Zoom call that weren't local, that we just organically grew from that point.
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  And we got to a point where we ended up with over 2000 people in our community.
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  We had international people.
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  We used to hold Monday night meetings and we would have people in Asia joining us while they were having their breakfast and listen in because they were investing in the States, so they wanted to learn more about doing
• 9:35
  that.
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  It was great.
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  It was all organic.
• 9:39
  And again, retroactive adjustments from us to grow it to what it was.
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  And then after about four years, we had all been on the BiggerPockets platform ourselves, so we were familiar.
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  A lot of what we built left field out of was remnants of what we learned at BiggerPockets and what we liked about it.
• 9:59
  But the reason we left BiggerPockets at the time was they didn't have a lot of information around being a passive investor in syndications.
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  They were focused on people that did single family flips, buy and holds rentals and that kind of thing.
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  We wanted to learn more and get a group of people together that were like minded about syndications.
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  What had happened in those four years while we were developing our business, BiggerPockets wanted to start expanding their community to include that passive investor as well.
• 10:30
  And so a common friend put us in contact with their CEO and he talked about how they were trying to grow their community, would love to learn off of us and partner and.
• 10:40
  And jokingly he said, maybe I'll buy you out someday.
• 10:43
  And we laughed.
• 10:44
  We got off the phone, talked about it amongst ourselves a little bit and we said, you know what, why don't we go back and ask him to buy us out and we could just join their group.
• 10:53
  They have more resources, they could help grow our Community beyond what we were capable of, probably.
• 10:59
  And we could help them get to market quicker because we would teach them about the things we learned that we did wrong along the way.
• 11:07
  And we called them up, they liked the idea, we negotiated through everything and about eight months later we signed a contract to sell to them.
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  And now it's transitioned over.
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  Now the community is called Passive Pockets.
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  It's on their portfolio or on their platform.
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  And we've stayed on as an advisory board member for the next three years just to continue to help them grow that community.
• 11:30
  Okay.
• 11:31
  And so sounds like there was perfect synergy there and perfect timing too.
• 11:35
  Great timing.
• 11:37
  You know, traditionally, acquisitions can be very contentious and oftentimes not work out or whatnot.
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  But I mean, how, how seamless was that whole process from when you first talked about it to actually getting the deal done?
• 11:51
  It was very amicable on both sides.
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  Both.
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  Both were engaged in getting the deal done.
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  So there wasn't a lot of angst in our situation, which I think we were very lucky for that.
• 12:02
  You know that.
• 12:03
  I agree.
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  I think there's a lot of cases where these get drawn out for a very long period of time.
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  One thing that made it a little more complicated is that they had been purchased by a private equity firm not long before they started talking to us.
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  So it became a very black and white numbers game at the end of the day of, you know, being able to make sure that the numbers were there for the private equity firm to feel good about it.
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  But we partnered very well through the negotiation process that it, it went very smoothly.
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  We were very lucky, I would say.
• 12:38
  Okay, all right.
• 12:39
  And after that you transitioned into coaching entrepreneurs?
• 12:45
  Yes.
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  And so what made you decide to do that?
• 12:48
  Yeah, so I, I knew I wasn't ready to be done.
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  I'm 53 years old.
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  I was like, it wasn't a big enough sale of.
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  To let me just be retired and done and I couldn't be.
• 13:00
  Anyway, I'd want to do something.
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  So I thought I would try franchise for my next thing and knew some about it.
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  But I actually, my daughter, I was driving her to Chicago to start a co op which is about a six hour drive from Columbus.
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  And I thought on the way back, I'm by myself, I'm going to find a podcast about franchises and learn a little bit more about it.
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  And I found a podcast called Franchise 101 with Tim Parmeter that was interesting.
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  I listened to like 30 episodes at 2x speed on the way home and really fell for the concept of it.
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  Of.
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  I didn't want to start something from scratch again.
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  I like the take it off the shelf.
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  It's a proven concept.
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  Just implement it and, you know, put your own spin to it.
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  So I listened to him and he is a broker, so he was like, you can sign up with me, we'll do a little interview, I'll get your background, what interest you have, and I'll, you know, find you three
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  different franchises to go vet and see what you think.
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  No charge to you, which I thought was great.
• 14:04
  So I applied to his program and got in, did the interviews with Tim.
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  He got me three franchises.
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  One was a gym, one was a custom cabinet factory, and one was focal point business coaching.
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  And I really leaned into the gym, kind of faded off pretty quickly.
• 14:25
  That wasn't for me.
• 14:27
  The custom cabinet factory was actually very intriguing and I really took that far down the road.
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  But ultimately I liked the flexibility with the coaching.
• 14:39
  I liked the idea that I could take all of my experiences from my W2 from left field and I could apply it back to help other small businesses or where I've actually transitioned this to is I'm going back
• 14:52
  and I'm actually helping coaches, limited partners or people that want to become limited partners about how to invest in this business because there's not a lot of education out there about it.
• 15:02
  So it was allowing me to stay in the industry, use my experience and help the community that I've been working with before, continue to do that by putting myself back into that space.
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  So it just kind of lined up again.
• 15:16
  These, all these things have just kind of fell into place.
• 15:19
  Luckily, at the right time, with the right amount of energy with me, that, that's kind of worked out so far.
• 15:26
  Okay.
• 15:27
  All right.
• 15:28
  And so you, you, like you said you were looking for something to do, you wanted a ready made system so you didn't have to do it over from scratch.
• 15:37
  You got with the franchise company, you've.
• 15:41
  You looked at several.
• 15:42
  Seems like coaching was the perfect fit given your experience, what you wanted to do.
• 15:47
  And so when you launched the coaching franchise, what was that like?
• 15:54
  Yeah, it was interesting.
• 15:56
  They had a great program for training.
• 15:57
  It was great.
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  And then they turn you loose and like, okay, go forth and conquer kind of thing.
• 16:02
  So it was where I struggled from the beginning, was really aligning to what my target client was going to look like.
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  I didn't have a strong feel for what that was.
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  Honestly, it took probably about four months, I'm in the fifth month now of having this, this franchise.
• 16:22
  It probably took four months to really land on where my strategy was, of who I wanted to advertise towards, who I wanted to try to meet, who I wanted to try to help.
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  And it.
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  It took a while for that to solidify because I was focused.
• 16:36
  There's.
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  There's so many options for coaching businesses.
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  There's so many businesses out there, and at first you feel like you want to help everybody and you can't help everybody.
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  So it took a while to get laser focused to where.
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  Now, like I said, I'm going back.
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  My goal is to identify people that have an interest in this syndication space and wanting to invest in it, to help coach them on building their, their, their kind of confidence in the process to get to a point
• 17:08
  where they take action.
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  And especially in these uncertain times, this is a.
• 17:13
  You know, the economy's been really interesting for any kind of investing over the last couple years.
• 17:19
  Syndication space is no different for that.
• 17:21
  So it really kind of flipped the switch again, finally around.
• 17:26
  Hey, you would get a lot of pleasure out of helping people that are interested in this space gain some knowledge, gain some confidence to be able to take action.
• 17:34
  Because taking action in that space is so relevant, so important.
• 17:39
  You learn so much more, by all means.
• 17:42
  You got to do your due diligence, you got to understand the space, you got to study it, but at some point, you got to take action, and you'll learn so much from doing that.
• 17:50
  And I want to help people kind of get over that hump and help them get to that point is what my goal is.
• 17:56
  Okay.
• 17:56
  And that's a very interesting point too, because I was just having this conversation yesterday with a guest where, you know, so many of the successful entrepreneurs we see out here have this bias for action, and they just, they
• 18:10
  act regardless if they're ready, if they have all the information, whatever it may be.
• 18:16
  And then we see so many others that have goals, dreams, these big aspirations, but the, the biggest thing that holds them back is just the ability to, to take action.
• 18:26
  So, you know, from, from someone that's, that's actually coaching entrepreneurs.
• 18:30
  Why do you think so many people struggle with that ability to just.
• 18:34
  To just act?
• 18:35
  Yeah, I think first and foremost, it's risk tolerance and how, how much they cope with the idea of pulling the trigger on anything.
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  It's a hard thing to do.
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  Depending on what the situation is, it can be difficult.
• 18:48
  I still struggle sometimes with writing a check to a syndication because they're not small checks by any means.
• 18:54
  So, you know, I think it's that initial fear of getting over it and just that feeling of you never are totally comfortable that you're educated enough on it.
• 19:04
  And there's a, you know, an 80, 20 rule in about any situation you look at.
• 19:09
  I don't know if people are always comfortable with 80, 20 or if they want 90, 10 or 99 1, you know, but it, there is a threshold that they have to get to to be comfortable.
• 19:20
  I like to use the analogy of when I was young, married, getting ready to have kids.
• 19:27
  We never felt like we were financially ready to have kids.
• 19:31
  We ended up moving forward, had our first child, and you know what, we adapted to it.
• 19:36
  We still found a way, we found how to process through and afford that child so much that we had a second child and we afforded that too.
• 19:45
  So a lot of that confidence comes from trust in the system that yes, there's a fear around it, but there are many other people that get involved with it.
• 19:56
  In our particular case with investing in real estate, we recommend all the time get involved with the community.
• 20:02
  Go find like minded people so that you can compare notes, you can talk about their strategies, how that aligns to yours.
• 20:09
  Yours is going to be unique, but you're going to hear things in other people's strategies that are going to help build your confidence and listen to their journey.
• 20:17
  You know, a lot of people that are in this space, they came from a W2 job like I did, they had two kids, they were, were in their late 40s and were frustrated with their job and wanted another
• 20:26
  income stream.
• 20:27
  You know, there's a lot of people that are like that.
• 20:29
  So you can meet a lot of people that have walked the similar steps and you're finding them a couple steps ahead of you on the journey so you can understand what they've been through and get advice from them
• 20:41
  to get you more comfortable and ready to, to move forward.
• 20:45
  Yeah, I love that.
• 20:46
  And community, so important, you know, as you highlighted there.
• 20:50
  Okay, and what, what do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about working with a coach?
• 20:58
  I, I think there's just confusion around what it is, is what I've noticed and, and rightfully so.
• 21:04
  Coaching versus consulting, very different things.
• 21:06
  There's many blends of coaches.
• 21:08
  There's life coaches, there's business coaches, there's career coaches, there's health coaches, you, you name it.
• 21:15
  So a lot of it is just, it's easy to slap a term coach on something and maybe not firmly understand what it is.
• 21:22
  And I, I always go to the breakdown of consulting versus coaching.
• 21:26
  It isn't consulting, it isn't that I would come in and tell you what to do.
• 21:31
  That's not what our coaching process is about.
• 21:35
  Coaches are much more about partnerships of I like to call, what I do is I'm trying to be a non equity partner in your business.
• 21:45
  I want to just come talk to you about what your strategies are, where your struggles are.
• 21:51
  Let's think through it.
• 21:52
  You probably have the answer, I want to help you get to it.
• 21:56
  Rather than tell you what the answer is, we would confer together and come up with a plan.
• 22:01
  Because a lot of times, you know, the, the thing that people find is if they run the business, if they're the business owner, when you get to the top level there, there's nobody to go to.
• 22:13
  When you were like a manager and you could go to the owner, there's nobody to talk to as the owner other than maybe you go home, talk to your significant other at home.
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  But who knows if they're really aligned to what the business needs are.
• 22:25
  So I come in as a means of giving you, a person that understands the business world, the ability to bounce things off of, have that non interested party listen to your story, listen to your goals and help you
• 22:40
  talk through how to get to those goals.
• 22:42
  And at the end of the day, really what I think of myself as is an accountability coach.
• 22:48
  Like a perfect scenario is I'm going to come work with you, hear your strategy, help you work on your strategy, define it, then back up from your strategy of what tactical things do we need to do to get
• 22:59
  you to that strategy, to get to that goal.
• 23:02
  And then I'm going to hold you accountable to what we define as tactical items that will help you reach your goals and we'll identify obstacles.
• 23:10
  How do we get around those and help hold you accountable to those things?
• 23:15
  That's what I really view my job is, is just help you implement the things that you want to implement so you get to the place you want to get to.
• 23:23
  Okay.
• 23:24
  All right.
• 23:25
  And Chad, if people want to find out more about your, your coaching program and how they could potentially work with you, what's the best way that people can reach out to you?
• 23:35
  Yeah, I've got a website that is Chad ackerman.focal.coaching.com that's really long.
• 23:41
  The easiest thing a lot of times is just find me on LinkedIn under Chad Ackerman.
• 23:45
  I'm on there quite a bit.
• 23:46
  So that's an easy way to track me down.
• 23:49
  Okay, yeah, we will link that in the show notes for everyone.
• 23:52
  Great.
• 23:53
  All right, well Chad, thank you so much for taking the time to be here sharing all this valuable wisdom from your journey with our audience.
• 23:59
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 24:01
  No, thank you, Dave.
• 24:02
  I appreciate the time, too.
• 24:03
  All right, that's all the time we have for now.
• 24:05
  We will see you next time.