Latest / The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions / Fired From the Family Business, Then He Built the Exit on Purpose

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Fired From the Family Business, Then He Built the Exit on Purpose · The Turn: Blue Collar to Billions

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Today we have Jonathan Sherry.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Jonathan has a great story because he grows up in a family business, and then he takes it to a place that he didn't really expect.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: He was shown the door by the people that bought his family business.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately, it may have been the best thing that ever happened to him.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because it caused he and his dad to start a new enterprise that they never even thought about in his business.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately it turned into a great exit for him, and it allowed him to focus on the things that matter most in his family.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to The Turn.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Corey Mitchell of Iconic Founders.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: The Turn is where blue-collar founders talk about the businesses they've built, the value they've created, and what comes next after they sell.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Jonathan Cheryl, welcome to The Turn.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Corey.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's good to be here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm excited to hear your story.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: I know a little bit, and I know there's there's there's fishing boats, and there's metal roofs, and there's like there's a lot of ebbs and flows all the way leading to writing a book.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: So um maybe we just start at the beginning.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, so many of us have, you know, many of the people, including myself that have been on the show, have roots in a family business.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um you started there.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Take us back to the beginning.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: What kind of business were you in with your father?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what got him into the business?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just some of the background.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was born and raised in a tiny little town in Florida, Northwest Florida, called Horseshoe Beach, a town that was probably five, six hundred people when I was born and raised there.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was a fishing village and commercial fishing, shrimping, crabbing, oystering.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a very busy little hub there.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad was in the seafood business, so he bought seafood from the boats as they come in and then he would process it, ship it around the country, ship it internationally.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how I grew up.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1993, the the nets, uh, which was the primary way of fishing, were outlawed.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: They were banned uh by a vote in Florida.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that put him out of business pretty much the day it happened.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he had to get into something.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: He was a great businessman, but the industry just kind of ran away and uh fell apart overnight.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So he got into metal roofing, had a friend in Tennessee who told him this is something I'm doing, and you might want to give it a try.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So he had nothing to lose, obviously.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So he gave it a try and started doing the same thing in that old fishing uh processing plant right on the water.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was hilarious, really, but uh, because it was not in a location you would think would have a metal roofing manufacturing facility.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I started working with him the day he opened.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: He and my uncle started a company, and uh I would go in after school.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was about 14 at the time, and so started off doing anything that was needed, sort of just sweeping floors, folding steel, loading trucks, and stayed there goodness, for till I was uh about I guess 2010 is when he decided to sell.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the business grew significantly over those years, and that's a we could talk all kinds of details there.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting story, but uh turned out to be very successful, and I grew in my role as the company grew and uh became the general manager.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, the next step would be when he decided to sell that business, and the journey kind of continues from there.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's let's take a step back.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to better understand the context we're talking about.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Was your dad a fisherman or was he a like a business guy that owned a fishing business or both?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so when he was really young, he he was a fisherman.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: He kind of in the boat, doing the nets, running the traps, all the things.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he got into running a business where he would buy the seafood from the boats, from the fishermen.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when he started doing the processing and and it became a you know an international business, uh, especially during the season, which was the seasonal uh row season, which is where they harvest the eggs from the fish and ship to Taiwan and places like that.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So uh yeah, definitely turned into a full business, a couple locations, and was one of the larger of its kind in Florida.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty serious outfit.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um what like what kind of an environment did you grow up in?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: What were did you talk about business at the kitchen table?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, we I talked about work, but not business.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the you know, it was for me, it was more about you know, customers and needs and employees and kind of learning and growing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it I didn't have a grid for business growing up.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I just I had a I knew work and honesty and treating customers right and treating employees right, and no no business schooling background, so didn't really have an anything to go by other than the example that my dad set, which he didn't come from a business school background either.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: He was just very wise man and uh very pure and handled business the right way, kind of the old-fashioned way.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I learned a lot about customer service and things from him.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but neither one of us really had that training, if you will, to understand scaling a business and putting in systems and ultimately selling the business for multiples.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: None of that was anything we really knew much about.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: For sure, me, and he didn't know a lot about it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're growing up in that town, was that, you know, you you you talk about it as a village.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it sounds like maybe that was one of, you know, a pretty decent sized business in that, in that, in that town.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, it was the biggest business.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of, there was a few others, uh, very small, but most of them sold to my dad's business.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of the business in town.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: When the I'll I'll say it this way, when the nets were banned over the next few years, people left in droves.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And to this day, there's probably 50 to 100 full-time people there.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And most of them are from kind of the outside, they're retirees that kind of come in and bought up property.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So the village pretty much disappeared as far as the hub of busyness.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: It it just doesn't exist anymore.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: That must have been.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, to me, it sounds devastating.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have this business, and literally, like, you flip a switch and you've built up this incredible enterprise.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: You're the biggest business in the town.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta imagine, you know, your dad's probably a local, you know, one of the one of the big shots in town.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: What did that do to him?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like losing your business overnight like that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: What did it feel like watching that?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: I remember he he just started doing, immediately got busy, stayed busy, you know, doing stuff that he had never done before, like uh tractor work.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: He had a small tractor and started doing odd jobs for people that needed it.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he never really dwelled on it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: That you know, he's um, I'm sure he did in his private time, but you know, we weren't aware of it.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think he was fearful.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: He probably was somewhat relieved because that's a very stressful business, very seasonal, and you're hiring seasonal help, and it's a lot of a lot of moving parts for very little kind of return.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: He just knew he had to figure out something to do to really kind of continue to take care of his family.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, he didn't let a day go by where he wasn't working on that.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when the opportunity for the steel came, it it was it was something he went and jumped into with both feet.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: How did he figure out how to buy a company?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't start a company, he started it from scratch.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I mean he knew how to run a company because of his seafood industry experience.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he yeah, he he just really just took uh what little funds he had, which was very little, and just began to bootstrap.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's one thing that he and my uncle, who was his partner, they just bootstrapped their business the whole way up.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, really never took out a loan, paid their own vendors early.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And but it was little by little.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it sounds like you have a a deep admiration for your father, like just the way you talk about him.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um what are some of those lessons that you took with you when you went on your own business journey down the road first of all is just treating people right.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And even when it kind of hurts, um and you your customer's always right.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's it's not always the case, but many times that's the approach you have to take.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, um my dad was not a man of ego at all.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized and learned from him that that's that's not gonna get you anywhere.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I would I'm sitting at desk away from him, and I'm hearing every conversation, every customer he's across from or on the phone with, and I learned to how he handled situations in real time, and I would mirror that, and it served me well to this day.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of how I operate, I think, comes straight from those humble beginnings where we were mucking it out in that office, you know.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um yeah, I do.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have a big admiration for my dad.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's taught me a lot.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: It it reminds me, so I grew up in a family business, and your your yours was in a a fish plant, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: You I mean, you literally worked in this fish plant.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's funny is my dad's first office was an abandoned turkey plant.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it smelled, I can only imagine what an old fish plant smells like.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: But I was just thinking uh that reminded me of my time as a teenager growing up in this really crappy turkey processing plant that stunk so bad still, they couldn't get the smell out of the concrete.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, yeah.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: That must have been a that must have been a really interesting thing.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Building out a business in the in in you know the literal wreckage of the old business that he was in.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's true, and starting, starting anew, building something fresh.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so true.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's pretty cool.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: So so you're in this business and you're you're kind of growing up as a person of business and and grow literally growing up, maturing in the business.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: What does that route look like?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then how do you how do you end up leaving the business?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2010, my dad and uncle decided they wanted to sell the business.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: By that time I was running the whole operation and they were, you know, that not really on site too much.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when they approached me about selling it, it was a new concept to me.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I had never really heard of the concept, and uh, but learned a lot real quick, like even the financials and how to understand how to read financial statements and all the things that go into it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a pretty neat experience.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I basically handled most of the due diligence requests for them and much of the communication between the attorneys and all the due diligence that that it goes into a deal like that, and got to really know the the incoming buyer, which was a private equity family office uh buyer, and the kind of the the managing director that was the face of that was a former Goldman Sachs guy.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you can see the the difference here.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've got a a Wall Street guy, and then you've got this country boy, you know, who grew up in a fishing village.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I learned so much from that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I stayed on the business afterward and as the president ran it for another six years.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And during that time was, you know, it was uh just a really new experience for me, really learning how to run a business the way an investor sees it and the what they're looking for, uh, the reporting and the level of detail and and focus.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you if we wanted to go buy a machine, we don't just say, yeah, we think we can sell some the products off of this.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was a full business plan and a presentation to the board.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you had to really do your homework.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And but it taught me a discipline that I hadn't had.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we built out our leadership team, the functional heads, you know, the HR and the finance and sales and operations.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so it no longer was kind of all the supervisors reported to me.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I now have leadership heads that report to me and others report to them.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was new, but I learned the how to do that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I also learned a lot of things not to do, too, that I don't want to carry with me, uh, the way that you know private equity kind of operates typically.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, but that was a very good experience for me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: We grew the business and doubled it during that time frame.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: We added, I think, four locations.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we moved our headquarters.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: What size business are we talking about here?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like a revenue.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the uh when I uh when they sold, when my dad sold, it was doing about 12 million dollars a year.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then um when we grew the business for the new owner, before I left, we were doing a close to 40 million, I think 37 or somewhere in there.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was on a still a really strong growth trajectory.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what a what a nice run.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you're you you you you see these sophisticated investors come in, um, and you really learn a lot about how an investor thinks about, you know, what whatever it is, CapEx, you know, investing in growth.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you you more than triple the size of the company.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Why'd you leave?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: What what happened?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I backing up a little bit to when my dad sold the business, when I got a taste of the the professional business world, I guess you could say, and the idea that you could grow a business and sell it for a multiple, and there's buyers that will pay a premium, you know, for a good run business.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It really, I felt like I was kind of I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to do that myself.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that this could be an opportunity to do it with the new buyer here.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I could be an equity partner and just stick, stay here, and we grow this thing, you know, to the stratosphere, so to speak, and in a national way.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I had big aspirations and they liked it and they they was all on board.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I approached the owners about that and said, I would like to be a partner at some point so that I'm kind of building wealth in the business, not just taking a salary and a bonus.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of like, okay, well, we'll we talk about it later, you know, when I don't really know right now.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I gave it some time and I checked again.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was six or eight months later.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he he said, no, there's there's no opportunity for that here.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, a little deflated, but I said, okay.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I went back to work like normal, you know, carried on.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And about a month later, he says, It's clear to me that you want to be an entrepreneur, and we don't have an opportunity for that here.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna let you go.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the conversation.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I needed to pack up my stuff and get out of there.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So they gave me a couple hours to do the best I could with that and left out the side door of my office.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even go through the main office to say goodbye to anybody, but that's that's how I came to end my time there after I think six years.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that sounds devastating, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're in your dad's business, he started it from nothing.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: You worked your way up from the the smelly fish floor all the way to this$40 million revenue business that you really, in a lot of ways, are responsible for a lot of that growth.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I'm assuming you just you've you had to have felt some real personal ownership in that business.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Just it you grew up in it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: How how the heck did you handle that that crushing blow where they're literally walking you out?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're make they're they're they're giving you the cardboard box and walking you out the side door, and you can't say goodbye.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: It had to be just brutal.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it definitely was.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I had the weight of personal debt.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I had my family to take care of.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I had a very small severance package, yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, six months, but still I had a three-year non-compete.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, as you already know, that's the only industry I knew anything about.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't touch the industry basically.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The non-compete was throughout the southeast United States.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, in order to continue doing what I know how to do on my own or for somebody else, either way, I'd have to kind of jump out of the southeast and move out to the Midwest at a minimum.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was it was a lot of uh a lot of long walks and you know, prayer and thinking about what to do next for sure.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't I didn't it wasn't a vacation, that's for sure.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um how old were your kids at the time?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I've well I I've got one daughter, and she would have been probably five or six at the time.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got a you've got a wife and a child to support.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you're unemployed, uh zero plan.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get through that?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And like where I you know, you you talk about long walks and praying and um you know walk us through what got you from that point to actually starting your own thing.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just check I I checked out a lot of different potential opportunities.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I went out to Colorado.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's outside of the non-compete, looked at buildings and talked to a friend of mine who is a fellow YPO and possible investor, you know, who was possibly interested in helping me.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh after a couple days, my wife got altitude sickness and it was really bad in the hospital twice.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so instead of flying home, we drove home uh because in the air is worse.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that that pretty much shut that idea down.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I come back, you know, and at this point, there's several weeks, months, a couple months have passed, and that severance isn't going to last much longer.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was talking with my dad, and he had a he had carved out this small little building division from the company that he sold, the company I was had been running, and was running that business and told me if I wanted to join him, you know, I could work for him and run it for him.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we worked out the details of that, and I went to work for him.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, long story short, we decided to sell the small steel business, the bit the building business, and start a new business.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I negotiated with him a deal that would make me a partner of his, you know, so pretty much 51, 49 percent, you know, he's the majority, he's the the investor in the deal.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um we started planning for that.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: He bought an old mill near Savannah, Georgia.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did that, moved up to Georgia to a town we'd never heard of before called Claxton, Georgia.
• 20:04
  unknown: Claxton.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Claxton, Georgia.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was like home of the metropolis.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the home of the world famous fruitcake, actually.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: They are world famous fruitcakes.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's kind of it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: So just so I understand, you're you're you're you're truly bootstrapping this from zero, you know, we got to get from zero to one.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um what it was this like a metal, a metal, um, like a prefabricated metal building company.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: What do you explain to me what kind of company it actually was?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we manufactured complete engineered building packages, which we didn't erect anything, so everything was just components, but we would sell to developers and contractors that put these things together.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: But we did everything from a fully engineered building package or just a bill of materials where and we did a lot of this where contractors would order just individual pieces and parts, and we would service anything from a backyard garage to a storefront commercial building, uh, processing plants.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, how how how does how does it go?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, tell us about kind of the trajectory of this business.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so just started out, just like I said, me and one guy, and started first thing we needed to do was get the equipment set up.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: So major overhaul of the facility, equip setting the equipment up.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: We knew nobody to uh come in and help us and get started.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so the figuring out the people part was the hardest part, the employees, and then figuring out the actual business and what's this business gonna be?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what are we gonna are we gonna sell components?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's a pretty low margin business.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta be high volume, low margin, or are we gonna focus on the engineer package?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just a every day was a Step of faith.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was no clear cut.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of had an idea of what we wanted to do, but there wasn't a clear cut plan.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was we've got this equipment, major capability, we've got to find a way to penetrate the market and figure out what which way to take it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just day by day, little by little.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And by year, I would say probably year two, we had started to gain some momentum.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, around the two and a half year mark, we would break even at the end of the month.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so we weren't just hemorrhaging money.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And around year three, we were doing pretty well.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I decided to sell the business.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm curious because it sounds like you're just kind of getting rolling here, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you you you build it up, you get you get to a point where you're breaking even, you get some tailwinds out of COVID.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why just when you're kind of getting it going, do you decide to sell instead of waiting for it to really blossom and flourish?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: When I built the business, you know, with the background working for private equity, I went into it knowing I'm gonna sell this one day, most likely.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking 15, 20 years down the road, you know, we'll probably sell and it'll be big enough to sell where we can retire and and uh go back home, move back home to Florida, and do whatever, you know, next business or next venture, but something do it a significant exit, hopefully.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so from day one, we built the business with that in mind that this is going to be sellable, and we don't want to get it sellable a year out.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: We want to build it sellable, as if an investor's watching.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we invested heavy into things like ERP right up front.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Even in that environment of not knowing anybody, I still was looking for the best talent I could get.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we were able to get some good people, and and uh that was that was how the company was built, and it was on a by this point, it had just got on a very strong growth trajectory and was showing real profit.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I, my family and I went on a vacation in Maine.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I like to walk and kind of that's my downtime, just go out in the woods and walk and and think, pray, meditate, think about the business, strategize.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's where all my inspiration comes from most of the time.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was out doing that.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was the last day of about a week vacation, and out of nowhere, I just see this light.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like this amber colored light, and it's not real bright, it's just kind of dim.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it just sort of comes over in front of me and and focuses down.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a beam, and it hovered over a book, and I realized this book is a Bible, and I can't I can't read the words, but it like went up to the top of the page and it's Isaiah, and then it goes down and it goes over the chapter 58, and then it goes down to 6 and verse 6 and 7, it stops.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't read it, I can just see the numbers and it disappears.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: At this point, does Isaiah 58, 6, 7?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: Does that mean anything to you?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, not at that moment, because when I when I saw it, even though I I should I know that there's more chapters than that, in that moment, I couldn't even remember if there were 58 chapters.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, Right, 58.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I grabbed my phone out and and start reading.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last piece there on the verse seven said, and to forsake not your flesh and blood.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the part that grabbed me.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so even in that moment, I didn't really know what to do with it all, but it was like, forsake not your flesh and blood.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: For me, that's my daughter.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's Faith.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the thing is, Faith was diagnosed with autism when she was two.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: At this time, she's 12.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: So at two, she was diagnosed with autism.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I had been feeling this kind of overwhelming sense that the next few years on her journey are super critical to her development between 12 and 18.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: For some reason, those numbers were just really strong on me.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's prior to all this going on.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I take that with me on my drive home.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a 24-hour drive, but we didn't fly it, we drove.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um, just you know, a lot to think about.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't thinking about selling the business in that moment.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I get home, I'm sitting on the couch, and the next day I'm going to work.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's on a Sunday night, and by myself, just sitting there.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't know, call it a steel small voice, just this major impression was maybe now's the time to sell the business.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it was those two things bringing together the the passage and the vision, and then selling the business, it all started to click.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I can sell this business now, I've got I can help my daughter during that time frame.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: I can do what's needed for her financially, location-wise.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: We would move back home to where we know where the help you know that we need to get for her is, and set her up for life as well, because I don't know what her life looks like as an adult.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's a lot there.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we um we got to unpack some of this.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um so, first of all, one of the things you started with in that story was I'm gonna build this thing to sell it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, a lot of what our show is about is what it's like to go through the process to sell it, but also what makes for a great exit, and of course, how you prepare for that is really important.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then I know you you you you were involved in writing a book about this specifically, so I'd like to know a little bit more about what you meant by that because I know you you learned from these Goldman Sachs guys, even though they came and sacked you, like literally, you also said you learned a bunch of things about how you think about business.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious, you mentioned ERP.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um what else specifically can you like dig in a little bit?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: What specifically did you do to make this thing built to sell?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, I knew that as soon as possible, I have to make this business where it's it can run with me gone for an extended period of time because a buyer is not wanting to buy a business that is has founder risk, meaning if I buy this and the founder's gone, do I have a business?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer to that question is pretty simple.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you can't go on a three to six month vacation and turn your phone off, you know, you probably don't.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I was able to uh delegate would be the simplest way to put it.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Really learning to delegate and then systemizing everything that you can and process and SOPs, even when you're small.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did is really getting treating it as if we're a large company that has to, in order for it to function, it has to have, you know, you can't just rely on tribal knowledge.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: So those were things that really uh focused on early on in the business was I it can't be dependent upon me long term.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so did you bring in like a president or a leader or someone to run it, like a general manager day-to-day?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I didn't.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I brought in uh department heads, so VP of finance, uh VP of operations, and VP of uh sales.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they it was to a point where the business could run with me gone for an extended period.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we had a system a system, and we had uh all of our software was integrated and the delivery software, the processing, the ERP all connected to the production outside.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've been a part of both.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've been a part where everything's kind of pieces of paper floating around, and and you know, just this is how we've always done it, so let's do it.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's if you can't duplicate it, it's not really systemized.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that was probably one of the biggest things that we did.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um diversify, making sure our customer base wasn't, you know, one customer is 80% of our sales, that kind of thing.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was we had a diverse customer base, diversifying our products as well, where we weren't, we're not like only servicing the self-storage industry, for example.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're also servicing retail to customers who are building sheds in their backyard all the way through to commercial.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to do those, all the things that the business schools teach you, right, that that you should do as well.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, that was that was a lot of the the stuff that we did uh to make it built to sell, if you will.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: So walk us through then what what do you do next?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I know at some point you brought in an advisor.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe maybe to tell us how you got from the this you know sort of vision or I do I do you consider it like a calling from God that occurred that day?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, I do.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um so you have this moment of clarity.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Where where do you go next to start moving the ball forward on an actual transaction?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Someone reached out to me from a coaching company, uh CEO Coaching International, and we talked about business and gained a ton of value just about my business and where I'm at now and some ideas that I could implement immediately.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And long story short, I was I needed help.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was you know growing this fast business in a foreign land, so to speak.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I ended up hiring a coach from that company.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: His name was John, and that was about three months prior to me realizing I it's time to sell.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: So um once I talked to my dad about it, the next time I had a call with John, which we talked weekly, and so within a week I told John, I was like, I'm ready to sell the business.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he never batted an eye.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's just getting to know me, but he's like, okay.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we talked about it a little bit, and um he introduced me to Andy, and Andy is the guy I co-authored the book with.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: He was my sell side advisor and great friend of mine now.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh goodness, that's a whole journey of itself.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: It took 12 months from the day I we started that, actually, from from the vision until we closed was a full 12 months.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: And during that time, curious about what's going on.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, first of all, um business is going well during that time, and then okay.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, tell us a little bit about what's going on in the business, but then a little bit also about how Andy is helping you to prep for a deal.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Andy, the first thing we did was got a quality of earnings done, which is basically an audit for the business.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's with the it's an intentional uh audit for the purpose of selling the business.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically to true up your EBITA and your financial statements, and we could talk about those, but that's that's a pretty important piece.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was the first thing we did.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Then we hired a outsource CFO because I our ours was all just kind of current focused run of the day-to-day of the business.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Our finance department was, and so we hired a strategic outsource CFO to help pull the information together and do strategic, you kind of forward-thinking pro forma uh financials for the business as well.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: That was another piece, and then we really got to work on the SIM, the confidential information memorandum, which is the full document presentation that ultimately ends up in the hands of interested investors.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it sounds to me like one, I think I think it's obvious to say, but I want to make sure I hear you say it, that you think hiring an advisor to go through the process is pretty important.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably the most important thing you could do, in my opinion, on that, to get a good outcome.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: And hiring a good sell-side advisor like like Andy, that's that it's amazing to watch him work.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually almost uncomfortable a little bit, but it's amazing and it and it really our deal, it turned out to be phenomenal.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I have to do a call with Andy one of these days, um, and and have him on the show down the road.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we we've we've decided in these early in these early um couple of years to stick to founders so we can talk about this personal experience and the journey.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: But our goal for the turn down the road is to be bringing on people like Andy that can really help us think through other aspects of the deal other than than the personal side.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so um what did it feel like to sell?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the day after kind of thing.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was kind of numbing.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're going through uh, you know, an Iron Man uh for 12 months.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so it and I and I will never undersell that.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's it's probably the toughest thing you'll ever do, but it's the most it's very worthwhile if you get a good deal.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't regret it a minute, but um yeah, it was overwhelming the process, but having great people around me was a huge help and supportive family and and all pretty quick you start realizing just how much your identity can be tied to your your professional life, and you know, for since I was 14, I've had a very kind of hard-charging business mindset.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, at this point I'm 39 when I sold, and so you know, the phone's not ringing anymore because I I got a clean break in my deal, and that was this we could talk about that.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's that was my next question is if you were able to actually get out.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was I walked the day we signed was my last day there.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean that's just the way the deal was written up.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was stayed, I had a consulting agreement, but they never called.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but yeah, so you know, a couple months in, it's kind of like being on vacation for the first couple weeks.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's you're you can deal with that, you know.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like woo-hoo, this is great.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: But after a couple months, the phone's not ringing, the text messages, the emails, there's no meetings, everything's quiet.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then you start to realize the industry is moving on without you.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're kind of becoming a bit of a memory to your step, your team, and everybody that helped you grow the business.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: They've got new bosses that they're working with now.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so it was it was pretty heavy.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that nobody wants to hear how you know someone who just exited their business is struggling.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean, right?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, oh poor, poor rich white guy.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much, there's so many facets to our lives, but it's a lot of good conversations about it, but figuring out what's next.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the tendency is to jump into something else to keep that keep that thing going.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird how you actually maybe you don't love the stress, but you don't want to not have it, if that makes any sense.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's it's kind of validating to have stress.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: So being okay with being quiet and being okay with being still is something that takes work to do and and personal development.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, that's that's how it's been so far.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And but so grateful.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I pinch myself.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is is this really real?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because the result was tremendous.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing everything that I sold it to be able to do.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter's in a great place, she's doing extremely well in school and physically, and we're back home in Florida.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um, you know, going back to that day when you had this vision, um, you were called, you know, to really change your life in a in a big way.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: How how have you how have you changed your relationship with your family in those four years?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Just I've just been able to be more present and be, you know, do the things that I wasn't able to do before.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I take my daughter to school every day, I pick her up every day, unless I'm traveling.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I get to, I think that presence is one of the things that helps her the most.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: And also me.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I it's it's a true honor and a blessing to be able to do that.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Just we're building a home on some property that we all love and want to be at.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's just a great, great place nearby.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: But um, we've been able to travel more and it's been great.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, before we wrap, a couple things.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: One, I tell us tell us the title and where people can find the book.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: The book is The Extraordinary Exit, and it's located in Amazon.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you can just look up The Extraordinary Exit in Amazon, or you can go to the Extraordinary Exit Book.com.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then one thing I always like, you know, you've had some time to yourself for the last couple couple years.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: Anything new you've kind of discovered?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, any new technology you're using, some new book that that's inspired you?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Anything anything new that you'd share with with our audience?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been listening to um podcasts and and um what's his name?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Salim.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if anyone's heard of Salim and Peter, Peter Diamandis.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And those guys are on the cutting edge of what's going on with AI, but um I've been utilizing the Claude, the Claude AI and and really playing with letting it kind of organize my business, not so much my personal life too much right now, but my business, and it's pretty amazing to see.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know what?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: I've never listened to that podcast.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: So the Salim and and Peter Diamante.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just look at if you look up Moonshots, it's that's the Moonshots podcast.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, cool.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: So Moonshots podcast is one for our audience to check out.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's one I, you know, that's a new one for me.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I I love being able to talk to smart people and learn uh new things myself.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that's awesome.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, we're gonna need to wrap, but you know, I'm excited to kind of see where your next chapter goes.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: You've in so many ways, you know, lived you've lived an incredible, you know, life and a journey, but more importantly, you've actually done what so many of us are not great at, which is slowing down and actually, you know, living the values that we all talk about, which is you know, putting our family first, uh putting faith first, all all the things that you're living right now is is really an inspiration to me.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure it will be to so many others.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: And the fact that it's actually possible um is is really remarkable.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: So grateful for you to to hear your story.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm looking forward to reading your book, and I'm looking forward to to seeing what's next.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so Jonathan Cheryl, thanks so much for being on the turn.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: Really, really uh a pleasure.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Corey.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Really enjoyed it.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, awesome.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us on the turn.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you could, please like and subscribe.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: We love getting this story in the hands of new viewers and listeners.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: So if you could forward it on to someone you think might enjoy it.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: And until next time, let's win.