Buyers and Builders
00:16:39 · Mark Sinatra
And so, and then number three, is, and this kind of relates more directly to your question, my experience with my search operated company, One, the the amount of technological tools that exist nowadays to foster workforce collaboration and to make that seamless, efficient, effective across the world, across countries, across states and regions, is is quite quite impressive. Right? There's just so many options out there. And when I think back to to to my experience, you know, at at, you know, Staff One, you know, we just didn't have those level of collaborative tools like like the one we're on now. Right? You know, Zoom, Teams, Slack, etcetera, etcetera. And so I asked myself, well, you know, if you had a business, and, you know, in my case, you know, I ended up moving that that company down down to Dallas after a couple years, you know, whatever, I just kept the headquarters there. And I probably, you know, would've if, you know, we had all of these collaborative, tools and the technology that we had today. Right? So in other words, like, you know, thinking at a business and, you know, the remote workforce, and there's certainly been a reversion, closer reversion back to to to, you know, working in the office. But still, you know, a lot of small medium sized companies are still hybrid or remote and they're using that as an advantage to grow. They're using that as an advantage to to hire because they're not constricted or constrained by geographical, borders. And so that's a really interesting dynamic today that didn't exist twenty years ago.
00:18:34 · Mikk
[00:18:34] S0: So you bought the business very close into the great financial crisis. Could you explain the first maybe a year, you as a first time buyer operating the business? Maybe you can share like how much depth you were using and how was the day to day when it comes to you operating the business? And how was the reality now? Because again, it was your first very first acquisition.
00:19:02 · Mark Sinatra
[00:19:02] S1: Yeah. The timing was was really, really tough. Right? You know, if I didn't buy the business at that at that point in time, Mikk, I'd probably have hair like like you have. You know? It's... It was very... It it it it was super tough because, you know, we had clients that some of which, you know, were, were going out of business. A lot of them were looking at ways to significantly cut costs and, you know, to their credit, you know, we, they had asked us for, you know, reduced fees and, you know, we, it's kind of one of those things where you have to really think about, you know, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And so you kind of, you know, work with them to, to retain the client, but you have that margin erosion there. You know, all at the same time concurrently trying to learn the business as well. And I remember it was like, you know, two or three months after we closed, there was a, we had a high deductible workers' comp program with one of our, with our clients. And we had an employee that unfortunately had a bad accident, and that was a max deductible, $250,000 claim that we had to come out of pocket for. So we had all this stuff happen, right, in the first, like, three to six months. I went in and it forced forced me to really learn the business very, very quickly and to to, you know, be, obviously extremely hands on, but I felt like I was constantly fighting, fires and putting out fires and was operating in like more of a reactive mode, if you will. You know, I got a question the other day. I thought it was really interesting. Nobody had had asked me this. And the question was, you know, during that search CEO period of of, you know, nine years, when did I first feel like, you know, I was a CEO? And I thought that was a really interesting question because when I look back on it, you know, there were so many mistakes I made, particularly like in the in the earlier years. And part of that is learning to become a CEO. But I personally didn't feel like I was a CEO until I was able to figure out the winning formula from a talent perspective. And that's putting exceptional people in the right roles and providing them the resources and the vision that they needed to grow and to excel.
00:21:54 · Mark Sinatra
And once I kind of figured that out, and unfortunately for me, this is, you know, quite, quite embarrassing, but, you know, I didn't really figure that out until, well, I figured it out. I didn't have that set in place, I should say, till at least, you know, I want to say three to four years, you know, into the deal. Took me too long to get there. But once I got there, Mikk, that's when I was able to finally work on the business versus versus in the business. And when I say like more specifically, you know, I was able to devote much more time to growing, you know, organic revenue, to helping the sales team, to, you know, our marketing strategy and redesigning that, and then ultimately focused on, add on acquisitions as well. So stuff that really kind of moved the needle from a growth perspective. And it's no coincidence that, you know, our growth really then started to kinda take off. You know, once once I started putting really, really good people in in those right seats, it just unlocked the the entire business. But for the first few years, you know, I was just... I was fighting fires. I was I was reactive. And again, you know, I didn't really figure out and execute the winning formula until till about three or four years in.
00:23:31 · Mikk
[00:23:31] S0: You mentioned putting right people in the in the right seats. And you mentioned, like, once I got there. So can you maybe go more into detail? What what is the before and after? Because not having those people in the right seats or not not having those people at all, and then you... After when you have those people doing this thing, I'm asking because we had to let go one of our... Like, one of the c... CFOs of of of the company, And I'm in this position or we as a shareholders are in this position, we have to find a new person. So that's a very relevant thing for myself as well. And I'm sure many others listening as well, like, how can you find those right people, number one, and what it feels when it comes to the before and after when when you actually find them.
00:24:19 · Mark Sinatra
[00:24:19] S1: Yeah. Yeah. That... I mean, that's that's really the the crux of it. So I think, you know, come coming coming you know, the business had had been around for twenty years. Right? Had a had a strong kind of tenured team. They had been, you know, the company on average, you know, on double digits, in terms of years. But a couple couple considerations. One, you know, we were we were based in a pretty rural, market, and the industry was geographically fragmented. So, you know, we tried to sell into larger, more metropolitan areas, and that proved to be a bit of a challenge, like from a sales perspective. Like, we just weren't giving the credibility in the market from from prospects. So so I had to really think through, well, you know, how do we... We we have to to kinda upgrade the sales team was was a was a big part of it. And I certainly made, you know, several kind of mistakes in terms of, you know, trying to hire and and scale that team. And more specifically, you know, kind of thought, well, you know, should I bring in like a, you know, senior, kind of high powered, you know, leader from from maybe a larger competitor, Larger company. And sometimes, like, a couple couple lessons learned on that. One, it's it's tough, right, for a lot of leaders who are used to working for a larger company that have a lot more resources, a lot more support, a bigger budget to to come from that environment into what I will call more of a, you know, kind of nimble, agile, searcher led, you know, business. Very tough transition because it requires that leader to become much more hands on and to not have... They're not gonna have the extent of resources, that that they were used to. So ultimately, you know, I decided that, you know, I was probably best to run sales for for the time being. And ultimately, to get to the answer to your question, I figured out, you know, really the... A good approach to identifying screen and interview for talent that that kind of fit us. So a couple of things is, you know, obviously, I think most companies need to really crystallize and clearly define, like, their guiding principles and their values so that those new team members, you know, are, you know, great fits and they're additive to the culture.