Larry Snyder, with 40+ years in business, explains how owners prepare for exit. Build management teams so the company doesn't depend on you, consolidate fragmented entities, and rehearse stepping back from your role. A roofing couple who exited their roles grew sales from $14M to $25M in two years under management.
Questions this video answers
Over 40 years.
About $150 million a year.
About 25 years old.
From $14 million a year to $25 million a year in two years.
Twice (sold businesses twice for about $1 billion).
Chapters
Foreign.
There we are live again. Hey, everybody, it's Bill Gallagher. Today we are really talking about the most important sale that you'll ever make and you're not actually working on it. Most of us anyway. What could that be? It's the sale of your company. Hint, wink, wink. So you're working on selling your products and services, but you're not probably thinking about how and when I'm going to sell this. It's like a vague notion and it needs some time and attention now to pay off down the road. Hey, I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling coach, host of the Scaling up business podcast. We bring our show to you every week. A new episode, a new conversation with a guru, an author, a business leader about growing their business, about exits, about the leadership required to do that kind of work and everything that goes along with it. People, strategy, execution, cash and leadership. We talk about all those five things every week, hundreds of episodes and more. All of that@scalingcoach.com ScalingCoach.com is where you can get all that and more as well as like here, wherever you are now, listening, watching us, whether it's on YouTube, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, Spotify, Apple, iTunes, podcasts, etc, that's actually the biggest place right where we get the most listeners is on the Apple podcast. God bless them all. Right, so I'm joined now by Larry Snyder.
Larry, where are you today in the Bay Area? California.
Oh, nice. I thought you were in Texas, maybe, but I'm glad that you're here.
Yeah, no, California, born and born and raised.
Born and raised. Well, I'm in San Francisco, East Bay Hills and where we're having a lovely day today. So it's nice that we could talk and meet here wherever you are and you and then our listeners and viewers from wherever they are. So just to introduce you a little bit to the listeners, Larry started with a business very early on, years ago. Like five or ten, right?
Yeah, I think actually three. Let me think of.
Yeah, we're joking. If you could see us on screen, most of our audiences, listeners, but if you're watching us, you can see we both have a couple of wrinkles in his face. Larry has spent over 40 years in business, but he started with the business at a pretty young age. And they grew that to over 150 million before his partners bought him out. And he's helped grow and scale other companies. And he has a particular focus on getting ready for the exit, which is the focus of our conversation today. What are the things that you need to do to get ready for the exit. This is not a new topic like we've covered this before, but Larry's got some unique perspective on it and he's going to share some stories of some of the people that he's worked with. So welcome to the show, Larry.
Well, thank you very much, Bill. Looking forward to it.
So give us maybe a little bit longer arc. How did you get your start? Talk about your career and then kind of how you grew this thing and then your partners bought you out for a bajillion dollars and like how that experience went.
Sure. Well, you know, as you mentioned, I've been in business for, you know, somewhere between five and 10 years. No, actually it's been for over 40 years. Have been in business and I've loved business ever since I was young and I came out of college. I started working for a food processing company, worked a couple summers while I was still in college and then transitioned into a full time job with them at a very young age, about 25. I was actually running a $80 million a year operation. Got to work with the management team, the board of directors and everything. So it was a great, great experience. I also got great experience with that company because we went bankrupt. And so you got to see the downside of not handling things. And those are lessons that are still with me today, but was with them. And then as you mentioned, I later went to a closely held, a smaller company, closely held and became a partner in that business, a leader in that business. And we did grow it to 150 million a year in sales. And about a little over a year ago, I exited the business. Now I'm still working with them, I'm still helping them get ready for the future, helping them do developed the leadership team, working on some certain special high value projects. So still engaged with them. But the other part of it is, you know, I really, as I said, I really love business. I love helping people. So one of the things that my wife and I are doing right now is going out and working with business owners to help them, you know, put themselves in a great position. You know, you've mentioned that you've talked about this, but preparing for the exit is huge. And you know, so, you know, given that I've been able to start businesses, build them, grow them and also exit, I want to take that experience and help others.
So give us a little picture maybe of what it is that you, looking back that you did right and wrong with your own exit. How did you set up that company? Well, any second thoughts, like tell us a Little bit of your own experience of getting ready to sell to your partners and how you grew that. And both the good and the bad lessons are, I think, are always useful.
Well, I think one of the things is, you know, we, when you're preparing for the exit, it's not something that happens overnight. It's not like you say, oh my gosh, that's a great idea, and tomorrow you're ready. It can take years to get ready, you know. You know, and some of it is, you know, you begin to prepare yourself, you put yourself in that mindset and you do have that longer term outlook. So, you know, one of the things is when, when do I want to exit or when do I think I want to exit? And you know, it could be five years, 10 or even 20. But to answer your question, Bill, I think one of the things that we did that really helped was, you know, about almost 20 years ago, we merged some of our own internal companies. We had grown, we had developed, and you know, it's always a bit messy. We had a few companies that were dealing in slightly different markets, slightly, slightly different geographic areas. And we finally realized that we were spending a lot of time wanting to make sure we were fair with everybody as new opportunities were coming up. Which company should handle this? You know, maybe we ought to have two companies handle it. Oh, well, let's create another partner, another company that's a partnership of those two companies. And it just kept getting messier and messier. So what I said was, hey, let's go at it a different way. Let's merge these companies. We'll all be one, we'll all be around the same table, we'll all have the same interest and, you know, be aligned, to use the today's word. And we did that. Not only did we get the, you know, everybody around the same table, but we brought some increased clarity in the market and we had increased resources that allowed us to go out and grow even faster. So I think the fact that we were looking ahead and we merged and got ourselves aligned was a huge positive for when you came down to the exit. Because now you've got one company and it's a strong company and there's that clarity.
You know, it's interesting. Very often people create different entities and they grow things up. And I think there's a time and a place for it, right? But then you find yourself also sometimes wanting to merge them back. But in real estate in particular, right, we'll often have a lot of different entities because we want to distribute the risk and operate them independently. So we want to finance them and hold risk over here in one entity and not have it affect another one. And sometimes when starting a particular product or a market or a new service, you'll also do a separate entity so that you run it with rigor and don't commingle development in some new area. That could be a completely different thing. On the other hand, it can defocus and fragment business as well if you keep running that way.
Right. Yep. Well, and of course, I think you're absolutely right. In our particular business, we actually did have a number of partnerships because we believe in long term relationships. And we did partnerships with our customers, they became partners. Long story made short, we did a number of partnerships, but we had the mothership, we had the flagship company which was, you know, after the merger was singular. And so to your point, on, on, on the real estate, you're absolutely right. You can protect yourself by keeping one, you know, one apartment complex, one shopping center or a group of houses in an individual entity and protect yourself. But you may want to have one common partner that's managing all those things.
Yeah, totally get that. So let's talk about some of the companies that you've worked with and share some of these additional examples and maybe from that we can tease some of the key ideas here. So you shared a variety of them. Let's talk maybe about. Well, actually, why don't we start with one of the bad stories. Right. You talked about a distribution company in the Midwest and a father, son and talk to us about that, help us share that story with us.
Sure. So I was, you know, I met with the son and he, you could tell he was devastated. I mean he was, he was just trying to figure things out. What happened was, or what was going on was that he worked for a small company, it was owned by his dad. And you know, I purposely say that it was owned by his dad because it was not a family business. There was no family outlook to it. Dad ran it, dad made all the decisions and dad kept everything close to the vest. Now the son felt that it's, you know, he was somewhat of a leader in the company. He'd been there for almost 10 years and he thought at some point in time he would actually end up owning the business, buy it from his dad or whatever. So he had a long term outlook. Well, unfortunately, dad, dad ran into a health problem and dad didn't disclose to anybody that he had the health problem. And he didn't disclose to anybody that he decided to sell a Private equity group came to him, he agreed to sell. So now here's son that finds out. One dad's got a health problem and so he's worried about him and then he finds out dad selling the company and he wonders, where do I sit in all of this? And you know, I think you and I both know too, in a situation like that, more than likely the way dad ran the company didn't build a management team, he didn't build systems or processes, you know, etc. Somewhere in this process, the private equity group is going to come back and renegotiate the deal. You know, they may have agreed to X, but by the time they're done and they talk about, you know, hey, we did our due diligence, we did a quality of earnings and everything else, you know, it's going to be half X. And you know, if dad's health is still a problem, you know, you know what's going to happen. So, you know, it's unfortunate, but here's, here's somebody that didn't think about the future, didn't prepare himself for the future or his company. So it had an impact on dad, had an impact on the company, the employees and the family.
You know, the leadership lesson I'm hearing here is not just the strategic thing about succession, but is really, are you a dominant kind of a leader? And there's a time and a place for like taking charge and being the last word, the decide or that kind of thing. But then there's also, are you developing a leadership team, a culture, a business that is not dependent on you, or does the business live and die by you because that, as you point out, will dramatically affect the valuation down the road. Even if you start to convince yourself that it's going to go well, if, if you're central to it, it's very hard for, for anybody to fully extract that value.
Oh, absolutely. And the value is, you know, can be millions of dollars, depends on the size of the business. But it's easily, you know, in, in even a medium business, a small business could be millions of dollars, you know, at risk. And so the point you raised right at the beginning is, you know, what's the most valuable product you'll ever sell? If you're a business owner, it is your business. And if you're not prepared, you're going to take a lot less than if you are prepared.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. This quarter I've been doing a lot of emphasis on execution side stuff and from the world of scaling up and As I opened one of our recent workshops, I was like, oh, my God, you know, I did all of the things that we talk about doing. I had daily huddles and I had weekly meetings, and I had, you know, quarterly plans and themes and things like that. I had dashboards and scorecards. I had all those things done. And yet I was still very, very central to the business. So you could have some of the structures in place and still be totally tied into the business as I was. And it wasn't until I created a crisis for myself, right, a moment, a turning point, that I shifted the way that I led. So structures are all the same. But now I had this thing where I was going to be gone for months, and before then I couldn't get away for like a week. But now I was going to be gone with our family on a whole summer trip, and I realized, oh, the business is going to tank and my wife's going to. We both work together. And that was when I started to go. I have to start to work differently. So I spent about 10 months asking the question, what are you going to do when I'm not here? Or how do you think you would solve it? Instead of telling them, here's what I want you to do, I'd say, how do you think you should do this? And what are you going to do when I'm not here? And that 10 months of looking and thinking made me a better coach, made me a better leader, and position the business in a much better place, like, got us out. I did actually then have the added benefit of spending a month in Italy with the family, traveling and sailing and that kind of thing, which, you know, is awesome.
Absolutely. Yeah. Recommend it to everybody. Yeah.
Yeah. So go ahead.
I was just going to say, when. When our children were younger, we used to take motorhome trips, and every summer I would take for same thing. Four weeks. I stayed in touch, but I. Four weeks, hop in the motorhome and go. And. And same thing. You have to get ready for it. And then one day, you know, you get back and you have this revelation. Why not just keep that going? Act as if you're not here. One of the questions I like to ask is, in a business, can the owner, can the leader take two weeks off without having to constantly check in? And that tells you a lot about how they've built the team.
If you're European, the answer is probably yes automatically. It still doesn't mean it's being run well. But in North America in particular, that's a real Struggle for us. And I used to do that thing where I'd go on for a couple of weeks, but then I'm there on vacation somewhere with my family. And I would just be on the phone and on email constantly, like just managing remotely. That's not what I'm talking about here. When I went to Italy, we like to rent sailboats and take the family and go by ourselves off in places. I would see the daily report from the team and I'd see the weekly update and the monthly thing. But I didn't have to be on the phone the whole time. I wasn't on the phone at all. I wasn't dealing with anything. Running meetings, handling calls, helping make decisions. No, they had it like. But it was.
That kind of touches on another point, too, Bill. A lot of people will say, well, when you're talking about exit, you're talking about selling. And that's not necessarily the case because it could be exit your current role. You know, I know. Also in the Midwest, a roofing company, young couple owns it, they were tired of running it and they decided, you know, they, they built up a good, solid management team and they, they actually decided, we're out. You guys run it. We're leaving. The. They left the area and. But they still own it. And the business went from 14 million a year in sales to 25 million a year in sales in two years. With the management team.
In two years.
Yeah.
Yeah. Really well done. Yeah. Well, I think that's the, that's really an important shift is getting to where the business is, where you're using all of the tools as they're intended to free you up. If you've implemented our frameworks and tools and the ones you do or the ones that we do, and then you're not freed up and the business is growing and you're not developing leaders, then why bother, right? Like, you're not, you're, you're not setting up that future sale, and you're not making your life any easier or more fun either.
No.
So let's. Another of your stories that you were talking about is West Coast Insurance Services company that has had some kind of partial exit. Tell us about that.
Sure. Well, they, they've, they've become part of a consolidation, so they were able to do the sale part of the exit, but they're, you know, it continues to run. And, and the team that I'm working with, they're saying, okay, where are we going to be in five years? What are our roles going to be? And the individual that's currently the CEO says, look, in five years, I want to step back and take on a different role. So we're working to identify exactly what that role is, what he's interested in, does it work? And also how do we begin to develop folks that are inside the team that could potentially become that next leader, that next CEO. So working with the CEO and I'm also working with one of the individuals that, you know, could very well take over and saying, okay, how do we get you ready? You know, what do we have to do in the next 90 days? What do we have to do in the next year? How do we get you some experiences? You know, how do you, how do you, you know, just bang your toes and your shins against the furniture and learn how to navigate your way through this?
Fun. Well, I think it's great. I hear sort of two things in that. One of them is the end, right? Creating a clear picture of the end. So what does it look like a year from now, two years from now, 10 years from now, when you have left the business? I think visualizing that, what do you do? Where did it go to, who bought it, why, how is it running? Thinking about that in a rich way is very similar to, like our vivid vision. It's easy for me to say our vivid vision process, which Brian Scudamore has talked with us a couple times in growing 1-800-got junk and how they use that. And most of our clients will do some vivid vision work for the future of the business. Now apply that and think about what does that mean for you and how does the business look and feel? And what's your. Are you now an advisor to it? Are you a proud papa or mama? Like, are you watching it from a distance? What is that, like, ongoing role or not for you? That's a really useful thing to think about and then start to think about. Okay, how do I go from here to there?
Yep, exactly. You know, again, you know, I love Steve and Covey, and two of the things that I think about, one is begin with the end in mind, and the other is be proactive because as the leader, it's up to you. Nobody inside your organization is going to come in and say, hey, let's talk about the exit, right?
Yeah, it's not a common kind of thing. So how about you shared with us a tech company in California and an owner who sold a couple times and had a billion dollar value. Talk to us about that and what are they working on now? Because I think it's in the same vein of what's the end game that we're thinking about?
Yeah, and very, very talented, very successful entrepreneur as you mentioned. He sold business twice for a billion dollars. And he's working on an early stage, maybe not startup, but very early stage again in the tech space. And it's incredible to work with him. Unlike dad, dad who kept everything close to the vest and all, didn't have a vision, didn't build team. He is, you know, very clear about where he wants to go, what his timetable is and he drives everything that way. Who's, who's going to be his investors, who's going to be on his board, what kind of team does he build up, what markets does he want to go after? How does he get, you know, let's say his plan is five years, how does he get to that point in five years? And everything is driven that way. And of course with his experience he's able to bring a whole different perspective, ask more powerful questions and insights and just constantly is driving towards that. And you know, part of it obviously I don't want to minimize this is he wants to make sure he's got a fantastic product. He's really working with his customers and solving problems for him, giving them opportunities and communicating that clearly. But the communication with his group, but whether it's the board, the management team, potential customers, I mean his communication is just amazing. So whole different. Really a lot of good things to learn there.
You know, I'm struck by how in a very early stage business you've essentially created a job for yourself. You have a, you, you're like, oh, I'm a business owner, entrepreneur, CEO, but in many cases you just have a big, big job and you wear a lot of hats and then as you grow, hopefully you start to move from that. But I think many you can grow a business quite a few years and go a long way and still be wearing a lot of hats, still be juggling between a lot of roles, still really have a super job and still be tied to. Is interesting that some people, after they have an exit or two, when they go to build this future company, they start with a totally different mindset. I'm building a team, I'm building a business. I'm not just creat job for myself. And some make that shift in the middle of the growth of the company. But that's a different kind of a mindset. It's somewhat the subject really of the E Myth revisited, right, the Gerber book where he talks about how you have some expertise and some domain and Then you built some business, but now you have to either get out of that or figure out who all those different roles are and start to deal with that business differently than you did in the beginning.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You can. If you're, you know, if you've got an existing business and all of a sudden there's a, you know, an awakening that you do want to get ready for the, for the end or, you know, where you want to exit. You can do a reboot just like you do with your computer or your phone, but it's more difficult. I mean, you know, if you use the dry board analogy, you've got a lot of stuff up there that you've got to erase before you start writing fresh. And so. But you can do it because I think it really begins with that mindset. You know, how are you looking at it? What is your vision? Are you willing to drive towards it or are you just going to keep working your way through the day to day?
So if we got somebody in there, they've been growing their business for a while and they're like, they like this subject. What's your, like, main message points for them? What are the things they need to remember to sell the business someday and get started working on now?
Well, I think a couple things. One would be, you know, first say that you're going to do it and you dedicate some time, you dedicate some focus. Doesn't have to be a lot. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, say as an example, maybe it's a half hour a week. Maybe on, you know, Sunday night or a Monday night, you just say, look, I'm going to take a half hour and start doodling, you know, what, what, what is it I want? So I, one, dedicate the time, dedicate the focus. The second thing I would do is say, ask, ask great questions. Just start working your way through questions. How long do I want to do this? How big do I want to be? If I'm, you know, if I'm a million dollars a year in sales and I want to go to 10, and I'm going to do it in say, seven years, how am I, you know, what am I going to have to do? Do I have to expand geographically? Do I have to add new products? Do I try to acquire somebody, whatever it is, but just start asking yourself questions. And then I think out of that it gets to the vision. You were mentioning your vision process, but you do you get to a vision, okay, if in seven years I look like this you know, now I've got somewhat of a framework, and then the next thing I would say is you. You then begin to start looking at it and saying, okay, where, where are the holes? What do I have to do? You know, how many. If I'm going to go from 1 million to 10 million, what's the structure of the company look like? Do I have a management team that can get us there? If not, who do I have to go find, etc. So you start working your way through it, and obviously again, it's not a light switch. You don't decide to do it today and you're ready tomorrow. It takes a long time and it's going to be several versions of it because the more you learn, the more insight you have, the more questions you're going to ask in the middle, more clear you become.
Now, the funny thing when I hear this, that I'm struck with is how often when we're having this kind of conversation with business leaders, they go to what they can have, not what they want or what they think they can have. So, like, well, I think we could get to this. Or, you know, I'd like to maybe try for this. Not. But here's what I want, right? Like actually saying what you wish for and focusing on that and then looking at could I get there or not, but actually declaring what it is you want. Not everybody needs private jet money, not everybody needs a private island or that kind of thing. Lots of people have fairly modest goals, and that's okay. But whatever it is, whether it's world changing or big goals, whether it's a personal payoff or security or, or whether it's money for philanthropy, like, whatever the thing is that drives you, I think is probably fine. We're not talking about. And with evil people here on this show. We're dealing with people who do good things. But now let's look at, okay, how could we get there and not. Instead of that internal rationalization of what you can envision and where you can get to, what do you want? Is the thing that I hear that's really distinct there. Let's, let's figure that out and then work that.
Absolutely. I mean, and, you know, we, we limit ourselves, right? Oh, that's the, you know, that you could never do that. I could never get there. But, but, you know, think about it and just start working on it and you'll be amazed at what opens up, you know what.
Or, yeah, or I wouldn't like my life like that. Like, oh, I don't want a Multi billion dollar business or whatever, because that would just be terrible. And you imagine that you would have to work a thousand times harder, but you can't. Like the leader of a multi billion dollar business doesn't work even twice the hours you work. I would bet most of us, in fact many people are working harder and putting in more hours and having more stress. Fairly, you can have stress. Whether you have a big business or small business. You only have, we all only have 24 hours a day and nobody can sustain sleeplessness forever. Like your body breaks down, you lose your marbles, like that kind of thing. So if a business 100, a thousand times bigger is being run by somebody with the same hours as you, then it's just really a shift in the mindset and the thinking. The way that we go, that's required. Right? The way that we lead, the way that we empower others.
Yep, absolutely. And I think, you know, to your point, when it's early business, a small business, you're wearing all the hats or almost all the hats, and you're scrambling, scrambling, scrambling. You get that thing up to a decent size, you begin to get that team and you can, you can remove some of those day to day problem pressures and, and enjoy life and stay focused on the long term.
You know, it's funny, wearing a lot of hats is like an analogy, a phrase that we hear a lot that we've used forever. I don't know where it first came in, but it, but it's, but it's apt. We all get it. Right. I think a useful thing to remember is that most of those hats don't flatter you and don't fit you.
Yeah, that's great.
One hat that flatters you and fits you. You should figure out what that hat is and give away the others as quickly as possible.
Exactly. That's well said. Yeah, I'm a great salesperson and an engineer and an accountant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably not. And, and you know, I think early on, like there's a temptation to try to be everything to everyone. We use the Gallup strengths assessment and tools and we talk a lot about developing strengths and leaning into what you're great at and what you care about and like that kind of thing. And I think it's really great. But you know, there's 34 sequence in that. Have you used this?
No.
So like a lot of things, you know, you got your Myers Briggs, you got your disc, you got your Colby, you got all kinds of things like that. And they deal with behaviors and aptitudes and interests and some of them values, that kind of thing. But you end up with a ranking of talent themes that you could turn into strengths with the Gallup strengths. And so you've got your top few, but then you also have your not strengths. Right. The bottom, say, 10 of 34 are the things that you don't like doing. And instead of beating yourself up about it, like, you could hire people who did and who love that kind of thing. Right. If you're not analytical, if you're not detail oriented, hire somebody who is. If you don't like to bring the team together, hire somebody who does, you know, thinking about those kinds of things. If you don't like routine, hire somebody that loves routine.
Yep. Yeah, exactly. I'm smiling. I remember years ago, we were out getting ready to hire somebody that was going to be a cost accountant, and we got to the end and we, we said, what do you enjoy doing? And very reserved individual. And he, he paused for a moment and he said, I like reconciling my checking account. We said, we've got our guy.
Yeah. Going along with that, we do an exercise called Love and Loathe. And we look at the things and. And write down, list out the things you love doing and the things that you hate or loathe doing. Right. And then we start to figure out who on your team loves the things you loathe. And how could we do some horse trading, right. And give away some things and then take on some other things and get everybody working and focused on their particular zone of genius work in their sweet spot.
Two thoughts as we're talking. One is, we're talking about preparing for the exit. And one of the things is you never know when it's going to come up. I mean, obviously the story I told about dad with the health, that could come up, you could pass away an accident or natural, whatever. What happens if somebody comes in and makes an offer from left field and you think, wow, this is great, but you have, you know, again, you're not prepared. You're not in that mindset, maybe you could actually do better. Just. Just like dad with the private equity that's was probably gonna, you know, cut. Cut his price in half. But if you're ready, if you're prepared, if you've been thinking about this, you know, somebody comes in from left field, you say, well, you know, appreciate it. But, you know, you show them the alternative. So the opportunity to be prepared counts in so many ways because you don't know when it's going to happen.
Yeah, you Know, it's interesting, I.
I.
Have two dear friends who passed away this year as CEOs, and neither of them started the year thinking, this is the year that I leave. This is the end of my trip this year, right? Both of them began their year thinking that they had more to come, many more. And then suddenly it was over in very short order. They left us. And you just don't know how much time you have left, right? So what is it that you love doing? What is it you want to spend time doing? And what is it that would. And then the other side of that, like, that's a fairly dramatic negative side, but the other side of it is what happens when something like beautiful and amazing a breakthrough happens. My team and I had orchestrated a great turnaround from like a near collapse of a company and then started scaling up dramatically with a shift in our strategy. And some years ago, and I had a group of advisors, actually in more than one advisory group, tell me now, right now, you should either sell or raise money. And I didn't do either one. I told myself I should just wait. And I had in my mind, like, you have to hit certain thresholds. It's all bs. What you have to do is create a great story. Stories sell people, buy into interesting stories and whatever it was like, I could have either raised money and got more people working on it, more money working on it, or I could have sold at that point. And I didn't do either one. And I'm clear that I missed an opportunity through not listening to other people.
And I think two things. The point you raised on a story is huge. I mean, it. I think of the old, when. When ipod got started, right? You could have come out and given all the technical details about how much storage capacity it had and how you could spin the wheel and how you could find a song by title or artist, etc. Or you could do what Steve Jobs did and he said, I'm putting a thousand songs in your pocket.
Yeah, yeah, it's. And you know what, it's funny, I talk about that one from time to time in the world in. And a couple of things to do with leadership as well as the strategy implications. But. But there used to be a whole bunch of music players before then. MP3 players, they called them. And Rio was about the biggest and best. Does anyone even remember the Rio MP3 player before then? Before then it became a whole chore, choosing music and loading it on. And then when you got bored with it, you had to reload some music because the capacity Was so limited. It's just like all your music with you all the time, everything you ever wanted, that was the story. Right. That's a very different thing than, you know, a few more features. And of course, the integration of that whole thing was. Was really brilliant. We saw the same thing later with the iPhone. Right. He's like, you know, at the time I had a phone, I had a pda, I had a Palm Pilot. Right. And then I got a trio that kind of combined those things that. But not very well. And he like put them all together. It's like, here you go. You'll thank me later.
Yeah, exactly. I know, like, hard to believe that was only 15 years ago.
It's. It's crazy how big. And now we all, you know, you drive next to and your car is not keeping up with traffic or is wandering in the lane a little bit. If you go past them, you'll see that they're on their phone.
Exactly. Yeah.
Well, this has been a great conversation. Some things to think about here before we move on. I just want to let our listeners know our viewers. If you like it, subscribe it, you'll get them every week. We put out shows every week and love to give you that. If you want to give us some feedback or if we can help you find a coach in your area, a CEO coach, a team coach, a scaling coach or anything like that, you're going to go to scaling up scalingcoach.com you go to scaling up.com as well. But scalingcoach.com is where we keep all of this and more. And you could like and subscribe wherever you are. But if the show helped you share it with somebody else who could use it, who maybe is in a similar situation or thinking like you're thinking. So I think that makes a big difference for the people in your lives if you'll share them with others like and subscribe. Liking it helps us. Giving us a review helps us. Subscribing actually helps you so you don't miss any shows. But. And then an email for us is info scalingcoach.com info scalingcoach.com is our email. I'm going to give folks access. So if you want to get in touch with Larry, learn more about his work, see what he does, get in touch with him. Larry Snyder.com and we'll put that link on the crawl here and in the show notes. But it's not hard to remember. Larry Snyder.com you could probably figure that one out just by listening and jotting it down as you fly, drive, whatever you're doing right now as you're listening to the show. So LarrySteiner.com, larry, thanks so much for joining us on the show today and helping us learn a little bit more and get ready for our exits for the business. I want to give a big shout to Wanda Mitchell, who gets our show ready and out the door every week, and the folks at Florida Podfly Productions, who edit our audio and write up our show notes and compile all that. So that's Albert Burge, Anna Cadena, Tim McGowan. Like that. And a big thanks to Vern Harnish, who created the whole scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits in the beginning. Thanks again, everyone, for watching, for listening. Keep scaling up. We'll talk to you again next time. Sa.
