Transitioning from Worker to Teacher – Small Business Interview with Harald Sinow of MacStation and Creo Development : SBS 89

The Small Business show episode number 89 for Wednesday, October 19, 2016 Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co the show by, for and about small business owners just like you, maybe here in Durham, New Hampshire I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you doing, Dave? I am.

Well, it's been a good week. It's been a more normal week for me this week. I don't know what that means, but that's the word that comes out of my mouth. So I guess that's good.

Yeah, not so crazy and running around so much like the last.

Like the last couple of weeks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. How about you?

That's cool. Yeah, very busy out here right now.

That's good.

Yeah, it's good. I enjoy it and find myself running around and hustling but it always puts a smile on my face so I like that.

Cool.

So I don't know whether I'm being effective or not, but it makes me smile so that's good. So hey, today we are joined by a good friend of mine, a guy I've known for a long time. Harold Sinau is a co founder of MacStation up in Vancouver. And Harold, thanks for joining us and hanging out with us today.

Well, thank you Shannon and Dave. Yeah, it's great to hear from you guys.

Yeah, we're definitely glad to have you today. So I want to jump right in. You know we talk a lot about, we build pre show talk there and history and what you've done and things. But give us a little bit of background on your history. You know, was MaxStation your first business or did you work for somebody else? Just kind of give us a little background on the. On Harold.

Yeah, no problem at all. Yeah, well, MacStation would have been our first business. I had a business partner when we originated the company so kind of jumped right in straight from university. I was actually still completing university at the time and I ended up partnering with someone who was a good sales guy and we coordinated together and actually used my business degree a little bit of a template for working on and building out the business. So when I was doing my marketing classes, I was actually using our account when we're doing our finance classes using the company. So instead of creating theoretical companies, I was actually we as a team were building that company out.

Oh, that's awesome. That's a great opportunity to do that. Very cool. So right out of the gate you guys just launched and was it always with the intention of you're going to be in the Mac business or do you want to be in the technology business?

What was it? Well, it was probably the Mac business. I was a little bit of a Mac guy, so I had a passion there. And my partner was definitely also a Mac guy. So I think it was definitely, definitely lean that way towards something we really loved and liked and had a knowledge about. And we literally did start from a garage. Like the initial sales were just direct to schools from garage, so you didn't have a retail store. And it just kind of grew through word of mouth and good service where teachers started wanting to buy it privately and they'd pass on to friends where they got good service and good knowledge. How it went from just direct sales from garages to schools to opening your first retail store and then growing it to multiple stores over, over years in online stores as that became a viable option.

Sure. No, that's great. And how long I know you guys became, you got an authorization, you became an authorized either reseller or dealer. How long after you started did that happen?

Actually, Apple's quite particular about giving out those licenses, as you may know. So it did take a few years of actually selling pretty much the accessories around the core Apple product and really putting together business plans to show Apple that you would be able to, to represent their product properly and push it through and find a market where it wasn't. And we were lucky back then. It was in 93 when Apple was going through some challenging stages prior to Steve Jobs coming back. So it was an opportunity where there was a flux in the market for us to come in with a different business model. So it was kind of good timing. We had the passion and Apple could see that.

Yeah, that's awesome. Can you remember, I know it was a long time ago, us old guys here, but was there anything stands out? That was really one of the most challenging things for you to get the business going where you felt things were working. You had a viable business.

Yeah, well, like any business and people keep on saying it, I keep on saying it for a reason. It's having a plan and a management plan in place for cash flow, making sure you're not spending unproportionate amount of your time, you know, receiving funds, managing cash because, you know, it obviously is very important. So I think that is the big one. And any small business that starts off, you're really wearing so many hats that it's hard to be an expert in all of them. So you're, you're trying to quickly learn as much as you can on a very small budget. So I think those are when you're initially starting, you don't have the budget and funding to put a, you know, management team in place that's got 20 years experience. So you're, you're really learning it on the fly as you're going. That's probably the most challenging when you're starting and not feeling like you're drowning or out of your element when you're doing that.

Yeah. I always tell friends that are starting businesses or anybody that asks, manage cash flow first. Don't worry about profits out of the gate. You need cash all the time. Worry about that. Profits will come later.

That's right. That's right. And that was a big portion at the beginning. And throughout the process, even as you grow, it doesn't stop, it just becomes different. It's different.

Oh yeah. It never changes. That's right.

Yeah. So I'd claim that as probably being the biggest one. Yeah.

And so true. And like you said, still to this day we do the same thing. It's looking at it. Hopefully the deals you make and things are, relationships you make are going to be profitable. But if you don't have the cash, it's a moot point, right?

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

That's why I spent my afternoon checking cash.

Yeah, that's my morning. Every morning. What's in the bank?

That's in the bank.

Yeah. That's good. So as you grew, I mean that transition you talk about from wearing lots of different hats and probably even doing a lot of the technical work and sales and then you made that transition to management, which I think is really definitely worth spending a few minutes talking about, because along the development stage of small business owners, I think that is a really good, difficult thing. And trips a lot of people up. Can you talk about that a little bit? How you kind of did you put the structure in place, started hiring employees or get a good admin or gm, how did it work for you guys?

Well, I think at the beginning still we were the same thing. We were the hr, we were hiring and interviewing. You know, we fairly personal people and you know, feel we have a pretty good read on others. So I think, you know, at the beginning you kind of hire people you knew and liked and were typically friends or that, you know, that you, the friends that you knew would be able to step up and then from expanding from there, you know, then eventually we did, as we expanded larger, had different hiring practices and we'd actually hired outside consultants to put Together, the We realized how wrong we were actually doing at the beginning. But especially when you go outside your immediate circle, as you grow, you'll quite quickly learn that even your friend network aren't the best employees for you. So you got to quickly expand past that to. Because your company and culture really is amalgamation of all your employees. So you can't emphasize enough. As they always say, hire slowly and fire quickly. Make sure you're not wasting your time and have a process in place for the right questions to ask. And even writing your ads that you get the right people even applying in the first place.

Okay, now I'm curious. Are there any key. We talk about magic phrases here, and it sounds like you've stumbled onto a couple of those. Certainly ones that were right for your business. Anything that comes to mind in terms of questions to ask while interviewing or like you said, things to put in the ad to filter people even before that happens.

Yeah, definitely. There is, I think, what I found too, as you're bringing people in, it's really trying to get across a little bit of the culture of your company. We always need happy, outgoing people. You don't really train that. You just got to find those people to start with. It's a little bit what's putting into your ad. But to follow up on that, what I realized, quite often I'm sitting in the room, always have to have at least a couple people listening because I hear something different, what I want to hear than what someone else hears. And quite often don't make that final decision on the spot, have someone else there. You can talk about it afterwards because you'd be amazed at what you heard and what someone else heard sitting in that same room could be quite different. So always have at least two people sitting in listening to that. That interview, if possible, if you have the band to do that.

Yeah, that's great advice, man. Yeah. I mean, I'm already like rewinding and thinking back to 15 years ago, interviewing people solo and hiring the wrong people. Not all the time, but some of them. Yeah. And it's like, oh, yeah, I could have seen that at the interview. Yeah, I didn't, but I could have. Yep.

Yeah, the filter is tough, you know, getting that in place. And I've talked about it here before. We, you know, we hire, we post lots of different places, and we actually just post now and started probably about five years ago, kind of a test in with the, you know, the job posting. And it's, you know, it's about 10 questions. Anybody who's applying for this particular position should be able to answer those questions. Some of them have nothing to do with the position. But the whole thing is just to see, oh, will they, you know, answer these questions. And you know, you'd be surprised at how many people just fire off the resume and cover letter without even reading down, you know that past that.

Yeah.

So it's important. Yeah, that works out. It works out pretty good. That's cool. So yeah, let's talk about marketing for a few minutes. Talk about word of mouth and, and I think a lot of folks don't include it, but I think you touched on it. You know, good customer service is probably the best marketing that you can have. What was really effective for to grow the business over that 20 year period.

Yeah. Well, it's quite funny that you touched on that right off the bat. The referral was definitely. We were quite diligent on tracking our customers and how they heard from us. That was a big part because we spend a lot of money on marketing and wanted to know where we're getting our money. Best bang for buck out of it. And we were consistently month after month still coming in between 60, 70% even when it's. We tried quite different campaigns. At one point we did full on mail order catalogs. Quite expensive to do. It's still quite amazing that word of mouth consistently 60 to 70%. We started looking at other companies that could help us put a program in place to actually develop more of a structured way of allowing referrals to come through a little bit on an easier basis or just to get it out there. There's a few good books out there like ReferralEngine and there's a couple other books that we went to seminars and learned actually how to develop that. And a lot of it really comes down to great customer service, open communication. We try to do a good job on people remembering people's names and little information and facts about the customers. So more like we were a small enough store that we weren't the big apple stores and there was, you know, we could spend enough time that we could remember people's names and make them feel more like part of a family. So that was, that was more of our, our market at the time.

Yeah, that's cool. It's almost like a built in loyalty program as well. It sounds like when you're getting all the, you know, holding onto their data and, and so you know who they are, so to speak.

And you know, that's right. Even when they call up, we'd just quickly pull up Their account, see what machines they had. Because quite often they, you know, that's not their livelihood. They don't know everything. What they had, how much ram, how big a hard drive was, so we could pull it up and just advise them on what they have and know exactly, you know, what type, what products they have in the hand.

Yeah. That's awesome.

That's powerful.

Well, it sounds like you reached out, excuse me, on a few bases here, when you're first getting started and trying to put employee things in place. And you said you had some consultants and then reading these books, trying to find people to help you. I think a lot of small businesses, and I'm speaking for myself too, oftentimes I found myself operating in a vacuum, trying to think you had to figure everything out on your own. But it sounds like you did the opposite, maybe, and reached out and had people help you. I think that's fantastic.

Yeah. You know, I think it took a few years of. Before you get to that phase. I think, you know, when you're younger and learning everything and, you know, not a lot of dollars there to spend that on those that you're really trying to do it yourself and, you know, you being quite proficient at certain things. And I think that was one of the big things I had to let go of. Quite often when you hire people, but you're not letting go of the jobs that they should be doing because you keep on thinking, no one can do it better than I can, which is a fallacy. But it's something that took me a few years to. To actually learn to let go. And that was my biggest thing, because once you're starting something, you don't want anything to fail, but by hanging on, it's a sure way of making sure it's going to fail to grow.

That's right.

Yeah.

We spent a whole episode last week just talking about that, how not to be in charge. And I mean, I still grapple with it today. Especially for me, it's always the cultural part of things and how to get that across so you can give it up to the employees so they can, you know, spread it out amongst everybody else and your clients. And hopefully they pick up on this. Like you've mentioned several times, it's passionate, you know, about the product, we're passionate about the customer service. And it sounds like catchphrases, but they're really not. It can be. It's tough.

And I think, I swear, you know, sometimes I felt most proud after a point when I got past, got over myself and realized that people can do things as good or better than me was after teaching someone, taking pride in teaching them thoroughly enough and communicating well enough that they could achieve the same level I was doing or surpassing it, and then watching them in action saying, wow, that's great. So that's where I started to get a sense of pride. Later on down, I was watching some of the employees blossom and grow and perhaps even outdo me. Maybe one day my children might do the same.

No, that's great.

What a great man. What a great way to frame your own mind. I mean, that's one of those brain hacks, right, where if you're a control freak, and certainly I am, and many small business owners are, where you feel like you have to be in charge and no one can do it better than you, well, make yourself the best teacher. And now you've kind of hacked your own brain to not feel like you have to be doing everything. You're just a great teacher and that's it.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Yeah, I like it. What a great man. Good stuff.

That's very cool. Okay, so since I'm, I'm so good at making these, making mistakes over the years, I always like to ask, you know, can you think back to.

You.

Know, I'm sure you've hardly made any, so it might be difficult.

I don't know about that.

Yeah, I mean, what, what mistake do you think you might have made that really taught you a powerful lesson that you could share with our listener out there that are, that are, you know, often at the beginning or maybe in the middle of the same journey that you've gone through?

Yeah. You know, I probably have kind of alluded to it a little bit already, but I'd say it's probably not firing myself soon enough, especially from certain jobs like I wore every hat and I wore those hats maybe too long. I could have, could have fired myself a little sooner and focused a little bit more on the, more of the direction of the company, you know, focusing that as opposed to some of the day to day operations which could be easily or taught sooner. So I think my main thing is I didn't fire myself soon enough.

That's powerful. I think that's a really good lesson and a great takeaway from, you know, your experience. And you talked about, and you may have already, you know, mentioned this, but we talked about measuring success and trying to, you know, become a good teacher, you know, that kind of thing. Were there other, you know, rubrics that you put in place to really look at and say, oh, you know, yes, we're. We're successful beyond just, you know, the revenue numbers or the profit numbers, you know, of the business.

Yeah, well, I guess there'd be. There'd be quite a few different things we'd look at. Even, you know, as funny enough as it sounds, is like we almost did become like a part, you know, a family. And, you know, we'd do things together and a lot of the staff would interact. So it was a little bit of our social network even within the company, and a bit of a bond and come camaraderie like you back in the early days, before they had all the online Internet gaming, we would after hours, close up, order in, you know, pizza and network through our ethernet and start playing marathon and other games like that back in the day. So, you know, that was part of it too, just having a really, a fun environment because, you know, life's short. We really want to enjoy our time and enjoy what we're doing. So, you know, as soon as the bank payroll is being paid and everything else is done, you want to make sure you're having fun. And besides that, as we started progressing on and I could start stepping away, it was kind of seeing how well the company could run. I didn't have either seven days a week, 10, 12 hours every day. If you could actually go away for a weekend and it ran as well or even exceeded your sales numbers, I started to see that as a success and actually building a company that can stand on its own and it's not just reliant and could continue on. So I think that was another measure of success I had was could I actually step away for a while and things could actually grow?

Yeah, that's a big deal. I agree. And I love that the culture part of it where, you know, very similar for me, when I hear my employees laughing and, you know, being able to joke around while they're getting their work done, It's a huge sense of, you know, satisfaction.

Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah.

I think that's really cool. Okay, that's great. So now you've made a transition, you know, a couple years ago and, and you sold the business. And so let's spend a few minutes talking about that. Was it. Did you have. I mean, we've all had kind of preconceived ideas in our head about what might happen if someday we sold our company. And was there. What was the most surprising thing to you about selling the business?

Well, it was a bit of a. It was a phased sale too. So you know, different market conditions happen and you know, we were looking at partnering with a larger partner to take a of a large deal that was coming to play and that eventually rolled into selling the complete company to them. I think probably the most surprising part of it was the emotional part. I think a part of you is actually in that company building some for 20 years and it's growing, it really is. You got to be careful that it doesn't become your identity, but to a certain degree it does regardless if you don't want it to be or do or don't want it to be. One of the great books read, it's a very simple one, but Built to Sell by John Werlow really tries to make sure you aren't the business or it's never going to be sellable. They'll tie you in for 5, 10 year transitions and all these other things. But that was still one of the things that really penetrated pretty far was how much you are actually attached to and your identity is attached to that.

Yeah, I would agree. And having gone through something similar, I was kind of surprised that you're just. It's like a relationship, you know, and you've spent so much time on it and then all of a sudden, you know, even after the transition, if you do a workout, you know, or something like that or nern out one day, you're not going to go in there anymore.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it took me a bit, a little while, you know, after our 20 year anniversary was just shortly after and I was still like, you know, sending pizzas to the stores as a happy anniversary. You know, it's still like. Still was party even though you're separate and had nothing to do with it at that point. It's still. Yeah, still is always like a little bit of. A little bit of you.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations on that, man. That's so such a. It's a great story. And, and so what did you transition into? What are you doing now? How do you spend your day?

Well, I was, you know, I was fortunate that my children were young at the time. They were like 9 and 11. So we'd work 20 years, pretty much long hours for that time period and pretty much scheduled and iPhones and computers at your side. So we went to Europe on a one way ticket and got a one year visa and we just explored. We're pretty much like gypsies for a year. So it's almost the complete opposite. No computers, no phone, got a motorhome and toured around 16 countries in Europe and just trying to find our passions and, you know, what do we want to do next in life? So it was a great opportunity to. To do that and reflect back on, you know, what have what you've done and learned and, you know, a great chance to bond with your children and.

Yeah, good for you, man.

That's great.

Yeah, that is a, what a wonderful reward for, you know, like you said, all the years and long hours and stuff that you're away from your family is that, you know, really take a year and go do something like that. I commend you for that. That's great.

Yeah. So we took a lot of. During that time period, even with it, I was quite a bit into real estate. So we grew that and I looked at multiple businesses over the year while I was away too. Just kind of exploring and seeing and realized it was kind of real estate where we found our biggest kind of passion and enjoyment. One thing we wanted to do was have a little bit of control. And sometimes when you're. You got a primary product that you're reselling, you don't have control over the supply or availability. So it was really. We kind of sat down and defined what have we learned, what do we want different? We wanted something that we weren't really reliant on a third party providing us with product and the price points we can sell it at and have a little bit more control of our destiny. So we're looking at building products ourself and that became multifamily housing. So we, yeah, so we transitioned into. Into building. Building homes and you know, bring. Bring some of our passion and our knowledge for 20 years towards that.

That's fantastic, man. That's.

That's great.

Now I understand too, while you guys were traveling through Europe and, you know, your, your kids kind of developed some.

Their.

Their passion and got involved in a business venture as well.

Right?

Or at least the, the impetus for the idea.

Right? That's right. Yeah. They really blossomed. I think during that year. What we did for alternative year of schooling with the kids too was we did homeschooling originally. We were going to settle down in one place and put them in a school, but we had so much fun traveling around, we're lucky that we brought the backup homeschooling books and we decided, okay, let's all. We'll teach you your passions. Let's do your passions. And my sons was cooking, so we would go to all the local markets and shop like locals. And, you know, writing wasn't his favorite thing to do. So he asked if he could write recipes on making new recipes from all the different 16 countries we went to. And my daughter was always into business planning. Even in grade three, her report was on the difference between passive and portfolio income. So awesome. Her teacher was like, what? I have to. What is this?

Yeah, that's cool.

So she worked on business plans and when they got back, they actually had a cookbook with over 100 recipes and started pitching it to publishers. And up here in Canada, there's kind of like Shark tank down there. It's called Dragon's Den up here. Talked to one chef who was actually a dragon, and he said, well, you should try out for it, but make some of the products in there. So the kids were selling their pasta sauces for charity, breast cancer research, and. And they ended up applying for the Dragons Inn up here in Gadon. And lo and behold, they got a couple partners and that's kind of been taking off. And then my son went on Chop Canada, it's a TV cooking show, and did quite well at that. And so now they've got a. Got a business where they got their pasta sauces in like 150 plus stores and looking at growing it. So, you know, that was, you know, they're now 12 and 14, so they've had a few years doing it, but. But yeah, they've. Yeah, so they got a little bit of the entrepreneurial bug in themselves and they're busy. The kids are riding home from school and making business calls and doing everything. Right now they're wearing all hats. That's great.

That's awesome that you're able to, you know, help them and watch that blossom in front of you too. You know, how rewarding is that? That's cool.

Yeah, I know like any parent, they go on for their kids forever. But my daughter ended up just getting something called Passion Week. It's like in New York, Vancouver, and different. And she's got accepted into that because she's always been into designing and making dresses. Did a fashion show here, here in Vancouver for the school board as an alternative schooling project too. And they heard about it and so she was going to be in Fashion Week Vancouver in March coming up, so she's busy doing that too.

Yeah, that's cool. Well, we'd love to have the kids on sometime talk about their business experience and I think that would be a really unique show, so we would have to set that up.

So. Yeah, so they're kind of learning and seeing the ups and downs and the pros and cons of Being new young entrepreneurs and they got to work with all the same kind of constraints and hopefully a little bit of mentorship from mom and dad.

Yeah. Oh yeah. What a great opportunity. That's fantastic.

That's outstanding. That's great.

I like it.

It's a great story. It's really good. So, okay, we've kind of gone through the whole gamut here and I'm going to ask you to kind of step back again a little. And you know us old guys now, we need to, you know, kind of repay these to new folks starting out. You know, if there was one bit of advice that you could have given yourself as you were getting started that you just wish you had known, what do you think that would be?

I'd probably say two things. One, I kind of at the beginning as you're learning, you're kind of feels like you're a little bit in a river and you're just kind of following it on a tube as opposed to, I wish I was a little bit learned earlier on about, you know, setting smart goals and not just a goal, but actually the steps towards achieving those goals. And you know, I would also highly recommend an accountability partner. I've just, you know, I've got one only in the last few years and it's the wonders that I will do now to keep my even half an hour once a week. But those goals we set are pretty big. And knowing that I have that call the following week, there's many times where I might not have done it for myself to push myself, but I'm doing it for this accountability partner to push harder, to not let down what I promised I'd do the week before. So I think having accountability partner is something I would recommend if it's possible. You know, if you find someone in the area, mine's not even mine's, you know, I'm in Canada, this person's in the US So it doesn't even have to be near you. Just kind of a little bit like minded people that entrepreneurial spirits and you know, like to push each other to do their best. So those would, those are probably things I would recommend.

Very cool. Yeah, you know, that's some great information. And I always say on the show, you know, I always learn the most and I've definitely picked up a number of things and realized how much I did wrong. Whatever I said to your list, like, oh wow, that's such a great idea. And so, you know, I always make the comment that, you know, our best years are always ahead of us and I really think taking some of your tips to heart will go towards making that true.

Yeah. And I think sometimes you need to have, like a major thing happen. Such as, you know, when I was getting close to looking at selling part of the company to a larger company, I really needed to change who I was to become a better person. So I worked a little bit less on the company and worked very hard on developing myself more. It's quite interesting. My brother actually bought me success magazines as a yearly subscription. They would stack up there for. I had them there for six plus months before I probably even opened it. And then once I started, it just hit a chord. And then, you know, I started using their weekly rhythm registers. Darren Hardy had a great product there and started using that. Then the whole family started using it and we still use it today. So I think some of those things really come into play. When you get to a certain point, you realize it's not you wishing other things were different, but wish that you were different. And how do I go about changing myself?

Oh, I like that. That's awesome. Well, Harold, you know, thanks so much for, you know, hanging out with us today. You have any other questions for Harold, Dave, or is?

I don't, no. This has been, as Shannon said, this has been enlightening and truly a pleasure just to sit and chat with you. Thank you so much for spending your time with us. It's been great.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate it. Great talking to you too.

Yeah, for sure.

Great story.

And like I said, we'll circle back and. And have your kids on and talk about their journey. That's just the beginning.

Sounds great. Thank you, guys.

Thanks, folks. And you can find us at businessshow Co. Of course. And on Facebook, actually, go to businessshow Co Facebook. That'll bring you to the group where we can all chat about this episode together. Thanks so much, Harold.

Really appreciate it. Take care, everybody.