Exiting Your Business| Jason Clark

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits? The money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Bismarck, North Dakota. Thank you for listening. I've never been to North Dakota. I've been to South Dakota. Oh, that's my bird clock. I don't know. I'm assuming it's similar to South Dakota, but I don't know that. Anyway, thanks for listening. Joining me today is Jason Clark of Via Studio. Jason, welcome to the show.

Nice to meet you, Christian. Great to be here.

Yeah, that bird clock, I got to work on the timing of it. It's a little slow, so it goes off after the top of the hour. But, you know, it's comic interlude. Yeah, that's so— tell us, tell us a little bit about Via Studio.

Sure. Visual Studio started in 1996 as primarily a web design firm, and I was not part of the company at that point. I actually bought into the company in 2003, and the web industry was growing and growing. It was a great place to be at the time. When I joined, because of some of my background, I quickly realized that a lot of the reasons that people were asking for websites and needed websites is because they didn't understand their brand. And they were doing that brand work in tandem with website projects. So I think my leadership there, once I joined the company, helped us expand our services. Um, and separate out those things, brand strategy, brand identity, essentially all the services that an agency can do. So web, web work is still a big part of what we do, but it is one of many offerings now. And it's a lot easier for me to separate those out and have those different conversations. So that was, you know, 1996, that was 30 years ago. Um, so it's been a lot of evolution.

That's an impressive, that's an impressive run. Um, so, so did you subsequently buy out your partners, or do you still have partners?

Yes, so I, um, I bought out my business partner. Um, he was effectively ready to retire, um, about 8 years into our partnership. Um, and then in 2003, I actually merged VIA, sold it to a company called eResources. So now I, you know, I went from 50% partner to 100% owner to one of many stakeholders in eResources. So that's, it's, you know, that's, I get to talk about mergers and acquisitions just as much as agency operations these days.

Okay, well, that's a unique thread. We'll tug on that. So why did you partner with eResources? What was the strategy behind that?

One of the bigger challenges, to be honest, you know, owning an agency in Louisville, Kentucky, we've got a great foundation of clients here. Their spirits industry is huge. Healthcare is huge here. Lots of opportunity, but I had been doing it for 20-something years.

You know, as you, you know, there's my team has been, there's lots of people on my team that have been with, with the company for 10+ years now. And, you know, seeing them needing an area to grow into, that type of thing. I wanted us to have a more national presence. We worked on that as an independent firm. Um, and again, like, I'm— I, there— I, I truly believe there are people that are, that are built for certain things. Um, the, the CEO that I— of eResources, Dusty, um, you know, he's, he's more of a mergers and acquisitions guy. He grows by that, and he's been able to take his agency from, um, you know, zero to $15 million in revenue and And again, that's not something that I, you know, at my advanced age now, it's not something that I knew that I was not built for and didn't necessarily want to do that by myself.

So the arrangement is, is it a, like, is it a franchise network or what? Like, what is the structure of this arrangement with eResources?

Um, so the, the company eResources has multiple divisions. There's an IT services MSP division called IT On Demand. There is a product offering that, that is for applications, online applications like grant management and scholarships and that type of thing called Orchestrate. There is a property management help desk team. So lots of different divisions. And again, Dusty, somebody that I'd known for a few years before this, reached out in an industry Slack group and said, hey, I'm looking for a branding marketing company to kind of tack on to my offerings, part of my growth plan. And, you know, since I had known him, I pinged him. I said, hey, let's talk. I had already entertained about 3 other, um, purchase or merger conversations before that. So I was, I was prepared for the conversation. I knew what my business was worth. Um, so it took about a year, uh, from the initial conversation to us signing the papers and officially doing it.

Okay, so you, you became a partner in his company? You got ownership in his company, or did he buy you out completely?

Correct. Yes, it is, uh, it is a purchase. So I will, uh, I'm going through an earnout phase right now, and okay, that will end at some point, and I will be— I, I will have been compensated for my business, but I will be an employee at that point.

Perfect. Okay, I think that's important to understand because there's not a lot of experience share out there around selling your business. And I know I, over the 28 years that I've been doing that, I've had a lot of conversations with businesses that have gotten to that point, uh, of selling. And, you know, you— most of them will only do that once, right? So, yeah, you, you don't have experience to, to rely on. So I think it's important to get, get some, um, idea of what's possible, what actually happens when, you know— I, I think the idea of a cash sale Um, is what most people think, you know, when they exit their business, there's going to be a pile of money at the end.

Um, tiny pile.

Yes. Um, and, and that's not usually the case, right? I mean, most small businesses in the United States don't sell for an all-cash offer. That's just not what the data shows.

It's very rare. Yes. And agencies themselves only get to the point of a sale. Like, usually an agency closes when a founder either goes bankrupt or decides to close. Um, if the metrics I've heard are 10 to 20% of agencies actually get acquired or merge, so it's very small.

Yeah, and, and I, I think it's important not necessarily to plan for it, but at least think about it. Like, I, I know, I know when I was a younger entrepreneur, you know, the, the the endgame, retirement, whatever you want to call it, was not on my radar, right?

Right.

And it was so far in the future, it wasn't, um, it, it wasn't something I had to deal with, right? I had plenty to deal with on my plate that was current. Um, but one of the things that I have discovered is that it doesn't really matter when you sell or how you sell, it's important to build the business to be saleable, right? Because, you know, you don't know when the opportunities are going to come or what's going to happen in your life that you want to sell. Like, but if you, if you wait until you're ready to sell and you haven't built a business to be saleable, you're not going to be left with much.

Yep, absolutely. There is, um, yeah, that's something I had to come to terms with, you know. If I guess if the sale— our sale happened in 2023, I probably started the process by just entertaining, you know, acquisition conversations probably as early as 2017, 2018. And, you know, the, the quality of the work rarely matters. The team that you've built rarely matters. It is your profit and EBITDA that matters.

And, you know, there's always accounting terms.

I love that. Well, and there's, there is a, you know, there in work, you know, this is a podcast about creatives, so we can go there. You know, most creative people, their first— and this is me too— their first priority is doing great work. So project after project for the longest time, we would do those projects for, uh, at a loss, you know, there are times when we built these big web applications and systems and, you know, took a, you know, crunching the numbers afterwards, like our hourly rate, we would have lost $200,000 on those projects, you know, that, and it's like, well, it had to be done right. It was like, well, the client's not, you know, and now my perspective has changed at this point in my career is, you know, if the client's not willing to pay for what it's worth, it's going to be really hard to justify building it for, you know, at that level.

So yeah, and, and I think there is this— as, as a creative, um, I think there's this desire to do the work whether you make the money or not, right? Like, so absolutely, I, I had, um, A friend of mine and, and colleague and client, and, um, he owns a, uh, marketing agency. And several years ago, he did— he did— he was, he was tech heavy. He was one of those unique agencies that was equally comfortable in the design creative elements and the technical dev side. Sure. Um, and he had, uh, through his connections, um, uh, Cardi B had come to him, uh, or Cardi B's agent had come to him and said, we want you to build this for us and our, um, uh, our, our fans. And he said, okay, um, that's a million dollar project. Like, you're talking about a heavy lift to do what you're talking about. And the agent came back and said, no, that's not what we had in mind. So he didn't do it, of course, but he priced it right so that if he did do it, it would be worth the time. But a funny thing happened along the way. The story, the need that she had brought to the table, it just kind of sat and percolated in his brain. And he was like, you know, um, if she wants that, there's got to be other artists that want it. And she might not pay a million dollars for it, but if I could build an application that I could scale to various artists, right, and, and, and rewrap it and resell it, then, then the economics make sense, right? Yep. Um, And so he went off on this journey to start a separate company to develop this technology, and it's been— good Lord, it's probably been 6 or 7 years, various funding rounds, and it damn near killed him, it damn near bankrupted him, but it's finally come to where it actually is going to start making some money and proof that But I say, I tell that story because it kind of shows that like sometimes the ideas aren't great for your business, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be something. And I think that's what we as entrepreneurs have to guard against is we're very intrigued with the possible, right? Like, and we see what's possible. But oftentimes we go down these rabbit trails of the possible, not really thinking about, is it, is it, is it profitable? Like, can it, can it actually be economically sound?

Right, right, right. Yeah, that's, um, and that's, I mean, your story there is the story of the modern web. This is, you know, somebody had a good idea about something and somebody else probably figured out how to scale it on, at a level that's big enough to sustain itself and make cash off of, right? That's content management systems. That's social media platforms. Shopify, like Shopify, right? Etsy is a huge one, right? Like everyone wanted e-commerce. And, you know, you've got all these little craftspeople that couldn't possibly spin up a $75,000 website to sell their craft. Somebody turned that into a platform called Etsy, and now it is just jamming. Yeah. And that's, but that's the difference between kind of a solo creative entrepreneur and somebody that thinks about things in terms of systems and scale. Like it's a different, I think they're both creative, but yes, it's a different mindset. And it's also like you say, it's, it's, it's also the, the ability to fund it on a level that it gets built and the ability to stick with it and endure that pain because it might not. So, you know, we get startups that come to us all the time for web apps and branding and, and what have you. And I'm like, you know, that's one of the first questions I ask is, what does your funding look like? Because if you don't have investors and this is coming out of your retirement accounts, or, you know, you think you're just going to pay for it as your day job paychecks come in, it's not enough anymore, or it's very rare, especially if you can't do it yourself and you're looking at agencies to do that for you.

Hey, listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Yeah, I think the tools that are available now, even versus 5 or 6 years ago, uh, are amazing to be able to do things quote on your own. I, I think about a, a project that I had, uh, invested some internal development dollars on, um, to the tune of probably, you know, $75 grand. Um, that was— and this is pre-LLMs— it was based on AI. It was on, on neural nets that were publicly available. Um, and it— I, I could not get it over the hump to get it implemented, right? And I still think it's a brilliant idea. I still think it'll happen. I think we'll develop it for us internally. But, but now that $75,000 project, I could have done the same thing much quicker for maybe 20% of the cost, right? Sure. So the, the tools, the tools are improving, and I think that will help some people, um, get past what they couldn't overcome in the past. But to your point, it's, it still has to be foundationally sound, you know. I, I think one of the, one of the problems Because I, I've worked on a couple of deals personally where we were looking at fundraising, and of course all the clients that I've had that have done it. There's something, there's something fundamentally screwed up about the VC model. Like, I mean, it, it's, it's not, it's not healthy. It, it doesn't work, um, in a lot of ways, uh, and, and I'm hoping that this technology shift will drive a change in that model because it's, it's not, it's not good. Most owners end up, you know, so diluted they don't own anything and they're working for nothing.

And right, yeah, there is the possibility that you get a new Craig from Craigslist that uses vibe coding and AI tools to build a product that makes millions and millions of dollars and makes that person, you know, helps that person grow a company that is, you know, sustainable and healthy. But that's this new era that we're going into. I don't think it could have been done without these new tools. You know, my son is 17 years old, and that's about the age that I started my career. And I tell him all the time, it's like, I can't, like, when I was 17, I could see what the next 20 years was because I understood the web. I had coded, I had designed, I had done all this stuff. And so it was easy to see e-commerce, online payments, uh, all this stuff. So it's easy to kind of hop in and ride that wave. I'm not the person to ride that AI wave. I'm like, I want to see, I want to see what the you know, 18 to 20-year-olds are doing, you know, who are the kids that are going to drop out of college because they have an idea and they have the time and the energy, they can put the late nights into it. Let's see what they're going to do. I'm not worried about the kids, you know, and we're not, we're not in the AI is taking everybody, everybody's jobs conversation, but I truly believe that the kids are going to be okay.

Well, yes, and, and, and You know, I remember an interview with one of the founders of PayPal that when they started out, they had no background in finance or banking, right? And they had no— it wasn't even on their radar. Fraud was not even on the radar. And he made the comment that like looking backwards, he said, if they'd known then what they know now, he said, I wouldn't have started it. Like, right? And so there's, there's this element that youthful people without experience bring to the table of they don't know any better. And that's necessary.

Amen. Yeah, I have people all the time that come up to me and, you know, I'm fairly well known in this region because I'm, you know, we've done some cool things. And, you know, I'll get somebody in their 40s that are like, you know, little tipsy at the, at the Ad Fed event and like, I want to do what you did, man. And I'm like, I'm not the cynic in a room, but I honestly, like, if you've already got kids and you've, you're already that settled into, you know, your way of life and your paycheck, it might be, it might, that time may have passed for you. Uh, just being realistic, right? I don't want to see somebody with a family and a mortgage, like, you know, I could when I bought into this company, when I was, I guess I was 30, I could, I could go without a paycheck for 6 months because I didn't have kids. And, you know, I had the time to stay up till 2 in the morning to do the work. And, you know, would I do that today? Absolutely not.

No. And I know that for a fact about myself. I started my business when I was 27. I did have two young kids, um, and a wife that stayed home with them. And like, I borrowed money, uh, from the SBA to buy a franchise and start a business. And I'm like, I would never do that, never take that amount of risk now, right? Like, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Yeah, no idea.

Good man. Yeah, I filed bankruptcy when I was 26. Um, And that taught me so much about money. And that was, you know, I honestly, I think that this might be one of the things that helped me succeed in business and creative is I always refused to go into debt. Like, we will lay people off before we take, like, tap that line of credit. We will not, you know, hire before we're ready and we've got the work to hire. You know, it was, it was painful. But I'm glad it happened because I'm— I still don't believe in debt.

Well, I think the only lessons that are worthwhile and certainly the only ones that stick are painful. Yeah, I, I mean, that's the truth. You don't learn anything by being successful.

Amen.

And I will tell you that in my experience, success can cover up a lot of problems. Right. So, so, you know, if you're profitable, you can get by not fixing the things that you need to fix because it doesn't, you know, you don't need to. But when you're on the ropes, you figure out what those problems are and you fix them. Yep. So, yeah. And I think with money, my experience with, with working with thousands of entrepreneurs and my own journey, um, there, there's a lot of baggage around money that people bring to the table, and it usually comes from, uh, you know, what other people have— beliefs that other people have instilled in them, right?

It is way too emotional. Amen.

Yeah, and, and most of those beliefs are not true. Right? Correct. They just have been put upon us by somebody else. And I'll give you my favorite example that I use with creatives all the time, or any bit— any business owner, is this, this axiom, this belief that you have to work hard to make money. And I'm like, well, okay, that may be true in certain circumstances, but is it always true? Like, I know lots of people that work hard that don't make money. And I know some people that don't work at all and make money. Like, so how do you, how do you rectify that? And then I take it a step further. I said, like, okay, so that belief, you believe that, like, I have to work hard to make money. What does that do to you? Well, one thing it does to you is that it limits your income potential, because if you get really good and skilled at something, and it doesn't take you as much time and it's not as much effort, does that mean that you should charge less?

Right?

Correct.

Because that's what you're saying. You have to work hard to make more money. So like, if you don't work hard, does that mean you charge less? And then their wheels start spinning and they're like, oh, okay, I— yeah. But those beliefs drive our actions, right? And a lot of times those beliefs are not even conscious. They're just running a program below the surface, right? Yep. And we don't realize that they're affecting our decisions.

Yeah, that's, uh, that's wisdom right there.

Hey creatives, Delaina Ely here. I have a question for you. If you could pay yourself more, why aren't you doing it? For real. S corp is an option for you, the creative entrepreneur. To move your business to the next level, to pay yourself more, and to cut your tax savings down. Yeah, less money to the IRS. We want that, right? So why haven't you done it yet? What's going on? The reality is you probably have 50,000 questions in your brain. You don't know which way is up and down, and you're still too busy to do all those things plus also create, right? Well, the good thing for you is that Core Group is actually the place to be to get that S corp election Yeah, we have an assessment. Let's see if you qualify. Come chat with me. Core Group, turning passion into profit.

As I have kind of journeyed, like, the— like, learning how to lead is a journey. And that is, you know, I see a lot of people that think that they are leaders because they keep themselves too busy. I have to be the one to talk to the client. I have to be the one that is directing this project. I have to be the one. And they are, you know, they are the ones, again, at our age, they're the ones that are having the mental health challenges and the physical health challenges and the ulcers. And it's like, I don't— like, you've got a competent team that works for you. They don't need you to tell them what to do all the time. Like you should be. And I truly believe this, that the leaders of an organization should be the least busy people in that organization because that is— that means that they're doing their job well, right? Like you and the team is doing their job well, right? Absolutely. And it's not to say that you're out on the golf course or out on a boat somewhere. It is saying that you are available and you have the mental bandwidth to jump in and help people solve problems and to mentor people. And to develop thought leadership. And, you know, like, you need that space once you achieve a certain level in your career. So if you're just the one that's just constantly digging and digging and digging, you know, you're not, you know, you're also depriving yourself of a personal spiritual journey with business.

Very well said. I mean, listeners, if you If you get anything from this interview, listen to that. And I'll repeat it, that, you know, I'll rephrase it. If you're responsible for doing anything and you have this belief that you have to be involved in everything, and, you know, it could be an extension of that, you have to work hard. Like, if you believe that you have to work hard to make money, how is it that you could ever get to the point that Jason's talking about? Where you're not busy, right? You couldn't because your belief is that you got to be busy. And I've experienced it myself. Like, it's hard to make that transition to not being busy because it feels right, right? Like, it feels— Well, like busy is—

Yeah. Like, we need a different word for busy, right? Like, because I love You know, I spent— I had 2 complete days in the last 2 weeks just working in HubSpot. Like, I was in the zone. I wasn't busy. I was just doing something that I knew needed to be done. I had a thought in my brain that I needed to get out there and I needed to get to be useful to other people when it was time. And I don't call that busy. That is my happy place. That's just being in the zone. Busy is all the administrative things that make someone feel important because they're talking to the CEO and they're, you know, and they have to talk to these employees. Like, that's the busy thing that is the— I think that is the death by a thousand cuts. You'll kill your soul. You will kill your motivation in this industry. You know, so, so let's, let's, let's define busy as well.

Yeah, no, I'll help you. I'll help you along. In my book, I talk about the Pareto principle. Most people know it as the 80/20 rule. And it's, it's, it's this, this fractal paradigm that you see when it comes to human behavior. And it shows up everywhere. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And it's fractal, meaning that it's a— fractal is a mathematical term, but what it means is a pattern that repeats. You see it in crystals and, you know, a lot in nature, right? But what that means is 20% of your efforts result in 80% of your outcomes, right? But then you take it a step further. And 1% of your efforts produce half of your results, right? So focus there, right? And it goes on from that point, but that doesn't, that doesn't matter. What I, we put to, I put to my leadership team this year is like, okay, you need to get real clear on that 1%. What is it that you do that you can repeat, or maybe it's something new that you need to do in the next 30 days? Because if you do the math, it's roughly 1 hour a month. It's actually, you know, 1%. Most people work more than 100 hours in a month, but like real work, it's close enough, right? Right. So what's that 1 hour that you can do that's going to produce 50% of your results? And focus on that and get clear on it. Because, and as my team, some of my team members, it was uber clear to them. Some of them had to sit and digest it for a little bit, and it took them about a week to come back and say, okay, now I know what that is.

Right? Right.

But how much, how much more powerful is it to work on that 1% or 20% than it is to get lost in the 80% that's not productive? And And I'll tell you that I believe that there is some percentage, it might be 20% on the tail end, that is actually counterproductive, that it actually moves you away from your goals.

Right? Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're there. And it's really hard for somebody to do this without some type of coaching or training. Like, it's— I think It's, it's just too easy to get involved in your own day to day and not, not see those things that, that, that produce value, right? Like it's just, you know, if you've got a mentor or a coach, or a group of professional friends, like there's all, all there are all kinds of resources there. But if you don't actually listen to someone else, that journey of self-awareness is not going to develop very well. That's, and that's something I would have never said as a cocky early 30s person, right? I thought I knew it all. And now I'm like, you know, I've got lots of networks and people to lean on to help me like, okay, like, I think this is my superpower lately. What do you think? And they're like, nope, that's just making everybody pissed off. Don't do that anymore.

Yeah.

So Yeah, and I remember earlier this year, I was in my mastermind and I came up and I had the hot seat and I gave my presentation. And one of my peers, he said, "When you said what you said, my stomach actually turned." Like he had a visceral reaction. Like, "That is a bad idea, Christian, don't do that," right? And you have to have the humility to hear that. Right? Like, and he was 100% right. Like, I'm glad that he said what he said because I was going down the wrong trail. Yeah. But you can get lost in your own mind, right? It's real hard to unpack and get clarity if you don't involve others. It's real hard, right?

I really love— and, you know, we're since we work in the creative field, it's easy to see this, like fragile egos and, you know, people that are really tough to talk candidly to. And I absolutely love TV shows where people are tethered to each other in some way that they can't untether and they just give each other the business all the time. Like I dream about a working situation like that. That. Like, give it to me, man. I've got thick skin. Like, nothing that you can say professionally is going to hurt my feelings. And honestly, I've told everybody I've ever hired this, it's like, you will never get in trouble for telling me your truth. If you believe something, tell it to me. And I just, man, it just, it drives me crazy when there's, you know, there's a thing and you're not allowed to talk about the thing. So everybody just talks around the thing.

And, um, the proverbial elephant in the room.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's called radical candor now, but it used to just be called tough love. It's like, I love you, I love where we are, but also this thing right here is fucked up and we need to fix it. Yeah. And I'm just— I, I dream about those situations when you've got people that trust each other enough to be able to be that candid.

We're— I 100% agree with you. We're huge fans of Patrick Lencioni and his books. The foundational one, the seminal one that I think every business leader should read is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Right. And it's a good one.

Yeah. And you can just Google it and look at the image and get what you need. You don't have to read the book. It's a good book. It's anecdotal. It's stories. It's not like your normal business books. It's a quick read, but the foundation of teamwork is trust, right? And what you're talking about, that radical candor or tough love, is only possible when there is trust. Because for a long time, I was the type of leader that no one wanted to have those conversations with. They didn't trust my response, right?

Sure.

Yeah, yeah. And they were right to, because I don't know how I would have accepted it. But to me, trust in an organization and a team is the, because you could define trust a lot of different ways. But in the context of teamwork, it's I can tell you something that you don't want to hear without fear of negative consequences.

Amen. Yes.

Yes. And once you have that, it's amazing what doors open.

Right.

But you have to start and be willing to give that trust to them so they can say it. Right.

Like, you have to be willing to be wrong as well. 100%. I'm going to say, and this is one of the things I think about a lot with thought leadership and, you know, people that actually move society forward, is you— is give me something to disagree with. Right. Like my— I don't really, like, I listen to a lot of podcasts and a lot of, you know, business kind of things, and there's nobody in that spectrum that I agree with 100%. Right. And I love it. Like, I think a good leader is going to throw something out there and say, chew on that. You might not like it. I might actually be telling you that because I, I might not actually believe the thing I just said. I just wanted to start a conversation. And I just think, again, as leaders, that's something that you have to do and you have to stir the pot up and you have to get people to talk and nothing good comes out of no friction.

No, absolutely not. Wrapping this up, I want to go back to something you mentioned at the beginning about you had reached your limit, um, and that's why you pursued this merger with, um, eResources. Um, I'm curious, like, what that conversation with yourself was like. Like, what— how did you come to the, like, okay, I'm at my limit? Or you recognized your limit and you're like, I, I'm not interested in going further on my own? Like, what, what was that conversation like?

Sure. Um, being involved in enough conversations with agency owners around the world, honestly, um, it was very— I guess not enough people had planned their exit. Like, what do you— like, what's— what are you gonna do? You know. And I've seen people just here in my town that, that are in their 60s or early 70s. And, you know, I, again, I don't like to be cynical, but I've— my old age, I'm getting a little— cynicism is creeping in. But like, I see people going through the, uh, going through the same, the same steps. And like, not because they believe in it anymore, because but because they have to. They haven't planned that next chapter of their life. So to be completely honest with you, I didn't expect it to happen so soon. I was just in the mindset of like, I need to know what my next chapter in life is because I don't wanna die trying to sell the next website project. That's just so, that sounds so boring. You know, I love the work. I love what we do. But once you kind of, you know, once you kind of work yourself up in organizations like that, leadership and that sales bit becomes a requirement. And so, yeah, just like, okay, what, like, what could be next if I, like, I proved that I could own an agency and run it and win all these awards and do all this wonderful work, like, What do I want to do next? And so part of figuring that out is not being tethered to payroll and to clients and to, you know, the project management system. And I'm just pretty darn excited about what that might be. So that is— so again, I started entertaining offers and having this conversation and trying to work on the the business side of the business as far as profits and EBITDA and everything. And, you know, again, this offer came, to be honest, it probably came a couple years earlier than I thought it would. Um, but it was good enough to say, okay, like I can, you know, after this is done, I could probably retire completely or I can move on to whatever that next chapter is going to be. And that's exciting.

Yeah, I love that you arrived at that. I think a lot of business owners, especially men, their identity is wrapped up in the business, right? And so the absence of the business is an absence of self. And like, there really is no understanding beyond that. Like, what is their to do without the business, right?

I had two very, very distinct responses when I announced on LinkedIn and my social medias and everything that, that I had, you know, I had sold the business. The first one is, are you okay? What's wrong? Right. And the second was, oh my God, that's amazing! I didn't know you could do that. How do I do that? Like, I had conversations with at least 4 different agency owners. Like, how did you do that? What did you do? Who'd you talk to? You know, and again, there's like the identity piece that people are like, oh, Jason is Via Studio. So if you're leaving that, like, what, you know, who's Jason? Exactly. And I'm like, I'll be fine. Yeah. And then the other is the people that are, you know, kind of burnt out on what they're doing. And like, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I guess, in the grand spectrum of business owners, I'm not that old. So being able to say, um, you know, I have an exit in my early 50s is like, oh my God, that's amazing, well done, help me do that.

Yeah. Yes, I, I think not having that mindset of building a business that's saleable and not focusing on the, the profitability of the business, because to your point That's what drives buyers. I mean, you know, that's it. That's what drives valuation. It's not your work product. It's not your team. There may be some strategic buyers that might buy you for those reasons, but usually not, right?

Right.

If you don't and you're in a business where it's service-driven, whatever it is, it could be accounting, it could be website development, it doesn't matter, you end up creating just a glorified job.

Yeah, you're just a freelancer with employees and administrative overhead.

Yeah. And at some point you're gonna go to grow to hate it, uh, like, like those 4 agency owners that are like, how do I, how do I, how the fuck do I get out of this? Like, you figured it out, how do I get out of this?

Box. Yes. And I, you know, again, like, I don't— I'm not here to gloat, but there is a certain amount of freedom now that is like, oh, you know, I could take a gap year pretty soon when my earnout's done. I'm probably going to do that. Sounds great.

Yeah, yeah. But, but if, if, if your identity is so wrapped up in what you do and the business The idea of a gap year is terrifying. Like, what would I do?

Right. Yeah. Who am I?

That's exactly right. Right. Like, yeah. And I see all kinds of business owners reach that stage of like, they actually won't sell their business because they don't know what they're going to do with themselves. They don't know how they're going to fill their time.

Yeah, and I'm just like, I'm so excited for that next chapter. It's like, it keeps me burning the flame here during the day as I'm working through this.

I love that for you. Well, congratulations. How do people find out more about Via Studio?

Sure, you can go to viastudio.com easily enough. And you can find me on LinkedIn just at C. Jason Clark, the letter C. And is that Charlie? Charles. Yes, sir. Charles. It's a— I think it's like a— for some reason, my family, all the men go by their middle names, and I don't know who started that. And it's just a thing we do. But yeah, and there is— we've got a new rebrand that'll be launching at the beginning of the year for the parent company that I'm really excited about. And so that's, uh, that'll be another, another round of awesome work that gets out into the world.

So yeah, exciting. Well, listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message. I don't know why you wouldn't like what Jason said, but shoot us a suggestion and we'll try and replace Jason. Until then, ta-ta for now.