S3:E9 - Systems Helped Us Grow to 3,000 Clients & Exit for 8 Figures with Mike and Aimee Hamilton

If you hear Elon Musk talk, they're talking about systems like every time. They are able to get more done than everyone else does because they have better systems. Like they understand systems better than other people do.

I think it's important that people don't feel like they've got to have a perfect system because it's never perfect.

Welcome to the System Hub Podcast. Hola.

Konnichiwa.

Guten Tag.

Where we interview world-class experts.

You have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing. I was fanatical in my 20s. If you could find a way to produce a business that works without you, your life would change.

Extracting, organizing, and optimizing their best systems and processes for rapid business growth. Now let's get into the show.

Welcome back. I am very much looking forward to this call. This is effectively part 2 and a very happy ending to an earlier interview I did with our guests many years ago, Mike and Amy Hamilton. They are the ex-owners of Inception Websites. Mike is the visionary, Amy is the integrator, and They really have experienced the highs and lows of business ownership. I think you have to be a special type of crazy to be a business owner and really endure all the way through. They've seen it all and recently had a fantastic 8-figure exit. And I wanted to share their story really to inspire other business owners. I couldn't be more excited to chat with them. So welcome to the call, guys.

Thank you very much, Steve.

Maybe just to start, to catch everybody up to speed, maybe who didn't see the first interview, perhaps you can start by just reminding us a little bit about what Inception Website does and for whom it serves.

Sure. You want me to do that? Are you okay? Yeah, we started Inception. We were chiropractors originally and we did a lot of marketing, ran into the space of websites when our practice was in its beginning, is what, right when websites and SEO was first starting. And that's how I met Dave on YouTube videos. So. I didn't meet him for a while, but I, I didn't know how to get my website to rank. And I watched a lot of videos that Dave was making at that time, which were super helpful. Just really building a system of how you do it. And I think it took all the just mess and made it something I could do, a system I could follow. And it worked really well. I built my own website, got rid of the junky one we had, and got ranking first pretty quickly. And then no intention of doing it ever for other people, but we were doing so well at it, we started getting asked by a lot of friends for help. And when 2008 and '09 happened and the economy crashed and our business got in trouble, Amy and I were always really good at growing things, but at that time we didn't understand overhead. And so we just had this like machine that was huge, but it was hungry and it needed a lot of new patients to keep it going in our office. And that just didn't work when the economy crashed. And so at that point we had to make some changes and it was either like we were going to really struggle our whole life or we were going to do something very different. And Amy, I think, and everyone else thought we were crazy at first, but I could just see, I'm like, I know we can do this for other people. So we started slow, had to basically live in our parents' basement for a while. I think when we finally met Dave at a seminar, And when I'm like, I gotta go introduce myself to this guy, cuz I literally am sitting here because I watched his videos on YouTube. And anyway, that kind of is where our friendship started. But we, and Dave coached us in the beginning cuz we, we knew how to get clients again. We were good at that, but we had no systems in place. I'm sure you remember the corkboard. So like we, yes, I have our first calls. Dave's like, how are you guys organizing what you do? And we're like, on a corkboard. And he's what program is that? And I'm like, no, it's, it's a corkboard. We take the names and we move 'em with pins down to the category. Of what we have to do. And, but it worked. It worked at that size. And I think we never had any idea that Inception would get as big as it did. And at the end, we were close to 3,000 clients. And you can't manage 3,000 clients on a corkboard. That doesn't work. Had we not met you, I don't know what would've happened, but your systems you brought to us even in the beginning and your thinking that you brought to us, which was way ahead of ours at that time, was helped us to start to figure out like, how do you start to manage all these clients and not just do it all by yourself and have other people helping you. And like, how do you create training systems and all of that kind of stuff? And had I think we not met you, I don't, I mean, it didn't affect as much what I did a little bit, but like what Amy was doing, because Amy was really instrumental in making sure everything was working. Like where I'm selling all this stuff, we got to produce a good product. And I understood SEO and like what to give them, but we still had to make all that and manage all of that. And so I think without some of those systems we put in place early, it would have been really death. And I think looking I came back now, like when we hired a CEO or fractional CEO towards the end that really pushed us to the end. And he had a huge company with 500 employees and many multiple businesses. And I remember asking him, like, I have no idea how you manage 500 employees because I can barely handle 15. Like, how do you— it's got to be impossible. And he's like, no, it's just systems. I have better systems. Like, you guys don't have systems yet. And that's what we're going to build. And we did have systems, but we didn't have systems to be at past 15 employees. That's where the limit was. And that's all we could understand at that time. So I think that's probably more than you asked for in that question, but that's the evolution. And we did everything online marketing that a chiropractor would need, like a website, Facebook advertising, Google Ads advertising, reviews, like all that kind of stuff. We provided all of that and had to stay on top. I think in the beginning we could just do a website that ranked good and that was enough. And towards the end, if you didn't do all that stuff, you couldn't make it. Yeah. I don't know if you have anything to add, but that's good. Yeah.

Amy, Mike mentioned there that you were instrumental in getting stuff done. I'm assuming you see yourself as a systems person. Have you always been a systems person or have you come around to it? Like, was it, yeah, a mate? Were you an organizer?

I don't know. I think you helped evolve our thinking, like Mike said, and I think it's something that you're just never done working on. A system starts and it grows and matures like a tree. Like, I think it just keeps evolving. Like Mike said, what worked at 15 employees didn't work at 30 or 50. So I think that is something that I probably was better at than Mike, but she's definitely a systems person.

Yes.

And when she met you, she was like, oh, I think, and it's funny because I can sit almost in the middle. Like I've fallen in love with what systems brings. It's not necessarily the creation, but so I get the visionary. Mind.

Yeah.

And then I also get the systems mind to then go, and here's how we do it.

It's— yeah, for sure.

Interesting to watch your journey. You went from back in 2012, you had a couple of employees and an annual sort of turnover of under $40 grand, and then zoom up to 2023 and we're talking 45 team members doing over $700,000 per month. And you talked about that evolution of systems. It's almost like you need systems that are appropriate to the stage that you're at. Yeah, I don't know, then maybe it's an Amy question or a Mike question. What changes did you notice when you think of in terms of systems at the different stages? I don't know if anything jumps out at you and you're like, that was just worlds apart back in the day to where you got it to.

I think you just have to have constant attention on your systems, or like, it's that, but you also have to have someone, and that was our fractional CEO at the end. He had knowledge we didn't have. We were driving home one day, I remember, and I just had popped in my head and I talked to Amy and I was like, I think we need to call our friend Mark because he's so good at business and I don't know what else to do right now. And we called John, our kind of number one in the office and said, hey, what do you think about this thing? We should call Mark. So I called him that day and explained where we were and he a week later flew up because he wanted to be involved and work with us on it. It ended up being a little— originally we thought we might be business partners together, ended up being just a CEO fractional thing and because that's all we needed. But he had just built a custom version of Salesforce for his company, which we needed that like we Inception needed something that we could build totally custom so you could sit and look at one screen and know what was going on in the entire business at one time like that. And it doesn't mean you have to use Salesforce. I'm not sure that I would say that's the answer really, but that's what we ended up doing at the end and it cost a lot, but it allowed us to see what was going on. I think before that we didn't really know. You think you know what's going on in your business. You don't. Like, I think almost no one ever really knows truly what's going on in their business. Like they just, they think they do, but they're going off gut feeling instead of actual numbers. And yeah. You know, towards the end we got real serious. We had a really high-level accountant that was more of a business accountant helping as well, that came as a part of our fractional CEO, a friend of his. And every month we would sit down and truly look at the numbers. What's really going on here? What's the marketing producing exactly? And how many of this are we selling? How many did we lose of this month? What should we be focusing on? And that, those changes went took us from growing by $5,000 a month in recurring revenue to $20,000 a month in recurring revenue, just because we actually knew our numbers and we put better systems in place and we started to actually sell products we had to the clients we already had. And like, we, we weren't doing that before. We, you talked about that probably with us long before this and we just never did it. Cause we're like, oh, we, we'll just keep getting more new clients. And we did. You don't think you're missing that much business, but it was an incredible amount of business we were missing out on because our clients wanted those things and they were going and buying them from other people. We didn't know. We thought they knew that we did that stuff. They didn't. So I think it's just the clarity of the numbers.

And so what we figured out was that after the evolution of the corkboard, we went to Podio. That was the next best thing for us for years, but we essentially broke Podio and we couldn't see what was going on, like Mike said. And so we had to create those new systems to see. We realized—

Additionally, if somebody else is ever going to buy your company, they got to be able to see what's going on. And I think when our fractional CEO came in, that was probably more like when that conversation started. I don't know if you're going to sell this or not, but if you ever are going to sell it, we got to start getting accounting straight and we've got to get, so it's really clear and easy for someone to see that would consider buying this. And we got to have unbelievable systems in place so they know they can walk in and just take over. I'm like, without any problems in it. We probably spent a year working crazy hard on that. Hard enough that Amy's hair started falling out hard. Like it was hard. That was probably the hardest we ever worked.

And maybe to give you some substance on that. So the year before we sold, Inception grew 36%. in one year. So that's breaking all kinds of systems. We had a lot of good systems in place, but all of a sudden all kinds need new attention, not just sales, not just website manufacturing. Employee systems are breaking. Everything's breaking. Hiring, everything.

Yeah. I think, yeah, you go from, I think in that last year or two, especially we you go from working in the business to nonstop putting out fires, trying to fix things that are breaking as you're growing so fast. And it, I don't know, I think had we continued to do it longer, I think it would've gotten easier. It was just, we went from 15 employees to 45, like fast. And for a 10-year-old company or so to grow by 36%, and we already were a pretty big company at that point, like it, It was madness. Just, so you're building a whole new management system. You've got like incredible large amounts of sales going on. You're hiring employees like every single day, trying to keep up and train everybody. And you're building the systems as you're going to do it. So it's, yeah, it was a little crazy, but good. I think it's fun. Like you said in the beginning, I totally agree. If you're not a little crazy as a business owner, you probably shouldn't do it. Yeah. As much as I say it was hard, I still enjoy that. I would much rather be in that state than sitting around bored, not knowing what to do because there's nothing going on. I'd rather fight the battles like that.

But we started to put out fires and solve problems by rectifying all those broken systems, which is really cool.

So anyway, that's the bit that really stood out for me, the way that you explained that it's the systems, they start breaking. And then it's the business owner and the key leadership team's job to then go to work on those particular problems and update that system. And then you move to the next problem. And I feel like that's where the business owner does their best work. It's when someone is stuck in the day-to-day operation, the grind, answering the same questions for clients, for staff, and they do that for years. That drains that entrepreneurial life force out. And that's where people just get stuck in a rut and they hit this ceiling, whereas you want systems to start breaking and then you want to be working on those systems and you go, great, now we've fixed that bottleneck or that constraint. Let's now move on to the next. And it's jumping from operations to marketing to sales. Like, just the way that you articulated that really spoke to at least my systems brain to go, yeah, I can see how that all clicks into place.

So like you just said it, but I think it's even, it's hard to explain how important it was for us to bring in that fractional CEO with fresh eyes. Because the first night he came, he was sitting in our house, we were discussing stuff. He's like, when you guys make a sale, what do you, what happens? I'm like, oh, we email paperwork to the client. He's what happens if it doesn't come back? I'm like, we just, we don't get the client. He's, you don't, do you follow up? I'm like, not really. Like, we're just too busy. And he's, he's like, why don't you just take their credit card right on the phone? They're buying right then. And I'm like, why can't we do that? I'm like, I guess we can. And we were losing, we didn't realize it, but we were losing 40% of our sales because they didn't send their paperwork back. And so just by taking the credit card on the phone because of fresh eyes saw that and we just never thought of that. It's so dumb. I think of it now. I was like, how did we not? So how many clients did we lose for 10 years doing that? It's like, insane, but you just, you can't see what you can't see because you're in the box. Like you need to, someone that's not been there has to look at it sometimes to like tell you what you're doing wrong. And you got to be really open to that. I think like we just said, come and tear us apart. Like we want you to tell us what we're doing wrong. And he's not, oh, they're not always right. They don't know everything, but it made a big difference when we did that.

One thing he had me do was actually create flow charts. Of every process. And boy, you, well, you start to really see, like Mike said, here's a somewhere that's not going anywhere. And it seems like an elementary thing, especially at that big a size, but going back to the basics and just starting over. Okay. Goes from here to here. What happens here? There.

And to build it into a system, to build it into the electronic system when we use Salesforce, you had to do that. And like we, with every system, we really worked hard to make sure, just like Amy said, there's no spot where something can die. If something, it can't, if anything stops and no one's aware of that, we can't have that. So like, it was, it's, you think you have it all figured out, like Amy said, but there was a lot of spots where there were dead ends that nobody was watching.

It was great in Salesforce to actually implement that. Like our web build team couldn't actually progress in their work unless every single stop was corrected and flagged or completed. So anyways, it was really cool to digitize that and then see that all the way through.

The part we never really got to do at the end, which would have come back more into your world again, is like truly build out amazing systems for like new employees to like training systems that were like done for them. And we, we planned to do that and we just, but like the sale popped up and then we just never really got to that.

Yeah. How did that sale pop up? I know you didn't start Inception Website with the idea of exit, and it sounds like when you got the fractional CEO, he just planted a seed. Was that something like, how did it really get on your radar and start to get your attention?

It really just was out of the blue. Like a company was coming into the chiropractic field and buying a lot of companies in chiropractic that could cohesively work together, and they needed a website company. And I think they heard about us from some people and talk to us and that's how it got started. And then it took a while. At first we were going to do it at first and then some things got changed at the last second and we backed out and said, we're not doing that. And we didn't feel like we needed to. We weren't desperate to sell and we were growing really well and it didn't seem necessary. And then that kind of came back. They came back around. I think most likely tried to find a couple other ones and it didn't work out. Our company was probably hard to beat if they could make it work. Our numbers were pretty good. So I think that came back around and I think the second time around it went better. I think they, they knew what we were not going to be okay with. I think on the second time and it, I don't know, people, I think you maybe had sent something ahead, like, should someone sell or not sell? Why? Like, I think if you really want to maintain control of your company, you shouldn't sell, or if you're going to, it better be to a very small entity that's buying you. Like somebody that's just a small thing. If you're selling and it's a big entity, which is more what we got into, it's unlikely that will be maintained. I think everything works out the way it should. I think, and I'm glad looking back now, I think there were some really frustrating parts for us in the process, but I think looking back now, it needed to be that way. And I think what I was saying is if you want to really continue to run your company, but you're wanting to merge for, let's say you need more money or you need some other piece bolted onto your business or something. When it's a smaller group that's joining, maybe a couple few people joining together, like that kind of thing, I think that's one thing and might work where you can maintain a position. I think when you're moving into something like we did where it's a, I think the company that bought us at this point now has had several mergers and they're one of the largest healthcare practice provider service companies in the whole world now. I think they're probably the largest. And so there's so many layers of that. if, if I'm thinking about it from their perspective, the guy at the top of that, the CEO of that company is managing hundreds of companies and every owner of every company says they've got amazing ideas that need to be implemented and they need employees. You can't do it. You could maybe, but it would be almost impossible. So it makes sense that we, we fairly quickly were sidelined in that scenario. I think from their perspective, it's what needed to be like going into it. Is that what you're hearing into the process? No, like that's not what they're saying to you when they're talking to you. So like the picture you get going in and the picture you end up with is different, but like that part's a little frustrating, but I think you probably wouldn't ever sell the company if they told you what really was going to be occurring.

Yeah.

And I don't know that they know that either. Just having been a part of this now, like I don't regret what we did. I think in our scenario, I think we needed to, like we were, technology was changing very rapidly. I don't think there's going to be much of a space for a company that was doing what we were doing for much longer. And that window was was closing and it was time. Surprisingly, I think today there are some other options because like in the beginning, if you have a business, like the only way you could really get money out of your company is to sell it. And the problem with that is that usually 90+ percent of the time you sell the company, whatever it was when you had it dies and goes away. Like it's not the same thing afterwards or probably. I think Inception is still doing really well though. It's not the same as what we were when we were there because it's just like that those people that built it aren't there. And I know like in the past there's, and even today there's companies, right now that are, and one of my friends is partially doing it, is they're buying assets to maybe mitigate a sale. And I think that's a possibility today that I think didn't exist before. There are definitely companies today that, let's say you have a bunch of free cash, they're buying Bitcoin or something like that and create to have value there that's growing and not have to rely on selling the company. If I had understood, let's say Bitcoin really early on, I mean, Inception was spooling out a massive amount of free cash on a monthly basis. The amount of Bitcoin we could have purchased would've made the company worth far more than what we sold it for. And I think those, that's something maybe for somebody to consider, at least. Yeah. If a company's making enough and doesn't necessarily even have to be a Bitcoin thing, but it's tough as a business owner 'cause you're like, you worked really hard for this and like, yes, you're getting money that's coming out, but there's a big difference between like many millions of dollars coming out that you can then grow and invest and the monthly amounts you're able to get out of the business. So I don't know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about that and it's probably confusing maybe to even talk about, but it's something that I think certain business owners could benefit from.

Yeah, I think the idea of coming to the conclusion that you want to take something off the table, a lot of business owners will reach that point at some point. And then how do you do that rather than just closing down a business completely? I think there are some different options with you. When the buyer approached you? It sounds like the picture that they painted for you is different to what it panned out to be. Did you have visions of, hey, we're going to help to support them, get it running, and then step out and then completely exit? Or were you thinking, I'm going to stick around and I'm going to continue to grow it? And this was just an opportunity for you to take money off the table.

I don't think we knew, but because they had so many other pieces in our industry that would have been so powerful, I and I think they thought in the beginning because they hadn't had any of these big mergers that happened at that point yet, if you could take our company and truly bolt on the other things that they had, we would've been absolutely unbeatable. And I think what happened, I suppose, when we got in though, is they all of a sudden had these potential gigantic mergers coming that they knew about, but they couldn't tell us about. And so it's put a freeze on everything. Nobody, we couldn't hire and it just, it stopped our progress. And so then, and then another merger happened and it just, it just, which was good for them. I think their overall company did very well, but like it made it hard for us to function. And I don't think it was their fault. It just, and Inception again, still is doing very well, but you just can't from their side of it. You can't keep Inception can't like Mike and Amy can't just make whatever decisions they want and do anything they want. Even if we would have been brilliantly good at it, they don't know that. And they're, they got, got hundreds of these companies they're trying to deal with and like most of them aren't making good decisions about things and maybe we wouldn't have either sometimes. So I get why they do it the way they do it, but a big entity like that, like it's, there's good and there's bad with it. I think with everything and I think for me, I would love to see more businesses be able to continue without having to sell to get an exit like that. Like it, yeah. And I think there are ways to do it if people are conscious of it early in their work or thinking about that. But it's hard to do that. Even if we had known some If I know back early enough, would we have made those decisions? I don't know, but it—

I'd like to switch gears and think a little bit about when they approached you. What was it, the value that they saw in the business, or how did you make it attractive for them? Obviously cash flow and the business, the— it's a strategic acquisition for them, so they're looking to gain access to the clients and there's the systems component, but were there any things that came up in the discussion that that either added significant value in their eyes that you can go, ah, yes, this really contributed to us getting a great exit?

No, I think number one, we were the most profitable company doing what we did. Like, we just, we had better systems and we could do it faster and better and cheaper than everyone else could. And not just in our industry, probably most industries. And so that was hard to beat. But yeah, just having like our efficiency of being able to, we could build a top top-quality, top-ranking website in 4 hours. Like, that's not that easy to do. It was for us, but for most companies, that's crazy. They just can't even imagine it's possible. So I get, for most companies, they needed twice as many of the employees as we had to do the same thing, and it took 4 times longer. So like, it, yeah, we were easy to win there. And I think the further that they got in and the more that they were able to walk through systems with us, they were Wow. And there was actually a meeting that one of their top people came in and our job was to go through our systems and they were going to basically say, yeah, now we're changing to this because yours aren't good enough. Okay. And when the meeting got done, after Amy went through all of our systems for about 6 hours straight, actually I just went through one. Yeah. For, but it was a lot of time because it was very detailed and Mark had worked really hard with us to get us ready for this because he knew what they wanted to see and And they turned to each other at the end of the meeting and said, these guys are better than everyone we have right now. Nobody's systems are as good as theirs are. Like we, we need to get the other people up to this speed. And so that kind of just stopped that whole change from happening, which was good. We had worked really hard on what we had and we didn't really want to have to rebuild it into a whole different thing that they had. But, but yeah, that was good to see. And I think it's again, systems, like it's all I think too, even in our garden, it's systems.

So like it in the profession too, I would say our rate of attrition was lower than most other companies and our reputation was really good. If we had systems for, if somebody had a complaint, if somebody had a gripe somewhere, how we reacted to that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then going through that. Exit process, I know it can vary and typically the larger the deal size, the longer that due diligence period is. And it sounds like you guys really were grinding it out towards the end and working some long hours and really hard. What was that process like for you? You're sitting down, Amy, doing 6-hour sessions to show a system and they're probably looking in your books, looking everywhere to try and see what skeletons they can find. What was that like?

It was really hard.

Yeah.

It was probably the hardest thing I've ever been involved with, but we had a CFO that we had hired along with Mark. So thankfully he had been through other due diligence processes with companies. So he took the lead and interacted with the company and then would just ask me like, hey, you need this? So we probably together worked on that. So we had two different times that we worked on due diligence the first time, and then the deal didn't work and we came back 6 months later and did it again, but I would say it was probably 4 months straight.

Yeah.

Of everyday requests.

And the company that bought us does this a lot. And so they were pretty efficient at their process. So I think they were faster than most companies would be. And I think because Amy and our CFO were feeding them pretty quickly, they just kept asking even faster. So it just, it was good though.

What was complicating the due diligence was our 36% growth was happening. So the business is growing like crazy. So I'm still monitoring systems. I'm actually hiring new employees at the same time. And we were growing so much, we had to move office spaces. We had desks on every single wall space at one point. So we had to build and construct a new office and get moved over, move telephone, move internet. I can be honest and say I cracked up and cried one day.

It was, Amy doesn't cry very often, so that's a, it was tough.

I had a moment as we called it, but no, it was good though.

It, I think maybe as just from a stepping back view of it, I think it's very critical and important to have a team of people that's helping you with this. Like it costs some money to have a broker, but that guy saved our life, like literally from a financial standpoint. And I didn't think we needed that. Like I really didn't think, I thought we were wasting our money on that. They know things that you do not and you need to have them. Like I, I've seen a lot of horror stories of businesses getting sold and they didn't have protection. Like we had really good attorneys, brokers, CFO, like all of these people were very experienced in that process. We didn't know anything. And yeah, like you need to have those people like that. You won't think you're going to have a difficult time, but after it all gets done, you're going to realize all the mistakes you made and they're, they can be really bad. Yeah. So like it, you definitely can't do it by yourself.

No, you definitely need a team of people.

Or if you do it by yourself, you better have some friends that have done it that can warn you about all the things that can go wrong. Cuz there are a million and like you, you'll have no idea. So like it, no idea till it's too late and the paperwork signed and then it's all over. So can't fix it anymore. And it, yeah, that was a big learning thing and it, we, and it, we really didn't understand how important it was until many months afterwards. Like even at the day of closing, I'm like, I didn't we didn't even need that. I don't know, we wasted our money on that stuff. And 6 months later, you're like, man, wow, I should go buy that guy a car because he saved our life here. And it just was super important.

I'm talking about systems and the due diligence. They definitely ask, what's your process if this— what's your process if your server goes down? What systems is it?

They know what they're doing, and you won't be prepared for everything they're going to ask for. They ask for everything you can't even imagine. Like everything that the stuff that happened in our first 6 months of business. What's this? Where did that go? What's going on with this? Yeah. We need the records for that. It's like the amount of like documents that Amy compiled is unimaginable, like for it. And that's especially why like your business accounting systems and like whatever system you're using to manage everything in the business that truly shows your numbers is so important. Our Podio years were a nightmare because they don't go, oh, it's okay. Your system wasn't that good. No, we need that information. Figure out how to get it to us. I'm like, you have to try to go through this ancient system and figure out how do you compile the numbers they're asking for. And that system doesn't compile numbers like that. So yeah, he's got to sort through them like one by one to try to figure these things out. It took forever. Yeah, I think the sooner you can be on top of those kinds of things, the better. It'll save you a lot of work in the end. So if you can have some people that understand business exits helping a little bit, earlier to get the accounting and numbers cleaned up. That's where your big problems will come in the due diligence, I think. So, which makes sense. Explaining the business is the easy part. Then like that part of the facility is all the numbers stuff that they want is where it gets, that's where it gets tough.

Yes. In that period, so we've gone through the due diligence and then you're coming up to closing. Were you part of the deal? Like as far as did they want you to to hang around for 12 or 24 months? And yeah, yeah, what did that part of the deal look like?

We just, we had a sort of a guaranteed amount of time that we would be there, and they really wanted us to be there, and it was good. And I think on their side of it, where I think we ran into some difficulty, which I'm going to say is my fault probably, is I'm a fairly intense person to work with, and that works pretty good when you have 15 employees. When you have 50 employees, it does not work so good because you You can't take 'em one by one into, after you upset one of 'em, you can't pull 'em into the room and talk to 'em for an hour to explain why you said what you shouldn't have said. So I think we started, John and I especially started running into problems like when we got to higher employee numbers and we started to, there started to be groups of employees that didn't like us and didn't want us to be there. And when the new company came in and said, what do you like about this place? And what don't you like? Amy, Mike, and John, we don't like them. And so like we have, Amy is saying, yes, we grew by 36%. Then they're buying us this year and you have to grow by that much again. Like your numbers can't fall off. If you're growing by $20,000 a month, you have to continue to grow by $20,000 a month nonstop and do the due diligence and hire tons of employees and train everybody and later, and so you're just at your wit's end when like you're And when things aren't going right, you snap more easily. And I think if I could go back and talk to myself now, then I'd be like, you gotta chill out. Like, you're killing all your employees. Like they, they can't, they're not— we can, as the business owners, can turn it up to a level that other people can't. And it's our business and we care about it that much. No employee almost ever is going to care about it like you do. And when you try to push them as hard as you push yourself, they're You just start crushing everybody and they don't like you when it starts making the business suffer.

I think in just the natural evolution of businesses, a lot of employees are comfortable where they came in and where the company was at. But as the company grows and the systems change, a lot of employees aren't always comfortable with that. And it doesn't mean that the company is good or bad or the employee is good or bad. Some people just don't blend with with the growth and the change. And so it was good. We learned, I learned a lot about hiring because we were really, we grew so much during COVID So a big start to our growth was during COVID because people needed to communicate with their communities, but it was really hard to hire people. So that was a good system to learn.

Yeah.

When you came towards the end of the agreement that you had with them? Was— were you guys burnt out at that point? Hey, we've had enough, that's it, time to exit? Or did it just work?

By that point, we really weren't doing anything anymore. I think really that they probably felt that we weren't the right people to be running those employees anymore. And right or wrong, it's their choice. They own the company. And I think once that decision was made, we were more and more out of work to the point when our employment agreement ended, we really weren't participating in any part of the business. We were at home again. So it, I, I think it was a good thing. I think it was time for Amy and I not to be there. Like, I think we loved it. It's your baby and all that, but it, I'm actually happy the way that it went. There were definitely days in there and I think every business owner that sells a business, I've met many of them now, they're like, ah, You can sit and have your grumbles, but it, in the end, I think it just happens the way it needs to. And I think I'm glad that they changed our roles and pushed us out a little bit. They didn't really push us out. I shouldn't say that. It was, they were very nice to us the whole time. I can't say they were ever mean to us at all. It just, you just get grumpy because you can tell they're working around you a little bit and that's okay. They need to do that too. They can't have their whole business hanging on your head and they have to be able to run it without you. And I think once they see they can do that and they don't need your expense and they don't need your problems anymore there that you're bringing into it from your old stuff, like it's, it's just like Amy was talking about when something grows, it changes and you, and a lot of times the people that were there before the big growth comes don't like the changes. And it's just like we, we went, you've had employees for a lot of years, Dave, and we have too. And as you grow, there's certain ones that you think are going to be with you forever and they're not, they just, they don't like the change that happens and they end up leaving and it, and we're no different. We're one of the employees too in the end. And so I think it's just a natural progression. And I think for Amy and I don't know everything we have in store for us in the future, but I don't think we'll start another business like that again, but like it was time for us to not do that anymore. Like it was perfect while it was there. And, but when all the pro— when everything starts to be a grind and you're being everything you're doing doesn't seem like it's working. Some, but something's telling you it's time and it was time. Yeah, it was time for us to do something different.

Some people talk about exit and once it happens, they feel a piece of them disappear. Part of their identity is attached to the business owner. I've even heard of business owners that get depressed on the other side with, oh wow, 'Now what do I do with myself? Okay, I've got the money and all the time in the world, but, but what now?' Is that something like— it sounds like you guys were ready, and you sound like you're— the way that you're talking about it, like it was just the right move. I don't know how you think about that, or if that in others that you can understand and appreciate, but it's not you. Um, yeah, I'm just wondering how you feel about that.

For me, I really I, outside of just the stress of the due diligence, I loved solving the problems, working on that. So it was hard to, I feel a dog on a bone. It was hard to like let it go for me. But like Mike had said earlier, gosh, my hair started falling out. I wasn't sleeping at night. As much as I wanted to keep doing that, I just wasn't.

Change. I think change is different for everyone. Like I like change, like I thrive on it. I get tired. I don't like things to be the same for too long. Amy is a little bit opposite, but like one of the things that we always do when we're, when we have big changes that are happening and we've been through quite a few of them over our lifetime, like we really will just make a list. We'll write down the pros and the cons and, and then you're logically looking at it and it's not all emotional. And I think, and that's what we've, and once we make that decision, then we're good. And I think it helps Amy to, to know what, why we're making the decision. Cause she maybe is a little more emotional. I'm pretty logical thinker. Amy's a little more emotional, pretty logical too, but a little more emotional in mind. That's a good thing. But yeah, I don't know for, and I think too, the whole time we were in the business, I'm a pretty big dreamer and I was always like dreaming of all the life things we were going to do. And so we have so many hobbies and so many things to do that we We just moved into a different kind of business, but it's life business now. Our life still runs like a business, but like it's all things that we just want to be doing, whatever it is. So like we're, but we still are always working on systems and organizing and people come and see our garden that have been gardeners forever. And like, they're just like mouths hang open and they can't believe it. Like how do you do this? Just because we have good systems and it's just, we keep improving the systems. And so we still get to work like we did, but it's just different stuff. Just new things to figure If you just stop and you just sit around and go, oh, what am I going to do now? Yeah, I get why somebody would get depressed to do that, but like, we just never did that. And I think it was good how it went. They sent us home and we were still employees, but that was a little weird at first. What are we going to do? I was like, we got all this property and all this stuff to work on. Let's just start doing that. And I guess if they call and ask us to do something, we'll do something, but they're not asking us to do anything. So we're just going to do this. And I think once we knew we weren't going to be there, then that just got more intense. So we just added more to it. I probably have, I've added about as much as you can add to it now. So we're, you're full again. That's right. We're overworking ourselves. Yes.

What type of things are you thinking of? If you think of your business as a system and then we go, okay, let's apply that same thinking to your life. Your life's a system and there are these subsystems that you're looking after. I know just before we hit record, you talked about health. Health being one of those, almost like a department in your life where now let's go to work on these systems. What are some of the areas that you're working on now that's keeping you full? Like, obviously working on the land, and you guys have a farm. How many acres have you got?

We have about 140 acres of property, and the actual area that we kind of garden, farm is probably more like 3 acres of land that, you know, yes, that stuff. But it's For a couple people, that's a lot. And so we have a greenhouse and every kind of berry bush and fruit tree and huge outdoor garden beds with everything. Amy's got every vegetable room. She has all these like charts and things laid out of what plants, what do you plant when?

And then, you know, when are you harvesting and what are you doing with each harvest?

And yeah, the canning and the freeze drying and there's a lot of stuff going on and it's quite a, it's a lot to consume, but it just keeps your mind busy. It's fun. And on the health side, we have— health is really important to us, something we work a lot on. So we work hard on eating really good natural foods, and Amy loves to make food, so she's always working on that and takes really good care of us. So we work on that all the time, and we spend a lot of time studying like what equipment exists that can help us to be healthy. Our whole basement of our house is a pretty big gym, and in the future, actually, we're going to build a separate building on our property that will just be the gym. That we have a red light bed and a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and like we do PEMF therapy. So there's this routine that we go through to work on that and it makes a big difference. It, when we do all, we just try to really take good care of ourselves. We want to live a long time and also just be able to keep doing everything that we do.

And, but what's funny is some of the things we do, some need more attention than others. They're just like the business. This one gets going really well and then this one's doing good, so we got to come back to this one.

And it's good. I think one thing we find, and I think when we were in business, you made me do this early on and I didn't realize how important it was and I should have realized it more. But you, like when you first started coaching us a long time ago and we were just working in the basement, basically you were like, what day do you take off? And I'm like, none. Like, I work 7 days. You're like, you're not doing that anymore. I'm forcing you to take a day off. And I'm like, no. You need to do that. Like you have to let your mind refresh. Like even now, what's funny is we'll take our friend that was our CEO, got us into this like vacation club system thing, which it's very good for us. And honestly, what's weird is a lot of times we'll go and do these vacations and we will literally, we did a ski one. We didn't even go ski. We just sat there at table planning for 5 days in a row, but But it, then when we come back into our life again, it's okay, now we're, we got it. Like we, we got all these things figured out that, and we don't always do that, but yeah, on that trip we did cuz it just, the scheme didn't make sense. And so we're like, let's just sit here and get some stuff figured out.

But we even think about it at home where all of our most busy work, we just, the other day we said, oh my gosh, okay, we've gotta make sure cuz we've got such a business type personality, accomplish something. And then we think, okay, we've got free time and maybe I'll accomplish this. Then it just never ends. So even at home, we've gotta just chill out and do something fun, go out to eat. We've gotta really plan that. I think that's important.

So yeah, we don't do enough of it.

We're still working on that lesson.

Yeah.

What an inspiration though, you guys in your journey. It's, it takes a long time for some of these ideas to cook and really take root. And I know we worked together so long ago when we got started. And it's, I think, seeing the ripple effect of systems. That's the big takeaway I want someone to realize. By just thinking in terms of systems like you do, and you bring it into your personal life, you bring it into your business life, anything that you do now, it's just who you are and how you view the world and the impact of that just makes it a much more winnable game because systems brings everything to the surface and quite visible, and then it makes it much easier to go to work on the system.

Funny thing is, when you hear anyone speak, if you hear Elon Musk talk or any big business, they're talking about systems. Like, they're— every time they're able to do things that they are able to get more done than everyone else does because they have better systems. Like, they understand systems better than other people do.

I think it's important that people don't feel like they've got to have a perfect system because because it's, it's never perfect. You're always molding that. It just is like clay.

We were talking about like the perfection paralysis. Like I think it's easy to— most business owners tend to be a little bit perfectionist and you can get very paralyzed in that. And like our CEO was really good for us. I was always okay if it's good enough, but he was really like, I'm like, man, we're not ready for this yet. We need another month. Nope. We're starting Tuesday. That's— don't— I'm like, we can't do it by Tuesday. We're doing it Tuesday. And if they're not making phone calls on— when we started selling to our— selling things to our clients, like, that's how that happened. I was like, we need 2 months to get ready for this. And he's, nope, Tuesday, which was like 3 days away. I'm like, yeah, Tuesday, bye. And we started on Tuesday and then our hair was on fire for a while. It was crazy, but you just can't— you can't keep waiting. You got to go. And I think you'll figure it out. Out as you go. I think that's a really important lesson for most business owners. They're waiting until they get a chance until they get, you gotta just go. It's good enough. You'll figure it out. And if you really get in trouble and you fall on your face, then you'll still figure it out and sure will be okay. Yep. Yep.

I think systems fits that perfectly in that most business owners think, oh, I'll get to that later or when I get time. And they never do. And that's what the trap is. You need to start now, be bad at it, and over time with iteration, you improve.

Yeah, the system will start to develop as you go.

Actually, the one thing that Mark taught us a long time ago was work cycles, just finishing things too. I think that helps your system progression. If you just start something, finish finish it. Don't start something and never get it finished.

Don't start 5 things. Like, he was— a long time ago, we had worked in a different business with Mark, and I was going crazy, and I'm like, I can't get anything done. Like, we need more employees. And he's, I'm going to come and watch you guys for a day. You don't need more employees. I don't know what's going on, but I'm going to watch. He watched all day, and at the end of the day, he's, you're very busy. He's, but you're not working. You're just busy. He's what's the definition of work? And I'm like, I don't know. He's like a process that like begins, gets, has a process and it ends. Then you did work. It doesn't, it's not work until you complete the cycle. And he is, you're not completing work cycles. You're just busy. So he's stop doing 10 things at once. Do one. What's the most important thing? Finish that. Then do the next, get it done. And I'm like, that's not gonna make any difference.

I don't know.

Oh, that sounded nice. I still need employees. Like, but I was like, just do it and then you'll see. And a week later, Amy and I were, all the work was done. We were going home on time instead of 10 o'clock at night. I was like, I don't know what just happened, but that is crazy.

So, but we do that at home too. That like most important thing, we'll do that, finish it.

And we're always making lists and doing that. I think it's. That's a really critical piece. And it's a system. It's a system too.

And it's the only way for compounding to actually kick in and work. Because when you complete something, like you finish a system, you get a little bit of benefit. And then you complete the next one and you get a little bit more. And then it's— they all start to stack up. But you don't get that benefit till everything starts building upon itself. And it can't build on itself until you finish it. So I— yeah, I— in the tail end, as we finish this interview. I think we'll be having another. You guys have rolled into next, I think. Yeah, you've got a huge amount of opportunity. So yeah, thank you so much for your shares and inspiration and insight, and yeah, looking forward to that next chapter.

Yeah, thank you so much for everything you've done for us too, Dave. Absolutely appreciate it.

You're a big part of our story.

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